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I have a factory contour 260 remington barrel that I just bought and im going to rebarrel my .308 axis to .260 rem. My question is can I use resized .260 brass to headspace the new barrel onto the action or should I by a go gauge and do it the right way? Thanks in advance
If your not experienced I vote go gauges.
I suggest you get a go gauge. The gauge for 260 Remington can be used for the whole 308 Winchester family, so it should have good resale value if you want to sell it when you're done. In fact, you might be able to find a used one for cheaper than new ones.
I vote go gauges as well...."Better safe then sorry!" to use an OLD cliche.....
I know this thread is a little old, but FWIW a LLLLLOOOONNNGG time ago this very website had an article which covered (in great detail) exactly how to headspace using a homemade barrel vise (as long as you had a regular vice) and a barrel nut wrench. That article explained how to remove the firing pin from the bolt carrier and headspace using a live round (preferably of your favorite ammo) or a piece of resized brass with two pieces of carbon paper in between the brass and the bolt face. I just tried to find it, apparently it's long gone (likely gone long before the Savage Axis or Edge existed).
Either way, I did my first build using a live round with the bullet pulled and the powder dumped. Live primer still in, not that it would've hurt anything if I set it off. I headspaced using Federal Powershok (cheapest decent ammo I could find). Imagine that... Federal Powershok would still hold .6moa groups out of that rifle all day every day until I re-headspaced it using the same method except for I used a piece of full-length resized brass out of a Lee full length die (when I first built the rifle I wasn't reloading). Now if I'm careful making the reloads my rifle likes best I can get .4moa all day every day. I'm not talking about the occasional awesome .4" group at 100 yards. I mean I can shoot 10 5-round groups and all of them would be between .35 and .45, with most being slightly under .4".
Long story short... a piece of re-sized brass works for headspacing and a long time ago this website had an article detailing how to.
If one uses Brass to set headspace, then THIS is how one should set. Use a new piece of brass (unfired) to set the Headspace to a tight bolt closure, you want to push the shoulder back by about .003 when setting headspace. The headspace set this way will result in the fire-forming of the brass to be very well supported and will result in no stretching of the Brass, thus lasting a very long time.