DIY Tikka Barrel Swap, By Dioni Amuchastegui

[HighUintas]

I just torqued on a factory takeoff 223. I have a 223 go gauge. Cleaned chamber, gauge, and bolt face. I did NOT remove the ejector pin or extractor. The bolt closes easily, although with a little more resistance than empty chamber. Probably close to when chambering brass.

I put a piece of Scotch tape on the bottom of the gauge. The scotch tape measures very nearly 0.002 with my calipers. The bolt closes easily, although with a touch more resistance than without tape.

I put two pieces of tape on and the bolt will not close. It doesn't even go down very far at all, like it's just barely getting over the camming surface.

Does that sound pretty good? Maybe about 0.002ish over minimum?

My other two barrels I only hand load for, so I just made sure the brass wouldn't grow excessively on first firing and went for it. No gauges.

 

[Castle Rock]

Perfect

 

[KY_coop]

I've used two pieces of tape. That's where my research pointed me and it hasn't been negative yet.

 

[MattiG]

There's a ton of room for error in some gauges. First time I installed a pre-fit barrel, I was a nervous little Nellie because my Forster no-go gauge closed just as easily as the go gauge. Torqued barrel to 75ft lbs. Proof Research said 1 piece of tape on the no-go gauge is fine. So that's roughly 4 thousands larger than the go gauge.

Rifle shoots .3-ish MOA with a rank amateur behind the trigger and hasn't ever done anything weird.

Sent from my SM-S928U using Tapatalk

 

[Dioni A]

I just torqued on a factory takeoff 223. I have a 223 go gauge. Cleaned chamber, gauge, and bolt face. I did NOT remove the ejector pin or extractor. The bolt closes easily, although with a little more resistance than empty chamber. Probably close to when chambering brass.

I put a piece of Scotch tape on the bottom of the gauge. The scotch tape measures very nearly 0.002 with my calipers. The bolt closes easily, although with a touch more resistance than without tape.

I put two pieces of tape on and the bolt will not close. It doesn't even go down very far at all, like it's just barely getting over the camming surface.

Does that sound pretty good? Maybe about 0.002ish over minimum?

My other two barrels I only hand load for, so I just made sure the brass wouldn't grow excessively on first firing and went for it. No gauges.

That sounds absolutely perfect. Even if there is some extra room in a chamber if you were reloading and sizing setting dies properly, it’s probably not even a big deal. If you read the saami blueprints for many of these cartridges. There can be as much as 10 thousandths tolerance on chamber depth most no go gauges will be shorter than the actual allowable chamber depth by a few thousands