E.Shell
Ultimate Member
I guess it depends on what you mean by 'finicky'.From what I am being told is that factory ammo is loaded short and designed primarily to be fired from an AR platform. Savage bolt actions are far more finicky.
An AR-15 should have plenty of room to close, so that you can never get it to fire out of battery. The bolt action Savage will close on a slightly oversize cartridge, and the bolt cams can size it down in the process. In this case, it looks like the AR is the finicky one.
The firing pin protrusion specification for the AR-15/M-16 family of rifles is 0.028" to 0.036". The accepted firing pin protrusion for bolt guns is usually around 0.045" to 0.050". Given similar headspace dimensions, if your Savage cannot reach the primer, that AR cannot either. It would again appear that the AR-15 is the finicky one.
Finicky in what way?
I don't have facts this, but I'd bet your Savage also delivers a greater amount of force, due to the mass of the striker and design of the spring, but that's just speculation. Maybe Chad can chime in with spring weights and striker mass.
Bottom line, ammunition should function and fire safely in a rifle that is headspaced within specs.
Sounds workable and should get you through, but the problem is really the ammo if headspace is supposed to be 1.260".I just measured a whole box and a vast majority are at 1.250" with a few as long as 1.253" I am measuring a couple more boxes and depending on findings, I will likely set headspace on a 1.250 round with 2 layers of scotch tape. This should give me a 0.003 bump +/- a thou. I will then see if a 1.255" measured round will chamber.
I don't think I'd set it back to 1.260" if the factory ammo you might find yourself using might run as short as what you have now.Then, when I get my reloading setup going, I will re-headspace on the 1.260 spec from a hopefully borrowed Go gauge.
Sound plausible?