Go No Go gauge brand?

[AbitNutz]

I typically use Clymer head space gauges for my Savage rifles. I have 223 and 308. I like to stick with what I know but unfortunately, Clymer doesn't mage 220 Swift gauges. My choices look like they are Forster and PTG. The PTG gauges are more expensive. If they're better in some way, I'm ok with that but if they're just more expensive and it makes no difference, I'd rather keep my money.

[JSnover]

If the Forster gages are properly sized it may be a question of longevity. Ask yourself if you'll use them often enough to wear them out. If the answer is 'no,' save yourself a few bucks.

[nicholst55]

Forster gages have a reputation for being shorter than spec. If Clymer gages aren't available, I always choose either PTG or Manson, in no particular order.

[country gent]

Handle gages with care the can be brittle they are so hard. 220 swift I would have thought clymer made. I think Dave Manson does though. Checking a chamber headspace gage can be tricky on rimless gages unless you have acess to a cmm thru work or a friend. I have done it on an optical comparator ( 100x makes .001 appear to be .100.) Find datum line dia with crosshairs and center on edge, Zero and run table to vertical line on back edge. Give you a very close idea. The cmm can print out every dimension with a touch. Was a pain as the edm I ran had to have a ruby tip on indicator or edge finder to keep from faulting out, the ruby tip tools on the CMM fauled it out, since it used an elec current to touch. Head Space gages sometimes do more than one caliber.SOme of my wildcats were drawn out and a ball drawn in contacting the datum line on the shoulder with a stem behind the ball of neccasary length for the length. I have see guys chamber to a fired case but you seldom know the chambers dimensions it was fired in.

[B R Shooter]

A go gauge wears out? Really?

[Der Gebirgsjager]

I've got some Clymer, some Forester, all work fine for me.

[flyingmonkey35]

Lyman all in ones / cade a checkers

http://www.lymanproducts.com/lyman/case-prep/ammochecker.php

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160130/68579d26fc053de509110c104834d475.jpg

[M-Tecs]

Lyman all in ones / cade a checkers

http://www.lymanproducts.com/lyman/case-prep/ammochecker.php

I am confused. What do these have to do with headspace gauges?

[flyingmonkey35]

I get those two things mixed up all the time.

[Blue2]

If you are putting a barrel on all you really need is a go gauge. Adjust the depth of barrel tenon after measuring from the shoulder on the receiver to where it meets the bolt face. Allow 10-15 th. for clearance when the action is locked shut. With the "Go" gauge installed in the chamber take measurements between the action face and the shoulder on the barrel as you are deepening the chamber. When you are making the final deepth of cut to create a "zero" headspace go about 2.5-3th deeper. When the barrel is torqued up to the receiver it will set back about 1.5th. which will give a perfect headspace of 1-1.5th. You need a bit of headspace or you could not set the shoulder back on brass when you were reloading. If you were only shooting factory you could go for an even tighter headspace tolerance. Adding shim stock on the base of the go gauge to do a final assessment. Savage type barrel installations are even easier as once you have the chamber reamed you just put in the Go gauge and turn in the barrel until it loads up the locking lugs. At this point you turn in the barrel nut until it takes a load on the recoil lug and action. This will pull the barrel slightly away from the action creating perfect headspace for reloading. If you are checking out a military rifle or factory or unknown build then the no-go and field are very useful.

[AbitNutz]

Forster gages have a reputation for being shorter than spec. If Clymer gages aren't available, I always choose either PTG or Manson, in no particular order.

I forgot about Manson. I can get Forster for $29.00 and PTG are $37.00 each. Manson are $30...if they have them.


Savage type barrel installations are even easier as once you have the chamber reamed you just put in the Go gauge and turn in the barrel until it loads up the locking lugs. At this point you turn in the barrel nut until it takes a load on the recoil lug and action. This will pull the barrel slightly away from the action creating perfect headspace for reloading.

I think I'm going to try this method. Thanks :smile:


While I won't be taking the rifle apart and switching barrels on a daily basis. I will happen several times a year.

