Where are the volquartsen parts for 597?

brindle

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I have a Remington HB 597 I’ve been plinking with lately. The mods out there are easy little five minute jobs like sanding the stock to free float the barrel and adding a sling stud to fit a bipod. I even bought a carbon fibre arrow shaft and epoxy to firm up the plastic stock fore end. Guide rails are polished and I’m looking at ways to fit up an on board tool kit in the butt stock. Low skill upgrades but pretty fun. Cheap too. Total cost for ‘the build’ has been about $60 including a used bipod.
I see that people are upgrading the extractor and hammer on these rifles using volquartsen parts. I’ve checked a lot of sponsors here, no luck. Are these parts hard to find? Anyone got a source that I could try? The trigger sort of sucks and the reliability, while decent, could be better.
Thanks in advance!
 
Did you try Sylvestre? They seem to be the only parts place in Canada. Brownells will ship to Canada. I just phone in my. Order and they tell me ,yes or no to Canada
 
I installed a VQ extractor & hammer from Sylvester myself. I as well installed a Mcarbo trigger spring. That combo along with everything polished works amazing! Very impressed.

Trigger spring!? I guess I’ll look into that too....
 
I really like this rifle and I think the kit with the hammer and ejector for that price would be a steal if it fixed my problems and helped it shoot a little better.
I like mine a lot too. It’s a criminally underserved rifle in my opinion. I still can’t believe the aftermarket options are so limited and almost never discussed. I can see why the 10/22 gets all the mod goodies, there’s millions out there and a huge fan base. For me the 597 price being far lower makes it an ideal gun to offer aftermarket parts for. I wish some more companies would put concepts out there.
Maybe my google skills are no good but I don’t see much available.
 
I love my 597. I didn't want to modify the looks. I wanted it to be a better shooter than factory, so that's why I upgraded the internals. It's my go to camping .22 for sure. Eats pretty much any pills I feed it too which is great!
 
I have the Volquartsen hammer and ejector in mine. A vast improvement in trigger feel and ejector performance. I had fail to fire issues caused by light strikes and wound up modifying my bolt to give more firing pin projection and solved that issue. I can provide details if anyone is interested. I still make quite a few improved charging handles to fix the sloppy fit of the original.

https://johnconroy.smugmug.com/Remington-597
 
I was looking at these too, do you guys think that would help with my problem of light strikes causing failures to fire?

No. The VQ hammer has altered geometry to reduce friction with the sear, therefore lowering the trigger pull weight required to break. The MCARBO spring is a lower weight spring, reducing pressure on the hammer/sear interface and thereby lowering trigger pull force required to break. If anything, the MCARBO spring will contribute towards light strikes. The factory spring is pretty stout, so to have a "light strike" issue means one of two things to me (or a combination thereof).

1) The round is not fully chambering. A portion of the hammer strike force is absorbed driving the case rim up to the breech face, and insufficient energy remains to close up the rim. A very dirty chamber is a possible cause, or ammo (such as subsonics) that does not have enough force to blow the bolt fully back is being used.

2) Excessive headspace. Round does not fully chamber with this condition, firing pin must drive the case rim up to the breech. Firing pin may not have enough travel to compensate for the excessive headspace, and physically cannot penetrate the rim enough for reliable ignition. Headspace in the 597 is set by the bolt nose to bolt recess depth, easy to measure with the depth rod on a set of calipers. One can also check the firing pin protrusion from the bolt recess, and calculate the penetration possible. If it is less than 0.015" (penetration potential, that is), that is likely the issue.

3) Piggybacking on 2, even if headspace is within spec, firing pin protrusion may not be. Firing pin travel is limited by the rear of the bolt, once the hammer pushes the little "button" at the back of the bolt flush, firing pin travel stops. One could remove material from the rear of the bolt to allow the hammer to push the firing pin further, or add material to the "button".
 
I installed the volquartsen hammer and extractor and got it out to the range today. I’m not picky trigger guy but wow what a difference.
The other difference was the failure to fire. Every round. I noticed the bolt was not travelling all the way home and required a push on the charging handle to close it up, then it would fire. Took it apart and noticed my fancy new extractor was not moving freely enough and so wouldn’t seat in its slot next to the chamber properly. So then the bolt stays open by a few mils.
I took bolt out at home, observed extractor function more closely and decided the slot in the bolt where the extractor pivots was too tight. I took out the extractor and VERY CAREFULLY applied some valve grinding compound to the sides where it meets the slot walls, then re-installed. For the next ten minutes I manipulated the extractor back and forth until I felt it move a bit more freely.
Took everything apart and flushed with solvent and G96, put it all back together, drove back to the range and the rifle runs great.
Obviously YMMV, I don’t think anybody recommends putting valve compound anywhere near a bolt.
I only put the volquartsen extractor in because I was already doing the hammer; stock extractor was fine most of the time. Runs great now though, no regrets, but if your rifle is already ejecting fine I would skip it. Unless you are like me and you prefer the solution that requires hours of tinkering.
 
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