tikka t3's

Ltbull01 said:
X 2!! :sniper:

Many so-called experts out there have so-called opinions about plastic and it's 'quality'. No one is giving facts about plastic and why it is so unreliable - it is merely opinion based on preference and bias. The plastic is not an issue I believe. If it so unacceptable and to be avoided, why is it reliable enough for many thousands of police officers to trust their life to every day across North America and Europe by way of a Glock and now many other pistols on the market?! Not to mention the military that uses plastic in their firearms - what tougher use can you get than that? Get over the plastic issue, it's proven, it's functional and effective! Move on!
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Agreed....

Some folks just don't like the feel of "plastic" or synthetic stocks, and that's fine.... to each their own. But then some of them go too far by saying the plastic is fragile, etc. with no basis for the statement. They may have handled a "plastic" stock in a shop, but likely never took one into the field, so they don't really know. :rolleyes:
 
Plastic

I personally don't like the idea of a "plastic" bolt shroud. But, on the other hand I love the idea of plastic magazines as long as they are tough!! My old browning abolt clip has surface rust all over it from hunting trips. I know one thing , and that is plastic won't rust!!!
 
Not bashing Tikkas, but on this thread alone four guys have reported broken bolt shrouds. The bolt shroud is there to divert hot gas/particles coming down the locking lug raceway and reaching the shooters face, if a failure occurs. The Tikka may be designed to vent some other way, but I would prefer steel like the majority of Mauser bolt actions (and their derivatives like the Ruger 77 and Winchester 70) over plastic.

canuckhunter said:
Canadian C7 mags are plastic and good enough for the military. QUOTE]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we stopped using the plastic mag a long time ago. In 94 we were issued metal mags because the plastic ones were prone to breakage, and not considered durable enough for use.
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dragoon7214 said:
Not bashing Tikkas, but on this thread alone four guys have reported broken bolt shrouds.
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So, whatever. Some broken shrouds out of the how many Tikkas out there?
What firearm has had zero problems? Metal mags can bend, dent, rust, rattle.
Most of us, including me, still keep buying them.

I realize it's not a tikka bash, but still, gotta keep things in perspective!:)
 
dragoon7214 said:
Not bashing Tikkas, but on this thread alone four guys have reported broken bolt shrouds.
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My Remington 700 - 'out of the box' - shot well enough but had a few feed problems which I thought never could be production problems. After enough frustration, I had a gunsmith look at it and the magazine was seated too low due to the dimensions of the stock and the floor plate necessitating cutting into the stock under the action where the floor plate sat so the magazine presented higher. In the process, the action was discovered also to not be trued. $175 later, it was fixed. :mad: My Ruger wood stock after time became compressed and had to have it pillar bedded - $75. :mad:

I'll gladly deal with a broken shroud that I can snap on myself and is given to me for free........ ;)
 
You'll never break the magazine, I think I remember one guy saying he ran over it with his truck and it was still fine. The bolt shroud is the only hinge, but more likely than not, you wont have any problems
 
mylesrom said:
Ruger and Winchester, Remington's even have a shroud??? Not that I recall.
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You should maybe take a look at these rifles, they all have them, as do Brownings, Savages, Mausers, Sakos. If you do a google image search you can even see pictures of them so that you know what a bolt shroud is. It's what keeps hot gases traveling down the locking lug raceway from hitting the shooter directly in the face. The steel shroud on each of these rifles deflect it 90 degrees away from the shooters face and eye. If the shroud can be broken or easily come off the bolt, it will become a projectile moving directly towards the shooters eye. I guess I just value my eyesight more than the fact that an easily broken piece can be replaced, rather than just built right in the first place. Accuracy and ease of production are great, but if the worst happens, you'll be wishing they had made that piece out of steel.
 
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dragoon7214 said:
Not bashing Tikkas, but on this thread alone four guys have reported broken bolt shrouds.



Not defending Tikkas (because the majority never have a problem and i personally think there great) but wasn't the Original question asking about broken plastic on Tikkas? So what do you expect? Of course theres been a few broken plastic shrouds and the masses are speaking up about it.
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dragoon7214 said:
You should maybe take a look at these rifles, they all have them, as do Brownings, Savages, Mausers, Sakos. If you do a google image search you can even see pictures of them so that you know what a bolt shroud is. It's what keeps hot gases traveling down the locking lug raceway from hitting the shooter directly in the face. The steel shroud on each of these rifles deflect it 90 degrees away from the shooters face and eye. If the shroud can be broken or easily come off the bolt, it will become a projectile moving directly towards the shooters eye. I guess I just value my eyesight more than the fact that an easily broken piece can be replaced, rather than just built right in the first place. Accuracy and ease of production are great, but if the worst happens, you'll be wishing they had made that piece out of steel.
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Do you know for a fact the plastic shroud is meant to deflect the gases on a Tikka, as in maybe the shroud is merely cosmetic in this instance? The Tikka like a Remington has a small gas port at the front of the action that is intended to divert gas outward but bolts are also typically designed to divert gases down into the magazine well, not back through the bolt. Whether steel or plastic, it would be inherently dangerous to have gases vented all the way back to the shroud as a means to vent gas. I question the above assertion about gases and bolt shrouds.
 
todbartell said:
I once seen a T3 LSS in 270wsm that you could turn the barrel out of the action by hand...scary! :(
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I'm sure every make of rifle has a story something like that. I'm not saying we should be blase about a loose barrel, but that is likely really rare and every make of rifle has some really bad example of quality out there. C'mon, you're out there, let's hear it!
 
