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?To nut or not to nut?

Every Gunsmith I talk to wants my Nuts ! They hate Nuts because it takes work away from them.... Reality says... Savages with NUTS are Winning every major competition they enter. The hell with improperly applied physics, all that matters is how the **** thing Shoots. They Shoot Just as good With NUTS...

I heard the same Rhetoric about the floating bolt heads.... now folks are making Custom actions with Floating heads and NUTS.... Don't fix it if it ain't broke, and Never let Anyone take your NuTS !

That's because all of a sudden that gunsmith isn't needed as often, and your not at his mercey (that is unless your having a tender love affair with him)
glt
 
I think this is an excellent thread with a ton of excellent information, just not necessarily relative information. When you start talking thread engagement, you are on a completely different order of relevance to accuracy than other factors. And while on paper there can be points made about the which way is "better", the fact is that in the real world there are many more contributing factors to accuracy that are variable that will come in to play before you'll ever be able to produce conclusive results from different threading techniques.


That being said, one thing that does often matter is the "squarness" of the face of the action, the recoil lug (both sides), and either the face/end of tennon or barrel nut.


If you truly are never planning on changing the barrel yourself, then skip the nut. This will also allow you to use a barrel with a heavier profile as it isn't being limited to the nut.

If there's the slightest change that you might end up wanting to swap the barrel at a later date, then have the action face, recoil lug, and barrel nut squared together.
 
I think this is an excellent thread with a ton of excellent information, just not necessarily relative information. When you start talking thread engagement, you are on a completely different order of relevance to accuracy than other factors. And while on paper there can be points made about the which way is "better", the fact is that in the real world there are many more contributing factors to accuracy that are variable that will come in to play before you'll ever be able to produce conclusive results from different threading techniques.


That being said, one thing that does often matter is the "squarness" of the face of the action, the recoil lug (both sides), and either the face/end of tennon or barrel nut.


If you truly are never planning on changing the barrel yourself, then skip the nut. This will also allow you to use a barrel with a heavier profile as it isn't being limited to the nut.

If there's the slightest change that you might end up wanting to swap the barrel at a later date, then have the action face, recoil lug, and barrel nut squared together.

the grand idea of thread engagement and barrel flex has everything to do with accuracey. If the barrel thread is moving a couple thousandth of an inch, the results at 100 yards will be ugly. No different that the C/G of a bullet being off center by .0001". That equales .093" displacement at 100 yards. It all adds up to big numbers.

Ok you don't want a nut. I got no problem after all it's your business. But on the otherhand lets look at it this way. A strait barrel is usually about 1.25" on the O.D., and then you put that on an action with very little threads in relationship to the weight they gotta support. When the barrel threads (shoulder too) can't hold the barrel ridgid you now own a shotgun that shoots real slow! A thousandths movement in the barrel thread is not goona help as well. Do a test, and see how much movement you have in the threads lateral and longitudial. Besides making weight, did you ever wonder why bench rest shooters rely on 22.5" and shorter barrels? The fulcrum points at the shoulder are key with harmonics playing a major role as well (once again we're back to Physics 102 and Applied Mechanics 101). If you stretch the thread into a forced contact the leverage against the rest of the unsuspended part of the barrel is much greater. Now bench guys like to use a shoulder (but there are some that don't) as we all know. Or do they? Next time look at the winning barrel tenons and see how the barrels are often supported (if they'll even allow you into the gun that far)

P.S. a #7 contour barrel that's right at 22" long will be almost three times stiffer than the same exact barrel 26" long. Now compair that to a big old 1" barrel hanging out there in mid air. Then remember that those threads and whatever shoulder you can come up with have to support this with almost three times the leverage against it. You loose everytime.
glt
 
For most of my adult life I have had rooms of Winchesters and a few other odds and ends laying around. Had a few XP 100's but went the Model 29 Smith and the Contender way for nearly all of my hunting needs.

Loved the XP 100's until I went to a gunsmith to check and see what the cost was to make the thing shoot a caliber I could actually kill a bear with. Say what? not in this life time or any other. Now if someone back then had made a Savage Striker and I had seen that everything is inexpensive and quite simply interchangable from 204 Roger to 460 Weatherby I would have been on it like bees to honey. Pre-made everything, no special tools or machines. Headspace gauges that are sized cases filled with two part apoxy!

Oh yeah. Savage did come out with a STriker and all of the above is true including the bees to honey. Now while the masses of Remington and clone fans are getting rid of each others nutslets think in terms of practical.

