My First Hunting Rifle Build Up

[hunthikecamp]

I wanted to get a thread going for my build up of my next hunting rifle, and I say 'build up' instead of 'build' because there's a lot of really cool builds on here but I'm not going nearly that custom. But I plan to do all the work and assembly on this rifle myself and take it from off the shelf to a solid mountain hunting rifle.

The Old: My current hunting rifle is a sporterized Springfield M1903, .30-06, manufactured in 1905 and sporterized sometime in the 70s for use as a hunting rifle. Equipped with a 3-9x40 Bushnell Scope that works, but runs out of light well before legal shooting light. It was passed down to me from my stepfather and I've enjoyed a lot of good hunts with it. I've taken my first whitetail buck as an adult, my first bull elk, and my first mule deer buck with it. It's old, but it works, and it'll certainly hold it's spot as my backup if I ever need it but I'm ready to sink my teeth into something newer, learn a few things, and make something that's my own.



The New: Browning X-Bolt Western Hunter in 7 PRC, 24" barrel w/ Recoil Hawg Muzzle Break. I picked this up recently for $800, and while 7 PRC wasn't exactly a caliber I was after, after reading up on it I'm pretty excited about the potential for it and couldn't pass it up at the price point.

This will be my do it all rifle, at least until I get to a point in my life where I can afford to build up another. But for now, I'm going to focus on putting the best components I can afford into this rifle to make it more than capable of any hunt. Not to mention up until now I've been pretty much a 1-2 box/year shooter, so as it is this rifle can outshoot me, heck so can that old 30-06. Part of this process for me is also to make that jump to shooting a lot more and being a lot more comfortable and confident behind the gun.

My goal with this thread is just to document all of my decisions, questions, answers, and just the overall process of assembling, breaking in, shooting, and hunting with this rifle. A lot of this is gonna be new to me so I'm sure I'll learn a ton along the way.

Initially the only question I'll throw out there to see if anyone has some input (with the caveat that I just haven't had the time to do a ton of research yet) is about suppressors:

-this barrel is threaded for M13-0.75, not 5/8-24. I'll see how it goes with the RH brake but something that is appealing to me is threading a suppressor on if possible. Looks like Hughes Precision and Silencer Central (and i'm sure more) offer an adapter but the idea of tolerance stackups and things not being perfectly flush worries me a bit, hoping to find some more folks with experience with these. Or is there an M13 threaded suppressor out there? Sure seems like there'd be a market if there's not some unavoidable dimensional issue...

 

[hunthikecamp]

Pic Rail Mounting - The Learning Begins
I picked up a Talley Picatinny Rail for my scope base and after reading Formidilosus's post and getting youtube educated I felt pretty confident about bonding the rail to the action.

Cost:
Talley Long Action 20MOA Rail for X-Bolt - $82
Loctite 380 from McMaster - $38
-I set the rifle up in the gun vise and levelled it by the top of the action (not super critical for this to be exactly level other than to keep the adhesive from running).

-Degreased the top of the action, bolt holes, bolts, and rail with Brakleen.


At this point, I also did a dry fit check and I'm glad I did. The two front right holes the threads were maybe a slight bit gummed up because I couldn't get the bolts to thread all the way in smoothly like the rest. 6/8 very easily threaded all the way down (circled in green below) but these two hung high (circled in red). I tried applying a little more torque by hand but didn't want to risk stripping the threads so I pulled the rail off. I cleaned the threads with some more brakleen and a q-tip and tried threading again. A little better, but still resistance. Knowing they are new I cautiously just kept backing out and threading in and eventually worked it the whole way down. This was maybe some crud or maybe just the threads were a little fresh from machining. Either way, worth the time spent so that I wasn't dealing with that with adhesive in the mix.

Next step, applying the adhesive, the step I had been admittedly procrastinating because there's no turning back...I applied what I thought to be a pretty reasonable amount, at least based on what i'd seen online.

I lined this up on the action and set it down. Almost immediately, with no pressure, a good amount dripped out the right side and thankfully i caught it with a rag before it went down in my action. I looked in the bolt holes and saw a few that were getting intruded on with loctite so, I panicked, envisioning bolt holes and an action full of cured loctite, and yanked the rail off and quickly set about getting the adhesive off in hopes of re-doing it. Maybe this wasn't an issue, i don't know, but the giant glob running down the front had me convinced i overdid it since this was before any bolt torque was applied.

Things cleaned up fairly well, all things considered. I got most of the loctite off of the action and was able to scrape the remnants off to where it didn't look pretty, but felt smooth enough to try another bond. I also chased all the threads with a bolt to make sure they were clean and they weren't too bad.

Post-Bond Attempt #1



Once I got it cleaned up, I took a little break. Almost gumming up your whole action gets your nerves worked up a bit...lol. Also realized at this point ventalition is key, I was doing this inside, window open, but I realized the open container of brakleen was stronger than i thought after i left the room.

For round 2 I elected to 'paint' the loctite on the rail using a q-tip which allowed me to get a much thinner, more controlled layer. This ended up being just thicker than a layer that would immediately tack up, no time for pics so I slapped it on and ran the screws in. No leakage this time and no intrusion into the bolt holes. I ran all the bolts down to snug and then 1 by 1 backed them out, applied a little blue loctite using a toothpick, and then snugged them back down.

Once all the bolts were loctite-d, I went around with the F.A.T. wrench and hit them all with 17 in-lb. Browning spec calls for no more than 18 in-lb.



Overall it turned out decent, most of the scraping/ugly bits I had to do are covered by the rail anyway so lesson learned. It may not be the thickest base of adhesive but I still think it's better than screws only. Maybe the issue i had is unique to the Talley-X-bolt tolerances and there's not much room for adhesive? Curious if anyone else has seen similar.

Next up, going to throw the rings and scope from the -06 on there to get plinking and break in the barrel, realistically the scope I want isn't in the budget until early next year.

 

[SCHUNTER73]

Nice work and good looking gun.

 

[TaperPin]

It reminds many of us of the first rifle we put together - that’s pretty cool stuff. Keep up the good work.