I have had the barrel off my Savage 110. This is chambered in 7mm Rem Mag. I borrowed some headspace gauges from my local gunsmith. I set the headspace with the extractor removed. The bolt will close on the go gauge, it will not on the no go gauge.

My issue is this:
To check my work, I took a sized case to make sure it would chamber. No problem with the bolt closing on the case. I added two layers of scotch tape to make a no go gauge out of the sized case. To my surprise, the bolt closes easily on this as well. I checked the case with my RCBS Precision Mic (compared length of case with/without the tape) and the tape thickness is .004". I added two more pieces of tape, and the bolt still closed easily.

I have no really good way to measure the distance from the top of the belt to the bottom of the case, but tried to measure this using my caliper. The go gauge measured .220 and the no go gauge measured .224 (sammi spec). I measured several pieces of brass and they meaured .212 consistently.

My question is this - Do I leave the chamber set to sammi spec, or do i re-headspace using a piece of sized brass? It seems to me that .008" is a lot of excess space in the chamber from the bolt face to the belt.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Dennnis