Savage is out selling everyone!.
Savage is winning everywhere
Savage is cheaper than anyone
Savage is more accurate out of the box than nearly any gun.
Did I mention less expensive?

Everything is amazingly interchangable from one gun to another. Nearly every takeoff barrel shoots amazingly well.

Savage/team Savage won the worlds F class competition over sea's,. two of the shooters were using factory complete guns.

I can simply extract a 378 Weatherby and my 460 Weatherby cases out of my short action Savage without pulling the bolt!

It costs me as little or as much as I want to change a Savage from one caliber to another and do it in 5-10 minutes. The nut seems to be something that is completely misunderstood.

When I get my barrels from Benchmark they have a class three thread on the tenon. Two threads in to all the way into the action there is zero movement in the engagement. I suspect the barrel would never move without the nut its so pricise and tight. But alas I thread the nut down and without wrench vice or anything heavy I use a none maring self made drift punch and mallet and set the nut only snug for just in case.

Twenty years ago I retired from a career and became a machinist so I could afford my habit. In those days tens of thousands of dollars in tooling just to utilize machinery So i COULD BEAT OFF AN OLD MAUSER BARREL. Weld A BOLT ON, MAKE A JIG TO WELD A BOLT ON THEN TRUE IT UP so i COULD. tHANK YOU NUTand thank you Savage for saving me tens of thousands of dollars in time and tooling and making me enjoy my sport even more.

Neal
 
the grand idea of thread engagement and barrel flex has everything to do with accuracey. If the barrel thread is moving a couple thousandth of an inch, the results at 100 yards will be ugly. No different that the C/G of a bullet being off center by .0001". That equales .093" displacement at 100 yards. It all adds up to big numbers.

Ok you don't want a nut. I got no problem after all it's your business. But on the other hand lets look at it this way. A strait barrel is usually about 1.25" on the O.D., and then you put that on an action with very little threads in relationship to the weight they gotta support. When the barrel threads (shoulder too) can't hold the barrel rigid you now own a shotgun that shoots real slow! A thousandths movement in the barrel thread is not gonna help as well. Do a test, and see how much movement you have in the threads lateral and longitudinal. Besides making weight, did you ever wonder why bench rest shooters rely on 22.5" and shorter barrels? The fulcrum points at the shoulder are key with harmonics playing a major role as well (once again we're back to Physics 102 and Applied Mechanics 101). If you stretch the thread into a forced contact the leverage against the rest of the unsuspended part of the barrel is much greater. Now bench guys like to use a shoulder (but there are some that don't) as we all know. Or do they? Next time look at the winning barrel tenons and see how the barrels are often supported (if they'll even allow you into the gun that far)

P.S. a #7 contour barrel that's right at 22" long will be almost three times stiffer than the same exact barrel 26" long. Now compair that to a big old 1" barrel hanging out there in mid air. Then remember that those threads and whatever shoulder you can come up with have to support this with almost three times the leverage against it. You loose everytime.
glt

You're not really explaining how the nut on the Savage adds any advantages by talking about longer barrels versus shorter barrels. I'm an engineer by training and profession. If I can't understand your arguments and rationale, do you think the majority of this Forum's members will? Several times you've drifted off-subject to include other examples that have nothing to do with the use of the Savage-style nut versus the threaded barrel tenon screwed in until the shoulder on the barrel is brought up snug against the face of the action.

Try as I might, I don't understand any advantage, whether you employ finite element analysis or finite differences analysis. The tenon threads will stretch under tension whether the shoulder on the barrel generates that tension force off the face of the action, or whether a barrel nut engaged in threads on threads of the barrel generate the tension force against the face of the action. Six to half a dozen. Same thing. Same difference. No difference.

You add the barrel nut and now the threads and face of the barrel nut also have to be cut true to the threads on the barrel tenon and the mating face of the action. If this is done, I don't see why a barrel nut would necessarily be worse than going without the barrel nut. But it simply adds another machining step to the process of accurately fitting a barrel to an action, in my opinion.
 
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You're not really explaining how the nut on the Savage adds any advantages by talking about longer barrels versus shorter barrels. I'm an engineer by training and profession. If I can't understand your arguments and rationale, do you think the majority of this Forum's members will? Several times you've drifted off-subject to include other examples that have nothing to do with the use of the Savage-style nut versus the threaded barrel tenon screwed in until the shoulder on the barrel is brought up snug against the face of the action.

