Question on Impact 737 and Remington 700 barrel machining

[MC Hamill]

Good day snipershide!

Question regarding some action and barrel combinations here, I’m sure someone will have a good answer for me.

I have Remington 700 actions that I started building my personal, semi- custom rifles at home here. I used Remage prefit barrels and had them all ordered to fit a standard Remington 700 SA, with regular bolt heads.

Several of these barrels are sitting here off the actions and are still good barrels with life left in them. I just either moved over to a different twist rate, length of barrel, or material choice before I had shot the barrels out. I would like to keep using them, but I have my Remingtons all tied up in rifles I don’t want to take back apart until they are needing to be redone.

Enter my impact 737, which I bought primarily to build a dedicated PRS rifle in 6GT. Love the gun. 6GT barrel is shouldered, love that system over barrel nuts, but obviously the Remingtons are not able to be ordered that way without sending the action to the smith. Rifle is Heavy as holy hell and I’m hitting the off-season locally for PRS, or at least the ones I want to attend. Would like to keep running the action and get used to it more, but it’s not the ideal rifle for the shooting I want to do this time of year.

Now here I am with spare Remage barrels and an impact 737. I know the bolt face for the impact is larger and my barrels aren’t going to work without opening up that face to fit the M16 type extractor. But it got my brain thinking, and that leads to my question for those that would know:

For the sake of compatibility, if I get the face opened up to accept the larger bolt head, is there any reason why I couldn’t run the barrel on a regular 700 with the factory bolt? Or in the future, if I order remage style to fit the Remington, is there any reason not to just get the larger bolt face inlet? My understanding of the mechanics in that joint where bolt head meets the relief in the barrel face is that the outer dimension around the bolt head should not matter so long as the depth to which it is cut is remaining the same, since that is where your chamber begins. Or, am I wrong and there is something I’m missing vital to that being matched to the bolt head?

Thanks for reading! Post away!

 

[bohem]

It depends on the chamber as to whether or not the breechface counterbore needs to be opened up or not.
Mag bolt faces are larger.

The easiest thing for you to do is screw one onto the Impact, throw a case in there and attempt to close the bolt on it. Some Remage barrels are cut with the larger counterbore to account for this question on the market. I know my prefits handle it for this exact reason.

 

[Niles Coyote]

The remage barrels that I have are not threaded with enough threads to pass a go gauge on the impact action so you will want to check that as well.

 

[bohem]

The remage barrels that I have are not threaded with enough threads to pass a go gauge on the impact action so you will want to check that as well.

Another good point. PVA's are capable of doing it.

 

[Flyperk]

Will this work in reverse, such as the 737r barrel work in a 700 action?

 

[J_myer]

Will this work in reverse, such as the 737r barrel work in a 700 action?

Digging up an old thread… did you ever find an answer on this? I am curious about it as well..

 

[Flyperk]

I did not. I even sent an email to the company with no response. I did not proceed with the purchase and went a different route. I would like to know so if you find out, please pass it on.
Thank you,
Paul

 

[45-90]

Not familiar with Impact action.
Without knowing the measurements of both actions for me it would be hard to tell how much machining is needed.
I'm familiar with Rem 700s and build most all my rifles off that action.
The M16 extractor is no problem with counter bore dia until one gets to Magnum cartridges....a bit more dia to accommodate the .535 dia cases, and a lot more dia is needed over standard 308 case dia, to accommodate the extractor to snap over the large .585 Lapua mag cases.

 

[Flyperk]

The initial question is simply will a barrel cut for the 737 action direct fit for a R700 SA. We know the footprint is same as 700 (except the trigger hanger) and it will fit most stock systems with little or no modification.
That info is good to know, thanks for passing it on.