Anyone disassemble Savage bolt? Check out these misfires

[username]

First, you should get a caliper and using the depth blade check the primer seating depths.  Rank the shells from shallowest to deepest. Record the depth on paper and number the corresponding shell.  Go to the range and see if you can determine a depth at which they stop firing. 

Take those that do not fire and use something like the RCBS Inertial Hammer to remove the bullets and the powder.  Then, sequenced from shallow to deepest seating depth, adjust your firing pin accordingly.

I have a Savage Model 12 in 308 which is easy to adjust the firing pin.  Likewise, if you disassemble the bolt to get the right headspacing for reloading, it is just as easy to "mess up" if you are not careful. 

How familiar are you with this rifle and have you practiced dry firing it much?  I had a similar problem recently with my Savage which was not firing; you could literally hear the difference in the "click."  I used some primed cases to adjust the firing pin's strike before I went to the range and all was well.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 8 by username

[vdep217]

1 minute ago, Lunatic said:

What the hell are you talking about? They are side by side his is the angle different??? !! 
You deflect, like in my opinion you do a lot. We didn’t talk about which one shows blow back, although I beg you to explain how the right one shows a blow back. We were trying to determine which one was deeper.

So what is the answer?? 

The right one is not as rounded as the left one.light is hitting them both different.  So I can not tell you wich one is deeper

[Lunatic]

5 minutes ago, vdep217 said:

The right one is not as rounded as the left one.light is hitting them both different.  So I can not tell you wich one is deeper

They are the same depth. The blow back theory as it applies to depth is BS. His pin is gummed up, it needs cleaning 

btw your own pictures show the same result. 

Edited January 8 by Lunatic

[username]

Another, simpler solution, is to buy another rifle! 

Let's start with a 700 Bat action, Lilja barrel, Jewell trigger, McMillan stock, and March Scope!

Just now, Lunatic said:

They are the same depth. 

No way to know this until you know the depth of the primer.

 

Edited January 8 by username

[Lunatic]

1 minute ago, username said:

Another, simpler solution, is to buy another rifle! 

Let's start with a 700 Bat action, Lilja barrel, Jewell trigger, McMillan stock, and March Scope!

 

Another test is to get another rifle, borrow it, and fire few rounds from the same box. From what I see from his pictures I’m willing to bet they will all fire 

[vdep217]

1 minute ago, Lunatic said:

They are the same depth. The blow back theory as it applies to depth is BS. His pin is gummed up, it needs cleaning 

btw your own pictures show the same result. 

No tge ones I have you can tell the difference looking at them in your hand the dud is barley dented

[Lunatic]

6 minutes ago, vdep217 said:

No tge ones I have you can tell the difference looking at them in your hand the dud is barley dented

You are telling me my pictures, which are perfectly focused, are hard to read and yet you are drawing conclusions with your out of focus, blurry pictures. Anyway I zoomed in on your pics and they all look the same depth. 
the blow back theory is dead 

[Lunatic]

12 minutes ago, username said:

Another, simpler solution, is to buy another rifle! 

Let's start with a 700 Bat action, Lilja barrel, Jewell trigger, McMillan stock, and March Scope!

No way to know this until you know the depth of the primer.

 

Why don’t we split more hair. 

[vdep217]

3 minutes ago, Lunatic said:

You are telling me my pictures, which are perfectly focused, are hard to read and yet you are drawing conclusions with your out of focus, blurry pictures. Anyway I zoomed in on your pics and they all look the same depth. 
the blow back theory is dead 

I said mine were not good pics but if I put the cases in your hand you can see the dif

[Lunatic]

22 minutes ago, vdep217 said:

I said mine were not good pics but if I put the cases in your hand you can see the dif

You can see clearly no difference in my pictures, related to depth
 

Edited January 8 by Lunatic

[Michael Britt]

15 hours ago, mazzgolf said:

In short, give me your thoughts on what this mis-fire problem might be - and if you've ever disassembled a Savage 11 bolt, how hard/easy was it?

I want to get ready for a predator hunt or two this season (@9CAS1 got me itchy to do it ) . So I took my Savage .223 to the range. Scope is still nicely zeroed.  The Hornady V-Max 55gr loads have very good accuracy out of my gun, and I really want to use them. However! I had 4 failures to fire out of about 8 rounds I shot last week from this box of Hornady V-Max loads (I have only shot a total of 18 out of this box of 50). The pix below only shows 3 mis-fires, that's because the first mis-fire I had, I re-loaded it back in the gun and it fired on the second attempt. I did not attempt to re-fire the next three that mis-fired. I wanted to keep them "as evidence".

This box of ammo is several years old, but stored in my gun cabinet with a dehumidifier. I also have some cheap FMJ rounds that I shot out of this gun the same day with no failures - and in the past I shot these same cheap ones with no failures ever (and that ammo is stored in the same place and is just as old, if not older, than my Hornadys). Something is wrong. I emailed Hornady and they told me they think my firing pin is not fully striking the primer.  This is what Hornady folks told me via email:

"based on the photos the primer strikes appear to be light. Failure rate on a primer is 4 per 1 million so the odds of seeing several in a box are astronomical. We seat all of our primers 5-8 thousandths below flush which pre-crushes the primer making it more sensitive. That being said all primers still require 17 thousandths deep of a strike to achieve an ignition. If you would like we can get yours back and measure the strike depths and confirm my suspicion that they are shallow. The most common fix for this is a complete disassembly of the bolt/firing pin assembly and having it degreased or replacing the firing pin spring all together."

But I find this odd because my cheap FMJ rounds fire fine. It is only these Hornadys that have a problem... check it out:

But, OK, so I thought, if the Hornady people are right, maybe I should just clean the bolt. I bought the gun new and haven't ever disassembled the bolt and cleaned it (this gun has only maybe 200 or 300 rounds through it) - but that is because the Savage manual says not to do it and it isn't needed. I further looked into it and apparently the firing pin is calibrated and if you disassemble the bolt, it is possible that calibration will be lost.

Has anyone disassembled a Savage bolt before? Any problems with keeping the firing pin the way it was? I keep reading people saying the main screw in the bolt is insanely tight out of the factory, too.

This guy looks like he has an identical gun as me - same model gun, same .308 caliber, same right down to it being a left-handed model like mine. So I might try this, but I'm not even sure if cleaning the bolt will fix my Hornady mis-fire problem. I might just buy different .223 rounds and use those (assuming they fire fine) but these Hornadys are really accurate out of this gun and I would like to use them. I'm not sure what to do.

 

Sent my 220 back to Savage due to light primer strikes. They were willing to fix it, despite it being out of warranty. They either have great customer service or poor QC and it's a "quiet" recall. Going to call soon for an update and to inquire what the issue was.

[barrike]

If Savage says not to disassemble, I'd try flushing your firing pin hole with carb cleaner first.  Firing pins are meant to be dry, not oiled.  You may have some gummed up oil or other gunk in there, reducing the strike force.  Also, maybe the primers in the Hornady ammo are a tad harder than your FMJ ammo. 

[smittty]

Head space get a new firing pin assembly springs and spacers that should solve your problem it only takes.0001 to make a difference 

[smittty]

Also if they don’t want you to disassemble the firing pin assembly just how do you clean it properly???

[mazzgolf]

2 hours ago, smittty said:

Also if they don’t want you to disassemble the firing pin assembly just how do you clean it properly???

Right! Exactly! When I saw that in the manual I was scratching my head. I never heard of a manufacturer telling you to NOT disassemble something like this to clean it. Especially the bolt with all the crap that can get blown back into it. It's a great question I have no answer to, but the manual says it in bold capital letters.