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Old May 25, 2013, 10:32 AM   #9
natman
Senior Member
 
Join Date: June 24, 2008
Posts: 2,606
I did a bit of research and came up the following:

The 700 is indeed a blowback design.

The additional spring and carrier under the receiver is an add-on to allow what was originally a blowback 22LR to handle the longer pressure curve of the 22 magnum.

Now is it likely that this gun can be modified to successfully handle a bottlenecked cartridge at twice the pressure?

In a word, no. For starters you would need a LOT more reciprocating weight to have enough inertia for the new cartridge. I doubt if you could get enough even if you machined the entire bolt out of depleted uranium. Then you'd need a much stronger spring, like something off of a truck suspension.

As experience with the 17 HMR proves, it's much harder to design a blowback action for a bottle necked cartridge because it has a much lower expansion ratio, that is, each inch of barrel represents only a small percentage of the volume of the case. This keeps the pressure high until the bullet finally leaves the barrel. The combination of 50,000 psi pressures and the long pressure curve would make it very difficult to keep the action closed until then and if it opens too soon the case gets extracted while the pressure is still high and KABOOM, you get a faceful of hot brass shrapnel and flaming gas at ~40,000 psi.

In short, it is extremely unlikely that there is any way to safely perform this conversion. There's a reason Mini-14s use a locking bolt. Life is too short to make it shorter by fooling around with guns that explode.
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