The barrel is a pre-fit from McGowen. It's for my Savage F T/R that was OEM in .308 Winchester. The new barrel is the same length and profile as OEM but chambered in 220 Swift. It is stainless steel, 30", with 5-groove rifling at a 7.7 twist and a 11 degree crown. This is the only caliber (.224) with an odd number of grooves and a fractional twist rate that McGowen makes. I'm eager to work up 220 Swift loads with heavier bullets that the faster twist will allow.

I'm adding a new PTG bolt head, Northland Shooting Supply barrel nut and recoil lug. The bolt head will house a Sharp Shooters Supply extractor/ejector kit. The trigger needs no help. The Savage Target Accutrigger in flippin' amazing.

Once all is operating well, I'll tear it all down and take it to H&M Metal Processing to have it finished in Black Nitride.

I forgot about Manson. I can get Forster for $29.00 and PTG are $37.00 each. Manson are $30...if they have them.

[country gent]

Abitnutz, I have a fast twist 22-250 Krieger 1-7 twist throated for 80 grn bullets. With the old 80 grn JLKs my come up from 200 yds to the 600yd line was 6-7 mins of elevation. With my 243 it was 9 mins and 308 was 12 roughly. It will be very flat shooting from the swift but barrel life will be short also. Stay away from thin jacketed bullets and ones meant for extreme expansion as the high velocity rotatation may destroy them. Swifts brass have some other issues when loaded many times, stretching necks thickening. Full pressure loads are hard on cases and barrels. Also ran in to some new winchester new unprimed brass last year the necks were to thick to chamber in my Number 1 220 swift.

[AbitNutz]

I'm going to concentrate on the 69gr Sierra Matchking at first. Sierra recommends a 1-10 twist OR FASTER for this bullet. My experiences I'm playing around with molly coated bullets. I'm not sure how well they'll do but they sure look pretty. I'm using the Neco Moly kit. I'm really curious to see what my chronograph shows from the OEM barrel and untreated bullets then to the Black Nitrite barrel and untreated bullets and then to Moly bullets in the Nitrite barrel.

I'm sure it will show some differences but all tf may not be worth the effort. I'm just curious and it looks like something fun to try. My experiences with Black Nitride barrels has been nothing but positive. I had an ER Shaw 1-9 barrel with 69gr Sierra Matchkings on a Savage 16 done and it worked out really well. I believe (hope? Pray?) that the Black Nitride extends the barrel life like is claimed. Of course, if I send nothing but killer barrel burners down the barrel, I'll probably burn up the barrel, no matter what.

I'm waiting for delivery on a LabRadar unit (like everyone else on Earth). I'm really curious to see how things perform out to a 100 yards.

[HollowPoint]

Back when I had my savage rifle and I didn't have the appropriate Go-Gauge to go with the only barrel change I've ever done on one, I used an empty brass case of the kind I planned on reloading with as my Go-Gauge.

I knew that the brand of brass I was using was the only brand of brass I'd ever be using in that rile so I head-spaced off of that specific type/brand of brass. As a No-Go-Gauge I simply stuck a piece of scotch-tape to the base of my brass to add an additional .003"-.004" to its length. If the bolt wouldn't close on that piece of brass with that scotch-tape stuck to its base then I knew the head-space was correct; and as it turned out, the bolt did not close; as it should be.

I simply screwed my barrel into the receiver until my brass made light contact with the bolt-face. Then I torked down my barrel nut. Torking the barrel nut down caused the barrel to be drawn forward away from the bolt-face by about .003"-.004" creating a safe head-space. Depending on who you ask, that's considered a tight head-space.

I know that's not the formally accepted way of doing it but, it has worked for me on three different re-barreling projects now. The most recent was with the re-barreling and re-chambering of a military surplus rifle I just completed. I did happen to have and use a proper Go-Gauge but, I was able to confirm my head-space using the brass with and without that piece of scotch-tape stuck to its base.

It's always nice when you have the right tools on hand but, in cases like this there are safe work arounds; especially on a rifle that uses the savage barrel-nut method of securing your barrel to the receiver.

HollowPoint

[leadman]

The 220 Swift is actually what is called a semi-rimmed case. The base is the same size (.473") as the 30-06 family but the body is .446" in front of the base. In this case the gauge might only be long enough to enter the chamber and not go all the way to the case mouth. Whichever brand you decide to buy should be able to tell you if it is full length or one of the short ones.

