[doofus47]

Hey all, well, I bought that Arisaka in the LGS. The bore looked dark in the shop, but once I got it home, I saw that it was chromed, so it did clean up very quickly and nicely. I used a pull through 7.62 brass brush and bent it slightly so it would make contact as I pulled it through.

I did notice, though, that the wood no longer sits flush beneath the bolt release. Picture 1.

I CAN tighten up the guard screw behind the trigger loop and bring the wood back into the fold, BUT then the top of the rear guard screw pokes up into the safety channel for the bolt and interferes with operations. The top of the bolt head (when properly flush) is in picture 2.

The stock is the original stock for this series of Arisaka; the marks on it match the series stamp on the receiver. It didn't start off like this 70 years ago.

Soo, I am thinking of 2 solutions:
1. Buying some after-market replacement guard screws and cut down the rear screw so that I can tighten the rear guard until the wood is flush AND not interfere with the bolt action. Pros: pretty direct. Cons:fewer threads holding the tang.
2. Stacking up nylon washers under the bolt head to take some space out of the equation before tightening? Pros: no potential for thread damage/cross threading. Cons: don't know.

End result: more pull between the tang and the trigger guard to bring the wood and metal back together.

Question 1:
Opinions solicited: Is this a valid solution ? Is there another method of re-seating the action into the wood?

I'm more of a user than a collector, so I would like to take this out and fire it. My theory of recoil is that it's better that everything be tight, so I'd like to bring the wood and metal back together before I jolt it.

If anyone's heard of a bad result coming from overtightening these screws or have some other caveat I am all ears.

thanks