Bighorn SR3 shouldered prefit

[FEENIX]

Now we have come full circle. You are not talking about the same thing that Greyfox and I are talking about. Bighorn actions have such tight tolerances that the do not need to be in the hands of a gunsmith to get a chambered, threaded, shouldered barrel. This was the entire point of Greyfox's question. You can order a barrel just as I described from several gun smiths and even straight from Proof Research. With a large majority of other actions the gunsmith must fit to the specific action due to poor tolerances. I ordered two barrels so far for my Bighorn SR3. Once I received them I installed them with a barrel wrench and vise and was ready to go with no nut and no time without my action in my hand. As I stated previously PVA will apparently do this for a few other actions but I have no experience with them.

I was not responding to Greyfox's post but rather to your post ...

My gunsmith never said, I wanted to see it first before working it. He simply said, yes just bring it over.

 

[Smokepoles]

So a long bighorn receiver with a floating bolt head can use blind shouldered prefits and be within spec swapping bolt heads back and forth too? If that is the case I'd say that's pretty impressive considering the extra parts in the bolt. I suppose If all the bolt lugs and abutments are cut identical the bolt head pin wouldn't much matter as far as headspace goes.
If that's the case I didn't know they were that tight and they deserve a pat on the back.
In the shoulder vs nut debate I don't think either is better than the other as far as switch bbls go, if everything's square and threads aren't overtorqued I reckon both would work the same. Uhh huhh.

 

[Greyfox]

Now we have come full circle. You are not talking about the same thing that Greyfox and I are talking about. Bighorn actions have such tight tolerances that the do not need to be in the hands of a gunsmith to get a chambered, threaded, shouldered barrel. This was the entire point of Greyfox's question. You can order a barrel just as I described from several gun smiths and even straight from Proof Research. With a large majority of other actions the gunsmith must fit to the specific action due to poor tolerances. I ordered two barrels so far for my Bighorn SR3. Once I received them I installed them with a barrel wrench and vise and was ready to go with no nut and no time without my action in my hand. As I stated previously PVA will apparently do this for a few other actions but I have no experience with them.[/QUOTE

 

[Greyfox]

I appreciate all the responses. It is impressive that the Bighorn actions can keep their tolerances tight enough for gunsmiths and barrel makers to provide shouldered pre-fits. I suppose any skeptics could easily do a pre-check prior to firing the freshly mounted barrel with go-, no-go gauges to confirm headspace.
It seems that besides the ease of fitting, an additional advantage of being able to order a shouldered pre-fit is ordering magnum a bolt head cartridge chambering. It appears that few(if any?) of the suppliers of pre-fits using the a "nut", will supply the magnum bolt head sized cartridges(ie 6.5PRC) with the small-shank Savage barrels .....which is the same thread used by Bighorn. Criterion/Northland comes to mind, only supplying magnum bolt head barrels for their "nut" pre-fits in the "large shank" Savage barrels.. While Savage, once upon a time sold magnum cartridges with their small-shank actions, they made a change several years ago to only supply them in the large shank actions. I understand that this was due to the desire on the part of Savage for greater action strength. The Bighorn fully supports the use of magnum cartridges in their actions, but the pre-fit barrel makers/suppliers can't control which action is used, and therefore don't want the liability should their "magnum" bolt head sized barrels be used on the Savage small shank action. A "shouldered" pre-fit enables one to order a pre-fit, magnum sized cartridge for their Big Horn action from those gunsmiths/makers supplying them.....My understanding of the situation.

 

[jcoop]

Shilen, McGowan, Pacnor and others will all build a magnum cartridge with a nutted barrel for a small shank action. My buddie had a nutted Remington, 28 nosler barrel, built by McGowan just a couple months ago (the thing shoots too). Criterion/Northlander is the only one that I know of that will not do it. I've had 3 300WSM and 2 300RUM and a 338 Edge barrel made on a small shank all with no problems.

 

[codym]

I just went ahead and ordered the proof carbon small shank savage prefit. It was in the twist and length I wanted and the muzzle came threaded. My biggest concern was the sammi chamber. I will run it and if I'm not happy I will just have the throat lengthened