16/116 decided to change the barrel out and things got out of hand.

I have a 16/116 FCLSS Weather Warrior in .223. I tripped across a good deal from ER Shaw on an in stock Varmint profile 26" Stainless with an 11 degree crown that someone ordered and then backed out on.

I then picked up a barrel nut, barrel nut wrench, trigger spring and an action wrench from NSS. Since the rifle has an Accustock, I didn't change out the barrel lug. I wish someone would make one for the Accustock...

I was ready for a real battle trying to get the smooth barrel nut off. I just followed NSS's directions and it came right off, no problem..
I soaked it with some Kroil and let it sit overnight. I put the action wrench on it with pretty minimal tightening. I then put my 11" pipe wrench on the smooth barrel nut and hit it twice with a dead blow hammer and off it popped.

The barrel unscrewed without issue but as NSS warned me, there was an unbelievable amount of crud in the threads. It looked like it had been dumped in grit/sand and then screwed together.

I decided to add a PTG bolt head for no particular reason and and dress it out with a SSS upgraded ejector/extractor kit. Those parts haven't arrived yet so we'll see how that goes. Ordering from SSS isn't very obvious but it seems to be working out.

Brownell's has Clymer Go and No-Go gauges on sale...but even so, were not cheap.

Some anti-seize and the barrel went on and head spaced easily. I dremeled out the stock to handle the larger diameter barrel without a problem. I had to open it up quite a bit as the new barrel is ALOT bigger. Hopefully, it won't heat up instantaneously like the original barrel.

I kinda went overboard on this but I shoot it a lot because it is so cheap to shoot in .223 and it's my only left handed rifle. I really, really need to shoot left handed as I'm blind in my right eye. The Savage has always been accurate but after a very few rounds the barrel would heat up and and the accuracy went away....alot.

So, I was really impressed with NSS. The action wrench worked perfectly, the barrel nut is top quality and the trigger spring really worked well. The owners advice was right on and I have had no issues at all.

I'm making one change to the NSS barrel wrench. I'm changing from bolts to studs. It will make it a lot easier to manipulate into position. Beyond that, I can't imagine this widget working any better.

Because of my so far happy experience with this little project I'm going to see about adding a few calibers and doing a switch barrel thing. Maybe a 7.62x39? PTG makes a bolt head for that size.

Too late, you're addicted.
Go ahead and start the man cave addition and order another safe.:smile-new:

Has anyone ever wished they had a smaller safe?

Smaller gun safe? If I had my way my gun safe would have it's own zip code.

I'm thinking about getting a PTG bolt head in 7.62x39 case head size. McGowan makes a pre-fit barrel for the savage in the appropriate oddball groove diameter. I'm not sure what to do about the detachable magazine. Is there one out there that will work with this cartridge?

Curious why you changed out the factory barrel. I recently purchased a model 16 in .223 Rem and during initial load development have already found loadings which are producing 5 round .300" groups at 100yds.

I had a similar experience, though not quite as good as yours. I was getting 3-shot groups under an inch, which is great for me. Two things happened to make me change out the barrel. First is that I shoot this rifle a lot. It's one of my few true left handed bolt rifles and the .223 is very inexpensive to shoot. It's like the 9mm of rifle calibers. The problem is that the OEM barrel is really light and heats up very, very quickly. After just a few rounds the shots start to scatter. The more I shoot, the more they spread and the barrel took forever to cool down, which is a problem if you like to sit at the bench and pound a 100 rounds down range.

The tipping point was when I ended up talking to ER Shaw about something else and found they had a barrel on the shelf that was too good to pass up. It was a matte stainless, in .223, 9" twist, 26", varmint profile with an 11 degree crown. The story was that someone had ordered it and not picked it up. The bottom line was that if you were to order one it would start at $291.00. They were selling it for $150.00 and it was ready to go. It really was just too good to pass up.

The new barrel is much larger and heavier than the OEM. At this point I thought...Ok, lets play with this some. So I ordered a NSS trigger spring, barrel nut wrench, action wrench and barrel nut. I also ordered a PTG bolt head and SSS ejector/extractor kit.

I'm well happy with the result so far. I haven't gotten the PTG bolt head or SSS parts yet so we'll see how that goes. The NSS stuff is top notch. The trigger spring worked amazingly well.

After I've got everything where I want it I'll strip it down completely and take it to H&M metal processing in Akron and have them "Black Nitride" the whole thing. They do the vast majority of OEM guns, S&W and the like. I've had more than a couple guns finished in Black Nitride with terrific results.

I'm really sort of stunned that I can do all this myself without benefit of my trusty, if not inexpensive, gunsmith. I mean I can strip this rifle completely, barrel off, bolt disassembled, trigger out with no problems what so ever. Setting the head space is not only easy but kinda fun. I couldn't do any of this with my Mauser based rifles.

That is one of the many great things about the Savage 110 family. The more I learn about these wonderful guns, the more I like them. Reliable, accurate, and super easy to work on, not to mention all of the great support on this forum.

I have a Model 12 pre-Accu-trigger repeater in 223...With a fast twist varmint barrel...best I can tell its a 1:7.5"...I shoot 55gr. FMJ-BT-c mil-surp bullets over H-335...shoots under 1/2 " @ 100 yards...is a fun little rifle to take to the range...it has the "3-screw trigger" I adjusted sear engagement, over travel and replaced the trigger return spring with .o47" musick wire...breaking clean at about 2.5 pounds....barrel is super smooth...and doesn't foul bad at all...I bought this Savage because it was cheep...I am happy with
it so farr...was thinking bout changing out the bolt head and re-chambering it to 22BR....Any thoughts on that??


REDD