[fast ronnie]

I like Manson's stuff.

[country gent]

I molied alot of bullets with the neco kit in the late 80s and thru the 90s. works good for some things, Its not an end all to barrel wear it might have increased my last 243 barrel by 800 rds. It does help with fouling and makes cleaning easier. Dont over clean the moly impregnated bore clean just enough to protect and get thru next shooting sesson. It will take a few rounds to get bore impregnated completely and if you remove it you start over. HAve your bullets clean I did a double acetone wash and dry before coating. HAve the shot cleaned and dry. ALot of us didnt use the shot just the jacketed bullets in the tumbler. Wear nitrile gloves as moly gets on everything when handled. It is a very fine lubricating powder that if allowed in will kill electronics. I shot alot of moly coated bullets in NRA High Power matches over the years. A !/2 of a wire minnow trap works good to remove shot from bullets.

[Blue2]

I will offer an observation for you. I have done a fair bit of shooting and a fair bit of putting barrels on rifles. When moly-coating was very popular, Berger Bullets had a brochure out showing that moly coated bullets were less deformed by the rifling and therefore exhibited better ballistic coeffecient than non coated bullets. I bought into the concept and used moly for a long time. (I love the look of the loaded ammo--vampire rounds) The thinking was also that moly coated bullets were slippery and gave a longer barrel life.
Now for the real world. Moly coated bullets are more slippery--they start down the barrel with less resistance so that your old sweet spot load is going to be slower than before because of a drop in pressure. It does not shoot like before but you can now add more powder to get the velocity back up to the sweet spot. Even add more powder to get a faster load if that happens to still be a good shooting load for you. Now ---this is what happens, the bullets are slippery and they start to move down the bore without ever getting fully engraved into the full depth of the rifling. The bullets are ridding on the top of the lands and touching on the center of the bottom of the groove but they do not fully seat into the corners of the grooves.
When examing barrels that were to be replaced and comparing barrels that had only been shot with "naked" bullets as opposed to those that had been shot with moly coated bullets. Barrels shot with naked bullets would burn out the throats at what was considered a normal rate for the caliber and twist rate.But the damage would ususally amount to about 1.5 inches of erosion before you got back into reasonably good bore condition. A barrel that was large enough to allow the removal of the threaded breech end and a rechambering would still have some shootable live left in it. However a barrel that had been running moly-coated bullets would be burned down the bore 7-8 inches and be totally pooched. The barrel using moly coated bullets would last may be 25% longer before it was needing replacement but at that point it was so messed up that resetting the barrel would be pointless. So therefore if you are considering resetting the barrel use "naked" bullets but if you only use it for one go round then moly-coating could be a good option.
I also found out that the German Lothar Walther barrels which use their own special barrel steel gave a better serice life especially when running the moly-coated bullets.

[John Taylor]

I don't trust Forster gages, had two that were not even close.

[Frank46]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here regarding headspace guages is that when buying them, buy as a set and don't mix brands between go-no go and field. So if you are shopping around and see PTG has the go & no-go get those. And do not get lets say a go guage from PTG and the no-go from someone else. Think I said that right. Frank

[M-Tecs]

The SAAMI chamber drawing define the minimum and maximum chamber lengths. The GO gauge is the SAAMI minimum chamber length. The FIELD gauge is the maximum chamber length. There is no SAAMI standard for the NO-GO gauge length, however, most are ground .006" longer than the GO gauge.

[yovinny]

While I'm no expert, I havent seen anything wrong with a forster HS gauge yet and after dabbling for 30 years, I believe I have most every one they make.
I use forster first and others only when it's something they dont have available.
They'll also happily inform you their grinding tolerance is +/- .0005"
Which I believe is pretty true, at least judging from the few I've attempted to measure with tools that can reflect that type of resolution.

Try calling clymer and asking their HS gauge grinding tolerance....You may have better luck than I did, if so please let us know.

Disclaimer; If used by one of those 'eggspurts' I've seen at gun shows that try slamming and forcing an action closed on a HS gauge, I have little doubt that forster HS gauges probably arent up to their 'precision standards'

Just my .02
Cheers, YV