Today I spent some time with a caliper, and magnifying glasses, and as a result have a complete understanding of the design (I think...), and have even learned a hidden surprise.
The bad news is, indeed there is some amount of plastic in the steel sandwich when the rear action screw is tightened down. To be fair, it's less than I thought. You see, there is actually a metal bushing that is either pressed or molded in to the action screw hole in the trigger guard. A magnet is how I found it. Sadly this part does not go all the way through the thickness of the trigger guard. This leaves (by my visual guesstimate) 0.060-0.70 thou of plastic that is put under pressure when you tighten the rear action screw.
To remove this plastic from the equation a the existing bushing needs to be removed from the trigger guard and a new one fabricated that is just long enough to make contact with the existing sheet metal part that holds the bolt release button in place.
When the screw is tightened it would apply force directly to the bushing, which would transmit the force directly to the the sheet metal part, which would transmit force to the existing bushing for the rear action screw, which then transmits force to the pillar; all metal to metal.
The above design is a bit of a kludge though (obviously). Ideally there would be a single long bushing from the trigger guard to the pillar. However Savage uses the existing rear bushing to hold the mag well in place, which means a single bushing would need a flange at the top and somewhat midway down. If this were done however you couldn't slide the bushing in during assembly.
I may order some spare parts and see about making a prototype stackable bushing, and see if it's viable, or if it gives me any further ideas.
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