Remington 700 Small Firing Pin Installation

[kapt]

Who is the best person to send my Remington 700 bolt to get the (.062 ?) firing pin conversion work done ?
Ron

 

[Gottschall]

Gre Tan

 

[carlsbad]

gretan popularized it. Good guy with good prices and good reputation. but lots of good smiths here on the forum can do it too.

I highly recommend the modification and put a .060 nominal firing pin in all of my rifles.

Another option is to order a new bolt from PTG with the .062 firing pin hole. This option is useful if you have other problems you'd like to fix such as extraction timing.

--Jerry

 

[kapt]

Forum Smiths - Chime in....

 

[geraldgee]

+1 @ GreTan

 

[nmkid]

I've had Gre Tan do 2 for me. My latest one just got used today. I was getting some 'ugly' primer cratering with middle-of-the-road loads so off went the bolt to Gre Tan. Now, those same loads, show normal primer indentation. By the way...Good time for fast turnaround. Mine bolt took less then 2 weeks to get back.

 

[nmkid]

Sorry for the picture size and quality. Very seldom do I post pictures so, every time I do(try) it's a head banger. The case on the right is the before case. the 'after' case is for me perfect.

 

[BoydAllen]

I understand the rationale behind small firing pin tips very well, since I own a Viper action that has one, but if your sole issue is cratering, be sure that it is more than an aesthetic problem before doing anything about solving it. Have you had any primer blanking or piercing that released gas? I have shot hot loads in Remingtons that cratered and cannot think of any instance where the primer failed as a consequence.

If you are set on a small firing pin tip, then absolutely Greg Tannel is the man...no doubt.

 

[jepp2]

but if your sole issue is cratering, be sure that it is more than an aesthetic problem before doing anything about solving it.

I have a Rem VS SF II in 204 Ruger. All loads result in primers that are cratered. The problem isn't the loads are too hot, the problem is that it has a bolt that Remington decided to put a chamfer on the firing pin hole. So I just accept the chamfer causes the crater on the primers. As Boyd mentions, I have had no problems beyond "they don't look normal".

 

[carlsbad]

To me, significant cratering is unacceptable. It will result in hard bolt lift and erode the edges of the hole. Remington does not chamfer the hole. The hole is chamferred as a result of cratering.

Cratering is caused by the force balance of the internal pressure of the cartridge x area of the firing pin cross section countered by the force of the firing pin spring and acting on the metal of the primer. A smaller pin makes the area smaller by the ratio of the square of the radius resulting in a force balance that eliminates cratering.

--Jerry

 

[kapt]

Thanks for the input folks. I went ahead and ordered a new PTG one piece bolt with the small firing pin in it. They will custom turn the diameter so that way I could get a closer match to the action bore as well.
Thanks again.
Ron

 

[jepp2]

Remington does not chamfer the hole. The hole is chamferred as a result of cratering.

Not really. There was a period (2008-2010) that Remington did put a bevel on the firing pin hole. Mine definitely came that way directly from the factory, and is not the result of cratering.

Taken from another forum where this subject was discussed:

"I just went through a Remington 700 armorer's course and learned some interesting tidbits on 2004 and newer 700's.

In the last few years Remington has been designing there 700's to crater primers on purpose. They've added a very very slight bevel to the firing pin hole so that primer cratering occurs during case expansion. This causes the primer metal to drift forward and thicken at the lip of the cratering and the dome of the firing pin strike. The Remington rep said they even have primer cutaways back at the factory that proves it works.

Normally, cratering comes around from having too much pressure in a hand load and when the case contracts, it hits the bolt face hard enough to bounce the firing pin back and material flows into the firing pin hole.

On a side note, which was news to me but might be common knowledge on THR, Remington has started fluting the 700 firing pins to reduce lock time. The rep thought that the new style firing pins would be comparable in weight and lock time to an aftermarket titanium pins."

 

[carlsbad]

Jepp2,
Maybe, I don't claim to be an expert in remington history, and the guy who wrote the section you quoted can't get the correct version of "their, there and they're" but if they did add a chamfer, it was ill advised and probably overly exuberant deburring.

so did you have yours bushed?

--Jerry

 

[eddief]

Chamfer, deburr or whatever, it was done by Remington on some of the 700's.