Kentucky Armory Club

Hey guys, hoping to get some help here. I know next to nothing about building custom bolt guns, so maybe you can shed some light on a few things for me.

My dad is looking at building a rifle chambered in .338 Lapua. He's already purchased an Accuracy International chassis, which fits a Remington 700 action.

Now, from what I've found, we can purchase the Long Action receiver and bolt from Brownells. This is about the extent of my knowledge... I realize the bolt they have comes stripped, so its up to you to install the extractor, firing pin, etc. Remington's website seems to sell of the small parts for it.

Is this the best route? I'm reading everywhere that custom receivers/bolts are the way to go for a precision rifle build of this sort. Only issue is, he's already spent $800 on the AI chassis system, and really wants to build around that.

I guess my real question here is, is this really possible? I know it would be much, much easier to just buy a complete 700 and swap the stock out for the AI chassis, but it's next to impossible to find 700s in .338 Lapua for a decent price.

It would just be too easy to build a .308, wouldn't it?

Sorry but 700 are not a tinker toy like a AR-15

If you bought a 700 action , you would need a barrel vise and action wrench , .338 go and no go gauges, a rougher and finish reamers ( or a finishing if you bought a threaded and short chambered barrel), a tap wrench to turn the wrench.
Or a metal lathe -about 12x36 and the above tooling.

You have to fit the bolt and barrel to action, blueprint the action
Bed the barreled action to stock.

In other words , you have to know what you are doing.
All this can be learned.

I may have left out a step or two.

First lesson is buy complete rifle first or order a custom rifle from a gun maker/ gunsmith.

And even if you cobble a rifle togather , it nay shoot 5 MOA not sub MOA.

I don't know what you mean as "next to impossible to find 700s in .338 Lapua for a decent price." and what price point is "decent"?

You can buy a whole rifle for like 1500 to 1800 (savage or maybe remy). Seems like the way to go if chassis are 800.

guncrank1 wrote:Sorry but 700 are not a tinker toy like a AR-15

If you bought a 700 action , you would need a barrel vise and action wrench , .338 go and no go gauges, a rougher and finish reamers ( or a finishing if you bought a threaded and short chambered barrel), a tap wrench to turn the wrench.
Or a metal lathe -about 12x36 and the above tooling.

You have to fit the bolt and barrel to action, blueprint the action
Bed the barreled action to stock.

In other words , you have to know what you are doing.
All this can be learned.

I may have left out a step or two.

First lesson is buy complete rifle first or order a custom rifle from a gun maker/ gunsmith.

I knew it wouldn't be quite as plug and play as an AR, but I never took into account just how involved this project would be... As I said before, I'm fairly ignorant on this subject.

Dave1965 wrote:I don't know what you mean as "next to impossible to find 700s in .338 Lapua for a decent price." and what price point is "decent"?

You can buy a whole rifle for like 1500 to 1800 (savage or maybe remy). Seems like the way to go if chassis are 800.

I believe that I made the mistake of comparing the price to a .308 700 (~$8-900). I didn't realize how big of an overall difference there was in the two versions of the gun. I was thinking there would be a cost difference, but not that much. I'm an AR guy, and never learned much about bolt guns. I'll pass this along, thank you.

guncrank1 wrote:http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewIt ... =484942760

The chassis he bought is the AI Arctic Warfare. I think he's changed his mind now that I've passed along this info. Probably gonna drop the money on the complete rifle and just swap them over.

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewIt ... =484953472

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewIt ... =484920727