My father-in-law has built up a pretty good stash of 7.62x39 ammo, and has been bugging me for several months to build him "one of those Savages" like I shoot. He always enjoys shooting my rifles with me, and I even got him to purchase a .22mag Savage last year that has become his main truck/walking rifle. I've been wanting to build myself a light rifle in .260 for deer hunting, so as the base for his build I purchased him a model 11xp package with the nikon scope and DBM in .260 Rem. I traded him a .308 take off barrel I had for his .260 barrel, and had both barrels cut and recrowned to 20" (one for my deer rifle build, and the .308 for his). Then I found a chamber adapter sleeve online to allow the 7.62x39 rounds to work in the .308 barrel...this was a little bit of a maverick idea to me, but it has actually worked out quite well. I sent the bolt of to SSS to have a PPC bolt head installed so the rounds would extract and eject.
So far, everything works really well and the accuracy is actually much better than we expected. With milsurp russian steel case 122grain ammo (the only kind we've tried so far), it shoots 1.5 to 2inch groups at 100yds. This is with the factory nikon package scope that came with the gun. Really the only issue I have is that the rounds will not cycle correctly out of the .308 mag. I was wondering if maybe a .22-250 mag may work better? or perhaps Savage would sell me one for the 7.62x39, though I have not called them to ask. If anyone has made this work, I would like to hear what you did to get your magazine to function properly.
thanks guys