marlin xl7 rebarrel

[cub45]

New member first post. I have a marlin xl7 223 and want to put a med weight savage 110 varmint barrel on it, what needs to be done to do the swap.
thanks
kurt

[Huffmanite]

Compare the chamber end of the Marlin with the Savage barrel. Look closely and you might notice the chamber end of the Marlin has a very very slight relief of metal that's the diameter of the Marlin bolt head. Savage will not have this relief. So, some say you need to duplicate this relief on the Savage barrel or just remove metal from entire chamber end. Have a shooting buddy, who will just use metal sandpaper or a large hone stone to do this. Others do nothing, they just install the Savage barrel and then compensate by using reloads they've resized for the different headspace. This is what I do.

What needs to be done? Well, just slip the barrel nut wrench onto the barrel nut (savage nut wrench works), clamp the barrel nearest the action as conveniently possible in a bench vise (I use PCV tubing I've cut length wise between jaws of vise and barrel to protect metal) and with a 16 Oz hammer, whack the barrel nut wrench. Usually two or three hits on the wrench loosens the barrel nut and then I can unscrew the barrel and then unscrew the barrel nut to reuse it on the new barrel. Having no-go and go gauges to properly head space the new barrel is recommended.

Assume you will need to open up the barrel channel on your stock for the larger diameter barrel you are installing. If you have the plastic Marlin stock, channel can be sanded to a larger diameter. Kinda a pain to do, but I just use proper diameter long sockets (for my ratchet wrench), that's wrapped with 100 grit sandpaper to sand channel. Sometimes I use a dremel tool with a sanding drum on it to initially open up the channel and then the sandpaper wrapped sockets to finish the work.

[cub45]

Thanks Huffmanite, the breech was what I needed to know about before I bought a barrel and end up with a problem.