Woodlotowner, Nate18, your bolts are opening when you dry fire or live fire?
No. The bolt wants to spring open when closed and cocked. On it's own. It is not as noticeable with a cartridge in the chamber, but still problematic. It is the torque of the firing pin spring, which cannot equalize when the bolt is closed, that tries to return the bolt to the open position where there is no torque. Torque is a twisting force as you know, so having a cartridge in the chamber reduces this tendency of the bolt to 'open' simply due to the friction of bolt face on case head as far as I can tell.
If you ever wanted to see a truly mickey mouse action, disassemble a Savage Edge sometime. The cocking knob rests on a cheap flimsy stamped sear ramp when cocked and when the sear falls away, as the trigger is pulled, the knob is released thereby allowing the firing pin (which it is set into) to move forward. I can hardly believe anyone would make, much less market, a cheap item such as this IMHO. The trigger group is just plainly a scary assembly of cheap stamped parts cobbled together in a system that is less sophisticated than the cheapest guns out there IMO. I'm no gunsmith admittedly, but I do work on a lot of different mechanical devices and I can tell cheap stuff when I see it.
The Marlins (XS7/XL7 series, one of which I own), as mentioned elsewhere in this thread at an extra $100 in price, is ten times the action/gun, and has so many additional features including an adjustable trigger even!!
Hate to rag on Savage, but they're all the same.....shoot very well.....cheap stamped utensils.
