Quote Originally Posted by Nandy
He is wanting to make a switch barrel out of his rifle. The head space on savage is set by screwing the barrel in the action with the gauge in the chamber and the bolt locked closed. Once that is set the barrel nut is tighten against the action and it is what keeps the barrel from moving. So if you can somehow can lock the barrel nut into the barrel after it has been properly measured then you dont need the gauges to set the head space every time you change your barrel. Rifles like the remington dont use the barrel nut, what the gunsmith does is to shave the barrel where it meets the action until the desire head space is achieved. The savage advantage is that the user dont need special machinery to fit a barrel since all it takes is to turn the barrel to the desire gap the locking it with the barrel....
Well, that's not exactly true unless you're starting with a long chambered barrel in which case the shoulder needs to be cut like you say. Along with the breech and the bolt nose counterbore on the Remington 700.
If you instead use a short chambered barrel you screw the barrel tight, shoulder to recoil lug to action face, and never need to touch a lathe. You then use a HAND TURNED chamber reamer to deepen the chamber approximately .010" (just for clarity that is the thickness of four sheets of notebook paper) until the GO gauge goes. It takes all of about ten minutes to deepen the chamber BY HAND until proper headspace is achieved. The cost of renting the reamer is about the same as a set of GO/NO GO gauges.
Once you've set your headspace with a shouldered barrel you can sell your gauges and screw and unscrew the barrel at will with proper headspace assured every time.