advice on removing a barrel on a 99

[Slash2]

I'm trying to unscrew the barrel of 99E .308 from the reciever and having no luck at all. Are they left handed treads or what? What's the trick? I have removed the pin below the chamber but I have not removed any of the magazine components. The barrel will not budge.

[Mad Dog]

Make sure the action is open.

You'll need a barrel puller.

Lefty loosy, righty tighty.

They can be real buggers to get off. I sometimes gotta hammer the crap out of my barrel puller with a rubber mallet before it'll break free.

Sometimes if I'm destroying the frame anyways I'll take it down pretty close to the barrel threads with a dremel and then split the case with a chisel just to break the tension off the barrel.

THEY CALL ME BUBBA!!!!

[Slash2]

Yikes! It doesn't sound like my jerry rigged array of machinist vises clamped to the reciever and barrel are going to give me enough torque, oh well.

The problem is that cases will stick in the chamber and not extract with anything above a very mild load. Some requiring a cleaning rod and some tapping with a hammer to get out.

I've cast the chamber and I can't see anything that would cause it. The chamber is in spec. I've inspected it the best I could through the reciever and can't see any scratches burrs or buldges, and I've run a chamber brush on a drill in and out untill the chamber is smooth as a baby's butt and that still didn't fix it. My last hope was to remove the barrel for a better look.

This is not a valuable gun so I had hoped to figure it out and fix it myself.

[Mad Dog]

Had that happen with a 99C in 284 once, polished the chamber to, no luck, sold the gun.

You can't load heavy with the 99's, rule of thumb is 2 gr lower than what the load calls for on other guns.

[Slash2]

You can't load heavy with the 99's, rule of thumb is 2 gr lower than what the load calls for on other guns.

Hmmm, interesting, I didn't realize that. Thanks for the info, now I can quit beating my head against it. This is my first 99 since shooting my dads as a kid. I guess I'll just have to except upper end 30-30 performance from it. You see it's been chopped up a bit, shortened stock, shortened barrel, so the fps are low to start with. It'll be a good brush gun even at only 2200 fps though.