ding in my barrel crown!

Z

Z71

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So I take delivery of my new Remington 700 SPS stainless on Dec. 24, just in time for Christmas! In all the excitement of checking it out and what not, with the weather not being the best and fall hunting season a ways away yet, I didn't pay much attention to giving it a full-on, close-up inspection until lately, and what did I find???

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WHAT THE F***?...check out the ding in the crown, right at the 4 o'clock position. It looks like it is sitting right in front of one of the grooves in the rifling and probably will impact the bullet as it leaves the barrel.

I ordered the rifle on sale and with the fall factory rebate promotion (of which I haven't seen yet) from one of the big mail-order businesses dealing in firearms. I was happy to see it came with the new X-mark Pro trigger and does feel much better than my 700 BDL.

My question is do I scope it up and shoot it to see if accuracy is affected or try and exchange it for another one?...What would you do?

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You do have somewhat of a problem because you're just finding this out now :confused:. The obvious response that you're going to get is "why did you wait so long to mention it?". I'm also surprised that you haven't contacted those from whom you bought it first before asking what to do here? Obviously, give them a call, explain your dilema, don't freak and stay calm, maybe they'll help you out. Worse case scenario is get a gunsmith to recrown it for you, he'll only have to take a few thou off. In the future, inspect your firearm through and through, inside out. Shoot it right away, what are you talking about the weather wasn't the best? are you a hunter or are you not??? :D Anyhow....good luck to 'ya.
 
Ding in Z71's rifle crown.

Over the years, I have cut down .30-06 and .303Br barrells and have had no problem recrowning them. The method comes out of an old issue American Rifleman mag.

1.Cast a pure lead or slightly harder ball. For .30, I have used a .38 ball, mainly because that is the mold I had.
2.Take a wood screw about 3/32 or up to 1/8 inch. Drill a smaller hole into the sprue of the lead ball and screw in the screw. Do your best to get it centered. Cut off the screw head.
3.Make a slurry of some motor oil and valve grinding compound.
4.Push a wad dam down the barrell from the crown about an inch.
5.Seat the screw shank with the ball in a variable speed cordless drill, apply the corborundum and oil and let the corborundum loaded lead ball slowly grind away, all the time swivilling the drill.
6.This will not take long to take out the defect.For a barrell cut off with a hacksaw, it will also take down the high side of the barrell rifling so that the crwon is perfect.

Believe me, this works and is the way the old timers would clean up a muzzle. I cut 2" from a P17 milsurp Winchseter .30-06 years ago and that rifle would shoot 2" 3-shot groups at 200 yds. (I also hack sawed and filed the big rear sight protecting lugs on this rifle, filled in the oval shaped hole in the top rear of the receiver to the contour of a Remington 30 (?), drilled and tapped it for a Lyman 57 receiver sight, as well as straightened the hump in the trigger guard assembly, surounding the mag slot) In those days money was tight and time was available. :)

I hope that this is helpful.


:cheers:
 
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lop a couple inches off the barrel to 22" and have it recrowned. generally $50-75 at your local smith.
theres no way in hell that wont affect it - if you look at the bore, the ding even made it out of round :runaway:

I'm also surprised that you haven't contacted those from whom you bought it first before asking what to do here?
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they will say its a warranty issue and to contact the manuf. i know because when my Ruger arrived with a ding in the crown (not even close to how bad this is, mine wasnt even near the bore and ended up being nothing to worry about) i called them and they said i need to contact Ruger in the states as its a warranty issue.
 
Call them up and send it back, Explain to them what the situation is and they should not have a problem with that ,you payed good money for it and you should get what you payed for . It is a warrinty issue so why should you have to fork out more money to have something fixed that should not have been there in the first place . I have had rifles replaced by WSS and SIR for defect reasons.
Call them up and explain that you would like an exchange ;)
 
Yep, and if you just gotta have that rifle, recrown it yourself, Brownells sells a helluva good kit, I have used it on my revolvers. Not sure how hard it would be for you to get it up there though, but I am sure we could work something out. Les
 
Thanks for all the replies so far guys, I will be on the phone in the morning letting off some steam...:mad::runaway::mad:

Just how does a new factory rifle have this done to it?...the crowns are machine cut on the assembly line but is no inspection given to reject defects like this?...is there absolutely no care taken while boxing it up for shipping from the factory?...was the guy waving it around and dropped it onto something solid, ruining the crown, then remained silent about it?...the retailer never inspected it for defects from the factory out of the box?

I'll be getting some answers today!...if all else fails a re-crowning is no big deal from the sound of it, some good suggestions here.
 
some people use a brass round-head carriage bolt.

but why mess around when you can order a precision crowning tool from Brownells, theyre not even that expensive. add the appropriate sized muzzle pilots and you can recrown any rifle in your cabinet.
 
Barry Jensen at Bits of Pieces seems to think it advisable to recrown a rifle just to clean up the end-apparently not much attention paid to it during mfg. Besides for $40 takes all of the doubt away- one less thing to think about. Seems to work anyways, all my rifles shoot very well.
 
That doesn't look that bad,but if the lip does actually touch any part of the bullet then your worst fears are just. the deep recessed crown would suggest that something really strange happened in the handling of that rifle.

I would take pictures of the crown ,then shoot it one time to see if it key-holes (if not leave it be).

Easy to say what I would do with YOUR gun.

Bob
 
Z71 said:
Thanks for all the replies so far guys, I will be on the phone in the morning letting off some steam...:mad::runaway::mad:

Just how does a new factory rifle have this done to it?...the crowns are machine cut on the assembly line but is no inspection given to reject defects like this?...is there absolutely no care taken while boxing it up for shipping from the factory?...was the guy waving it around and dropped it onto something solid, ruining the crown, then remained silent about it?...the retailer never inspected it for defects from the factory out of the box?

I'll be getting some answers today!...if all else fails a re-crowning is no big deal from the sound of it, some good suggestions here.
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Well what happend ?
 
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