Ltbull01 said:
I'm sure every make of rifle has a story something like that. I'm not saying we should be blase about a loose barrel, but that is likely really rare and every make of rifle has some really bad example of quality out there. C'mon, you're out there, let's hear it!
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What you want to hear about bad??
I'm only interested in good.
 
Can anyone confirm that the job of the plastic bolt shroud on T3s is to stop gasses or is it purely a cosmetic item to make the action look smoother when the bolt is closed?
 
Ltbull01 said:
Do you know for a fact the plastic shroud is meant to deflect the gases on a Tikka, as in maybe the shroud is merely cosmetic in this instance? The Tikka like a Remington has a small gas port at the front of the action that is intended to divert gas outward but bolts are also typically designed to divert gases down into the magazine well, not back through the bolt. Whether steel or plastic, it would be inherently dangerous to have gases vented all the way back to the shroud as a means to vent gas. I question the above assertion about gases and bolt shrouds.
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Ok, if you look at almost all modern front locking bolt action rifles you will see that they have a gas port on the right hand side of the action to vent gases escaping down the locking lug race way on that side, away from the shooters face (this is assuming a right handed bolt action rifle being fired by a right handed shooter). They also have a vents drilled into the bottom of the bolt body to vent gases escaping through the firing pin hole and through the body of the bolt into the magazine. The Ruger 77 is a good example of this, it has one small and two large oval shaped vents, and it is still one of the strongest bolts out there. The locking lug raceway on the left side of the action vents gas all the way back to bolt shroud where it is deflected 90 dgrees to the shooters face by the flange on the left side of the bolt shroud. This is the way Mauser designed it in 1898 and has been copied by numerous other manufacturers ever since. If this system were inherently dangerous, believe me it would not have lasted over a hundred years. If you still refuse to believe this, pick up the latest copy of "Rifle" magazine and check out Brian Pearces article on the Ruger 77, and you will see in detail how these systems work. You can also checkout Jon Sundras article in "the Complete Rifleman 2008" on the Montana Rifle Company 1999 action,

Other rifles have additional systems to block the raceways. Check out Savage 110s and see the massive ring they put on the rear of the bolt to deflect gases at the end of the left raceway. The Savage action also utilises a second set of baffles immediately behind the locking lugs to block the raceways, making the ring redundant, and yet they still feel the need to have a backup system. Since Winchester reintroduced their controlled round feed actions they have incorporated a gas baffle on the left side, opposite the claw extractor to block the left raceway, and still have the shroud covering the left rear of the action.


The Tikka puts its vent on the left side of the the action, so they must have taken in to account the fact that the flush fitting plastic bolt shroud would not adequately deflect or stop gases in the event of a failure. If for any reason that vent hole is blocked, or the gases coming back are too much for that vent, they are definitely coming down that race way and the bolt shroud is going to be all that is in their way. Design flaws sometimes do happen, engineers make mistakes (product recalls happen all the time), and sometimes a series of events can lead to a catastrophic failure (case/primer failure+vent of gases rearward+weak bolt shroud= particles in face).
 
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I did a little research and found some information. Here are two links describing exactly what I outlined with a ruptured case/primer causing the bolt shroud to hit the shooter in the face. One is from this forum, and another from the UK. One is a Tikka 595 which has the same style plastic bolt shroud and is a precursor to the T3, in 17 Remington, and the other is a T3 in 223. Both of these cartridges are at the lower end of the spectrum of chamberings for Tikkas. The damage might have been worse in a larger chambering like the 300 WSM or .338 Mag. I also found numerous reports of broken bolt shrouds, so it would seem unlikely that these two incident are the only cases of venting gases damaging the shroud and or shooter, just the only two I could find after a quick look on the net.

http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/foru...23241&highlight=tikka+bolt+shroud#post1523241


https://www.snipercentral.com/forum...ghlight=&sid=91f8c790029f81f0447092367dcc0351

I'm sure all the Tikka guys are going to jump on me for this one, but it's not like I'm making this stuff up. In one case I found, the shooter reported that the shroud had worked to deflect gases after his 6.5-06 had a failure, so obviously Tikka has designed the shroud to act as a shield. Heres the link to that one.

http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php?p=898897&highlight=tikka+bolt+shroud#post898897

Several shooters on this and other forums stated that they were not going to replace broken shrouds because they either felt that the rifle looked better without it, they didn't want the hassle/wait to get a replacement one, and didn't believe it served any function other than to keep dirt out of the action. Now you've got a safety feature, that because of poor design and material, is being omitted by users. As much as it might not be the best material, if it's completely missing, imagine what is going to happen if there is a cartridge failure and the shroud is missing beacuse it broke earlier.

I'm very surprised that no one is marketing an aftermarket one made out of a light alloy, I'd bet it would sell well.
 
Wow.. I didnt think it was for safety... Mine cracked right off just from cycling the bolt...

I never noticed anything after when I didnt replace the shroud though. Everything worked as normal...
 
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