The “Parts” Gun Member Bill Craig
The author built up this rifl e on a Remington Model 700 short action rifl e he acquired at a bargain price.
such an urge. This usually occurs after I have accumulated various gun parts that I haven’t been able to sell at the local gun shows. Sound familiar? My latest collection of parts actually started almost two years ago when I had a custom stock built for my Remington 700 CDL in .257 Roberts. Not that there was anything wrong with the factory CDL stock — on the contrary it was really quite nice, but I had this blank of beautifully fi gured walnut. Sound familiar again? No one at the gun shows was willing to give a fair price for my short action CDL stock so it remained in my reloading room for a year or so. In the meantime my gunsmith, Carl Remey, had come
D
by some complete short action Remington 700 magazine assemblies (brand new) for $30.00. Had to have one! Didn’t know why, but the price was right. Have you priced a Remington magazine assembly with trigger guard, fl oor plate, follower, and magazine box lately? It will shock you! A short time later I was sharing a table at our local
Mountain Home gun show with my good friend Roy Cun- ningham (another bona-fi de, card carrying gun nut). Roy had a table full of real goodies, among which was a take-off barrel in .22-250 caliber that appeared to be almost new and it too was from a Remington 700. It was 26" with a varmint contour. I did not know why at that time, but I had to have it! He was asking a whole $25.00 for it, but we ended up trading some miscellaneous items that I had nothing in. All of a sudden the light bulb fl ashed on and I realized
that all I needed to make a complete rifl e was a 700 short action. After spending hours on the Internet searching for an action, I wasn’t able to fi nd anything that I felt would fi ll the bill. Also, I couldn’t quite decide on a large bolt face or small bolt face … one reason being that I had not made a decision on the cartridge. “Thank God for gun shows!” Every other month we have a show about 2½ hours north of us in Springfi eld, Missouri, which I normally attend. While perusing the tables the decision of what cartridge was made for me — one dealer had fi ve 50-round boxes of
id you ever get the urge to make up a rifl e from almost nothing? Every so often I am stricken by
The completed "parts gun" used various parts and pieces acquired here and there at "bargain table" prices.
Sako .22 PPC ammo all custom loaded. For $65.00, I bought 250 rounds and a complete set of dies. Norma makes the .22 PPC round at about a buck apiece. What a bargain! This also could be called the “Bargain Gun.” Knowing that another good gun buddy had a JGS reamer for the .22 PPC also infl uenced my decision. Now we have everything we need to make a rifl e
except for one small thing — a 700 short action. Shortly thereafter while shopping in Wally World, I stopped by sporting goods and there it was! A Remington 700 short action rifl e in .243 with scope and mounts for $397.00. After selling scope, mounts, barrel, and stock, that left me with $247.00 in a new action. All the parts are now in place. My friend Vanis Davidson dropped off the JGS reamer
and I discovered it had a 0.246" neck, which meant a lot of bullet pulling, neck turning, and totally remaking 2,500 rounds of loaded ammo. Oh, well, I am retired, and anyway I really enjoy these kinds of projects. After meeting with my gunsmith we decided to cut off all the threading, re- chamber for the PPC, cut 2" off the muzzle, and re-crown the barrel at 23". While Carl was doing the necessary gunsmith work
I was busy preparing the 250 cases and also opening up the barrel channel to take the heavier varmint contour. The CDL stock was standard barrel contour but there was just enough wood to make it work. There was one more detail about this project that had me more than a little bit concerned. The standard bolt face diameter is 0.473" and the bolt face diameter for the PPC cartridges is 0.445". Carl informed me that he could make it work “as is” with a little tweaking of the extractor and the ejector rod. This was my biggest concern about the whole project. Within two weeks the gunsmith work was com-
pleted and the “moment of truth” was almost here. My head was playing “mind games” with me. How would it shoot? Would it extract a fi red case? How would it look with a heavy barrel on a sporter stock? I sent three of the re-worked cases with the rest of the parts, but nothing hot, to the gunsmith. The brass had been neck-turned to 0.244"
www.varminthunter.org Page 139
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