I recently dropped a 30-06 into an XLR Chassis. The challenge here is that the XLR uses AI magazines, and AI doesn’t make a 30-06 mag.
A quick search online and showed that there are some who take either 338 or 300 Win AI mags and just bend the feed lips to feed the narrower case. It seemed easy enough for bubba so I figured I’d give it a whirl.
The action is a trued mid-80s 700BDL and I left the actions’ feed integral rails intact. Barrel is a Shilen #7 contour, and TacOrd did all the hard stuff.
I bought the H-S Precision tool from Brownells for this. You really don’t need to; it is literally a piece of aluminum with a slot cut in it, but I figured I was bending up more than one $80 magazine, so if the tool saved even one mag from my ham-fisted home-machining, it paid for itself four times over.
So I bolted the action to the stock, made up some dummy cartridges, and had at it. It took about 30 minutes all told to get both mags running well.
How much to bend the lips in? The HS-Precision tool comes with a chart, but that was quite useless. The AI mags were clearly and sufficiently different to make the chart, so I resolved myself to Newton’s “Bend It a Little and See If It Fits” method. (I’m pretty sure that one was Newton, might have been Leibnitz.) A gap of 0.400” worked out about right.
The final Fore and Aft measurements were:
338 F/A 0.410”/0.410”
300 F/A 0.400”/0.420”
You can clearly see the difference in the feed lips between the 338 and 300 mags in this pic.
I’m not sure either is better at this moment; the 300 took a fair amount less bending to get it to work, but the 338 feels smoother.
Of course YMMV. While the feeding fell pretty much into place for me I have been warned by several knowledgeable folk that it may not work out so easy next time.
A quick search online and showed that there are some who take either 338 or 300 Win AI mags and just bend the feed lips to feed the narrower case. It seemed easy enough for bubba so I figured I’d give it a whirl.
The action is a trued mid-80s 700BDL and I left the actions’ feed integral rails intact. Barrel is a Shilen #7 contour, and TacOrd did all the hard stuff.
I bought the H-S Precision tool from Brownells for this. You really don’t need to; it is literally a piece of aluminum with a slot cut in it, but I figured I was bending up more than one $80 magazine, so if the tool saved even one mag from my ham-fisted home-machining, it paid for itself four times over.
So I bolted the action to the stock, made up some dummy cartridges, and had at it. It took about 30 minutes all told to get both mags running well.
How much to bend the lips in? The HS-Precision tool comes with a chart, but that was quite useless. The AI mags were clearly and sufficiently different to make the chart, so I resolved myself to Newton’s “Bend It a Little and See If It Fits” method. (I’m pretty sure that one was Newton, might have been Leibnitz.) A gap of 0.400” worked out about right.
The final Fore and Aft measurements were:
338 F/A 0.410”/0.410”
300 F/A 0.400”/0.420”
You can clearly see the difference in the feed lips between the 338 and 300 mags in this pic.
I’m not sure either is better at this moment; the 300 took a fair amount less bending to get it to work, but the 338 feels smoother.
Of course YMMV. While the feeding fell pretty much into place for me I have been warned by several knowledgeable folk that it may not work out so easy next time.
