Model 10 .308 Rebuild

[Kaldor]

Hey all,

I started a thread awhile back about what I should get and what do I need type thing to rebuild the Model 10 308 I picked up cheap ahandful of months back.

Good news is, I have all the parts. Time to start building! Goals are to inlet the barrel, pillar and bed the rifle, and have a nice looking, nice shooting rifle. Ill have some questions as I go along.

Model 10 .308 from Armslist
Criterion 26" 10 twist barrel, nut wrench, recoil lug and barrel nut from Northland
BoydsProVarmint stock in Nutmeg (Im a sucker for a classic looking rifle)
Bottom metal, trigger guard and 2 4 round magazines from Savage
Vortex Viper 6-24X50 scope from Cabelas
Vortex Rings and Nightforce 20 MOA base from Midway

Forthe moment Im going to use the stock trigger as its not terrible.

A pic of the starter rifle. Got it for a decent price, with a cheap scope, and 100 rounds of .308. I have my own homebuilt barrel vise, which is a monstrous over built thing, but I had a hell of a time getting the old barrel off. I guess I should have listened to Jim from Northland and just bought the action wrench. Even still, I prevailed, using a heat gun, rubber mallet, and a little brown sugar on the old barrel to keep it from slipping.


Started working on it yesterday. Had to remove a little wood from where the bottom metal sits. Boyds doesnt cut the channel long enough for everything to fit together.




I cut the channel longer. Will seat this up with some poly when I refinish the barrel channel.



Now onto opening the forearm up for the heavy varmint contoured barrel.
Before:


Testing:


After:



Had to remove quite a bit of material. I used a 7/8" dowel with some 150 grit wrapped on it, a half round file, my Dremel and a bunch of elbow grease. First time Ive done this so I was a little nervous about screwing something up. Barrel has a nice 1/16"clearance from the barrel nut forward.

I dont know if Savage sent me the wrong parts, or I screwed something up, but I had to modify the trigger guard and the bottom metal slightly to get everything flush.

This is what it looked like when I put the bottom parts in. Trigger guard was almost a 1/4" high.



So I filed the trigger guard down a little and the bottom metal down a bunch, cold blued them, and it looks like this now. Much better.



Well, round one is done. I need to head space the barrel next. For the above pics I just had it threaded in so I could get the barrel channel opened up to where it needed to be.

After that Ill pillar and bed. Ive never done that before, so Ill have some questions here shortly.

Questions:

The front action screw is about 1/4" long now that I changed over to bottom metal instead of a blind mag. Whats a good source for buying the screws from? Im not sure if I can get them from the local hardware store, and I dont feel like buying an entire box of them from McMaster Carr. Id also like to change the 3 screws toSSTL if I can. Im assuming that they are just 1/4X20 thread screws?

A question about pillaring. I picked up the lamp rod as was suggested in my other thread, but Im looking at the stock and I am actually worried that pillaring the stock might weaken it. On the front screw the wood is about 1/2" thick, the rear is a little better at about 1". There is not much meat to thefront and rear on these holes either. Will pillaring make that big of a difference in this rifle? Im really concerned about ruining something.

For the bedding, I plan on just removing a little material from the inside of the stock everywhere I want to bed, basically from the front of the action, to the rear action screw, ending right in front of where the trigger group sits. Ill also drill some small holes in various locations to give the Devcon a some places to really grab ahold of the stock. Do I need to worry about going all theway back to where the safety is or is that overkill? I do want to fully bed the lug. Do I just tape this off with painters tape, or do I use show polish on this part? Also, should I use modeling clay as a dam to keep the Devcon out of where the trigger group and magwell are?

Thanks for the help! Im sure Ill have more questions.