Bolt Head Question

So I managed to find myself a couple of new bolt heads for my rifle so i can switch it out to all calibers!!

The ones I recieved however, are older ones with the large firing pin hole through the bolt head. Savage changed the diameter of the firing pins a few years back from .145" to .095". The reason they did this was to have more strength in the bolthead retaining pin by keeping the hole smaller.

I am wondering, would I have any issues using my 0.095" firing pin and bolthead retaining pin with a bolt head with a 0.145" firing pin channel?

I am thinking that the firing pin will be held in good alignment by the cross pin, and the smaller hole in the bolt face where the pin ultimately protrudes(they are the same diameter where they protrude from the bolt face)

Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or have you done it before?

Im hoping maybe Fred or mrfurious or maybe billpa may have some advice on this.

I haven't done it, but I can't see where using the larger diameter .140" bolthead with the .095" parts would be an issue other than if you had an "UT-OH", blown primer and etc. Part of the diameter fit is to help keep any escaping gases venting out the hole in the bolthead and out the twin ports in the receiver ring to some extent limiting what can blow back into the bolt body.

As far as alignment is concerned the pin tip diameter itself is the determining factor. In fact the bolthead retaining pin is kept in position by the firing pin, not the other way around. Using a.140" retaining pin with a .095 firing pin would allow the retaining pin to protrude outside the bolt body one side or the other and only partially engage one hole in the body, not a good situation! Back past that everything just kinda flops around where it needs to.

That's all I can think of at the moment, maybe Fred will jump in with some addition insight.

Bill

I haven't done it either. I would imagine you'd be cratering primers more frequently.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jo191145

I haven't done it either. I would imagine you'd be cratering primers more frequently.

---

How? That portion of the firing pin has nothing remotely even close to cause with cratering.

Bill

Bill, I think your right. I think I'm wrong.

good to hear, sounds like I am good to go, I will be using a 0.95" retaining pin so the pin will be kept in proper alignment as you pointed out. I wanted to be sure though so I thought I would post it up here. In a perfect world I would have gotten boltheads with the smaller diameter hole, but here in Canada boltheads themselves are very hard to come by, so I cant be too picky.
SSS cant ship to canada at the moment so I took what I could get for now.