Try as I might, I don't understand any advantage, whether you employ finite element analysis or finite differences analysis. The tenon threads will stretch under tension whether the shoulder on the barrel generates that tension force off the face of the action, or whether a barrel nut engaged in threads on threads of the barrel generate the tension force against the face of the action. Six to half a dozen. Same thing. Same difference. No difference.

You add the barrel nut and now the threads and face of the barrel also nut have to also be cut true to the threads on the barrel tenon and the mating face of the action. If this is done, I don't see why a barrel nut would necessarily be worse than going without the barrel nut. But it simply adds another machining step to the process of accurately fitting a barrel to an action, in my opinion.

well I guess your not the only guy with an ME sheepskin. Get your Applied Mechanics text book out a read it. Then draw yourself a sketch of the inner workings. Fire a round and visualize what's happening as the powder starts to burn and the bullet starts to engage the rifeling. Now with the data gleaned from the book start to plug in the vectors of force (should be a minimum of six vectors of force acting on the barreled action). You'll see it right away. I took it further a pluged it all in a mechanical program that makes the parts work as if they were being used.

The bolt! Savage uses a floating bolt head that aligns itself with the base of the brass. It has a draw back, but not in alignment. When you remachine the bolt face to square it up with the bolt body, that's about all you've done. The seating surface is also in need of the samething as well. And is only as good as the remachining of the seating surface. Yet all this work is only a patch to fix a portion of the problem. If the bolt has clearence on it to move it has some error built into it (I know about the Borden bumps). The bolt on the average action does not lock up exactly the same everytime. Close maybe, but never perfect because there's some built in clearence. The bumps do help a lot I might add. What I don't like about the floating bolt is that there maybe a slight problem if your a bullet jammer like I am. But if your a guy who seats his bullets a couple thousandths off the lands you don't have a problem. The real problem with virtually all bolts is in lateral motion. It can be fixed to a great extent, but you'd best know exactly where your going. And we have not even talked about the lock time issues that all guns have to a certain extent, and how some of the remedies seem to create other problems
gary
 
well I guess your not the only guy with an ME sheepskin. Get your Applied Mechanics text book out a read it. Then draw yourself a sketch of the inner workings. Fire a round and visualize what's happening as the powder starts to burn and the bullet starts to engage the rifeling. Now with the data gleaned from the book start to plug in the vectors of force (should be a minimum of six vectors of force acting on the barreled action). You'll see it right away. I took it further a pluged it all in a mechanical program that makes the parts work as if they were being used.

gary

Wow. Now you've cleared it all up for all of our readers with your condescending response. That'll gain you a lot of credibility. Most people that truly know what they're talking about are able to explain it. Maybe you know what you're talking about. You're definitely not explaining it in any manner the majority could understand. You're jumping around to non-relevant items, as if you feel the need to provide us with the credentials of your understandings of all theoretical aspects of mechanics, physics, and the art of marksmanship. Where's the focus on the subject of this Thread? Which is a barrel nut.

I follow your discussion on two different barrel lengths. What's it got to do with whether a NUT is or isn't used. The same issues apply to the mega-long barrel versus a short barrel whether the nut is used in mounting the barrel to the action or not.

You've talked about the benefits to the nut when it comes to stretching the threads so that the threads on the barrel tenon make better (fuller) contact with the threads in the action. This is the second time I've asked this. What difference does it make if the force used to create the tensile force between the action threads and the barrel threads is the nut on an extended threaded barrel tenon, or the shoulder of the barrel at the end of the threaded tenon? Either system is acting to pull the threaded tenon back out of the threaded action. Where's the magic in using a nut to create this force versus the use of the shoulder on the barrel itself? How do the threads know whether the tension they're experiencing is due to the shoulder on the barrel, or a NUT?

How does the tensile force from the use of the nut improve the percentage of action/barrel thread contact compared to the use of the shoulder at the end of the threaded tenon on the barrel, provided that equal quality threads have been cut in both examples. That explanation cannot be so difficult that you're unable to articulate it?
 
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The bolt! Savage uses a floating bolt head that aligns itself with the base of the brass.
gary

When you fire a Savage the bolt face does not align to the brass the brass aligns to the bolt face which in turn is aligned with the rear of the lug and lug abutments so these surfaces should be true to the bore of the action, the bolt however is allowed to do what it wants without affecting the bolt head.
 
There are Many Thousands of Savages with NUTS that Shoot better than a Human can drive them.... So, the ONLY reasons to Delete the NUTS are....


Make $ for Smiths

Makes Excuses for poor Shooting and Blame your NUTS.

You don't Like how your NUTS look.


