Spent most of the day at the office trying to get caught up on work. I'll go for weeks wondering where everybody went and then I'll get a month's worth of work dumped on me in the course of just a couple of days. Got home, caught up on my email other mindless tasks and thought it might be a good time to pick up where I left off on the Mauser Project.
The headspace was close but still needed just a tad more room. I had already picked up a chamber reamer, headspace gauges and an extension handle that lets you make a small cut without taking the barrel off the action so it was just a matter of getting started.
With the bolt stripped, it looked like it would work but I couldn't figure out how to get the collar that holds the extractor in place to come off the bolt. I didn't want to bend the crap out of it so I left it there. The bolt would go into the action just fine but it wouldn't come out. Without the extractor on it, the collar expanded just enough to hang up on the way out. I wound up compressing it with a small set of needle nose vise grips and then wiring it in the compressed position with part of a paperclip. The scary thing is that it actually worked.
I was able to put the reamer into the chamber through the action, give it a few twists, take the reamer out and check the headspace with the stripped bolt and gauges. It didn't take much before I had it closing on the go gauge and not closing on the no-go. Then I reassembled the bolt and slid a resized shell casing up under the extractor, closed the bolt and then opened it again. When I drew the bolt back, the ejector kicked the shell out just like its supposed to.
Next I'll have to open up the feed rails so it won't be a single shot. That ain't happenin' this weekend
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