Action strength.....how big a barrel can it handle?

[Dan B]

I've got a BIG 6.5mm barrel that I need to do something with. It's a 30" straight cylinder Shillen SS Match chambered in 6.5-06 with only about 100rds down the pipe. I've also got a Savage 110 series action that need a barrel! Right now this barrel is on a Mauser 98 action...I know (now) that this is too much barrel for this action to handle with the current bedding arrangement (simply has the action bedded).

So instead of trying to make it work with the Mauser action, I'd like to have it installed on the Savage and a smaller .30 cal barrel threaded on the Mauser.

The question...can the Savage handle a barrel this big?? What stock and bedding would you use??

Also, can the Mauser handle a 29" .30 cal tube with 1" muzzle diameter?? The action has a single shot plate installed for the follower and one piece Leupold base to try and help stiffen it. The wood laminate stock that the Mauser currently sits in has a .75" aluminum bedding plate in the bottom that the action is bedded to and bolted through...so I'd like to use this stock to save a few bucks if you fellas think it is any good.

Input please!!! The snow is making me want to tinker with guns!!!

 

[James Jones]

With a barrel that big I'd either barrel block it or just bed the barrel and free float the action.
Kirby Allen has a bedding system that actualy taps the barrel and beds it to a V block if I remember right.

 

[Buffalobob]

First, let me say that I know nothing at all about this. I just tell the gunsmith to give me the largest diameter barrel that they recommend for the action. Secondly, let me say I do not endorse one bedding method over the other.

If you go down to "General Discussion" and see the thread "Gun Show in Blackfoot" you will see two guns both built by excellent gunsmiths. They are both bedded differently, and they shoot about the same which is- much better than I can consistently hold - probabably somewhere in the low 0.3 or high 0.2's. The gun laying on the ground in the case is a FN 98 with a 30 inch barrel plus brake. At the end of the barrel it measures 0.95. This is a NBRSA Heavy Varmint barrel taper. It is bedded as tight as possible with no side nor front of the recoil lug clearance. It is epoxy pillar bedded (not metal pillars) and it has 3 inches of the barrel bedded (pad). If you take the action screws out and hold the gun upside down, the action will not fall out. When he rebuilt my gun he built 4 other Mausers at the same time, so he knows something about mausers.

Morale of the story is that with a barrel pad and pillars my gunsith felt the NBRSA Heavy Varmint taper was all he felt comfortable putting on the mauser action. He made and contoured the barrel himself.