There is NO other Rational reason, Period. NUTS Work.
 
As you are dealing with Phorath beware and you may feel free to use the fact that he is and was an arrogant *** that teased us about the current leader of this country was going to do be the new gem in the whitehouse during the time leading up to the past presidential election.

Well we have all seen what has come down from the whitehouse so there you have it. I know where he lives and will be visiting the *** the next time I pass through Soldotna Alaska.

Neal

Interesting comments there Neal. Seems to be an inability to stay on-topic. You talk like a man who believes he's 'in the know 'and 'in the right'. Not much room for tolerance here. Let me guess... A retired law enforcement officer?

When you stop by to visit me, remind me when it was you received my invitation. And what the purpose for your 'visit' was? Was it for purposes of political education? Or a discussion on the barrel NUT?

I'd hate for there to be any misunderstanding...
 
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SInce you know I am retired Law Enforcement that is a given. I have quite a number of friends to visit in Soldotna Kenia area each time I travel. Couple of retired State Troopers and such. We always share the good times and the bad times and the names of people who need to be known.

It probably won't be friendly though because I flat out do not like the way you treated people during the last presidential election (arrogance). And the arrogance you sometimes convey as a superior being on this website.

That is all
 
the names of people who need to be known.

It probably won't be friendly though because I flat out do not like the way you treated people during the last presidential election (arrogance). And the arrogance you sometimes convey as a superior being on this website.

That is all

And the significance of this post with regards to the subject matter of this thread is? Care to explain why my name needs to be shared and known with "retired State Troopers and such"? Care to express yourself clearly here and spell it out? I'd almost suspect you were "retired on duty" with the statements you've made to date.

Never skipped a beat did you? You've accomplished all this without any hesitation and obviously not one shred of remorse.

I get the quick initial impression you're a real stand-up kinda guy. For a moment there, I might have thought your uninvited visit was for purposes of friendliness.
 
There are Many Thousands of Savages with NUTS that Shoot better than a Human can drive them.... So, the ONLY reasons to Delete the NUTS are....


Make $ for Smiths

Makes Excuses for poor Shooting and Blame your NUTS.

You don't Like how your NUTS look.


There is NO other Rational reason, Period. NUTS Work.


I completely understand how great the nut is but in this case I'm using a 1.25" shank barrel that is a heavy contour and you just don't see that kinda barrel being set up much with a nut, geargrinders is a definite exception.

As far making $ for smiths that just don't wash for this kinda build, the action needs trued just as any none custom action so there's that and if your not using a prefit barrel with a standard chambering then you need a smith to chamber and fit your barrel. My case is better since I can do all my own smithing with the lathes and tooling at my disposal.

The nut can be a source of issues, I proved this to myself with my Model 12, even with a ground lug I could see that the fit was of so I made a mandrel and faced the nut, fit was excellent after facing it and low and behold my cold bore shot went from 1moa low and left to on target and as the barrel warms up it stays constant.

I don't really care how the rifle looks as long as it shoots accurate and consistent, bottom line I want to give myself the best chance of thousands of rounds of cold bore smoking dead on hits as far as I can range!!!gun)
 
I completely understand how great the nut is but in this case I'm using a 1.25" shank barrel that is a heavy contour and you just don't see that kinda barrel being set up much with a nut, geargrinders is a definite exception.

As far making $ for smiths that just don't wash for this kinda build, the action needs trued just as any none custom action so there's that and if your not using a prefit barrel with a standard chambering then you need a smith to chamber and fit your barrel. My case is better since I can do all my own smithing with the lathes and tooling at my disposal.

The nut can be a source of issues, I proved this to myself with my Model 12, even with a ground lug I could see that the fit was of so I made a mandrel and faced the nut, fit was excellent after facing it and low and behold my cold bore shot went from 1moa low and left to on target and as the barrel warms up it stays constant.

I don't really care how the rifle looks as long as it shoots accurate and consistent, bottom line I want to give myself the best chance of thousands of rounds of cold bore smoking dead on hits as far as I can range!!!gun)


+1

The Nut is not for accuracy but for ease of assembly.

The fact that savages shoot well in general is the combination of factors not the fact that they
have a nut.

Long Range shooters are not bench rest types but the accuracy required is just as important
to them and the fact that most if not all bench rest rifles do not have a barrel nut is very
simple to understand. Less is more.

Also the cost would be more to blue print a savage because of the extra piece to deal with
than using the shoulder method.

This post has drifted in all directions but by now I'm sure the original poster has his answer.

J E CUSTOM
 
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