The Firing Line Forums - View Single Post - M1 Garand barrel chamber and headspacing question.

wyop · December 24, 2012, 04:16 PM

There's about 0.004" to 0.005+" difference between the minimum chamber headspace for a go gage and the point just before the bolt closes on a no-go gage.

So there's room to work.

And as I indicated above, there's more than one way to arrive at the proper headspace. The headspace issue is widely misunderstood by many shooters. At the very crux of the issue, headspace is just the distance from the datum for the cartridge in question to the bolt face. For the .30-06 and similar non-magnum, bottlenecked cartridges, the datum is a point on the shoulder. For a belted magnum, the datum is on the front of the belt. For a rimmed cartridge (eg, .30-30), the datum is on the front of the rim, etc.

Nitriding: The nitriding processes I've seen used on barrels have been salt baths.

December 24, 2012, 04:16 PM	#11
wyop Senior Member Join Date: July 15, 2012 Location: Wonderful, Windy Wyoming Posts: 133	There's about 0.004" to 0.005+" difference between the minimum chamber headspace for a go gage and the point just before the bolt closes on a no-go gage. So there's room to work. And as I indicated above, there's more than one way to arrive at the proper headspace. The headspace issue is widely misunderstood by many shooters. At the very crux of the issue, headspace is just the distance from the datum for the cartridge in question to the bolt face. For the .30-06 and similar non-magnum, bottlenecked cartridges, the datum is a point on the shoulder. For a belted magnum, the datum is on the front of the belt. For a rimmed cartridge (eg, .30-30), the datum is on the front of the rim, etc. Nitriding: The nitriding processes I've seen used on barrels have been salt baths. Last edited by wyop; December 24, 2012 at 04:22 PM.