Gun Digest – August 2019

T

here are a lot of things my .308

Norma Magnum could do well.

Making it past the bouncer at

a .280 Ackley Improved-only

club wasn’t one of them.

Thankfully, it was no ordi-

nary .308 Norma Magnum.

No. It was a Savage, which means it

can be whatever the hell it wants to

be ... almost.

Go from a .308 Norma Magnum to

a .280 Ackley Improved? Sure thing.

All I needed were a few simple tools,

some basic parts, a little mechanical

common sense and about an hour

of my time. One thing I didn’t need,

however, was a lathe to transform

my magnum long-action rifl e into a

streamlined .280 Ackley Improved.

But a .308 Norma Magnum to a .280

Ackley Improved? you ask. You can’t do that, Mr. Gun Writer, because those two

cartridges use two completely different bolt faces.

Yes, I’m well aware of this emphatic mechanical fact. I can almost hear some

of your heads exploding as you contemplate just how in the world I thought

I was going to be able to make a bolt-action rifl e with a bolt face sized to .540

work with the much smaller bolt face of a .280 Ackley Improved, which is .470.

Here’s a hint: I’m not. My savvy Savage readers already know how this was

going to happen.

A Savage 110 Series rifl e can do more than just accommodate a lathe-less bar-

rel swap between equal cartridge bolt faces, such as a .270 Winchester to a .30-

06 Springfi eld or a 6.5 Creedmoor to a .338 Federal. The Savage bolt, itself, is just

as modular. You can physically swap out the bolt face of a Savage 110 Action

bolt assembly—again, without a lathe. To do so requires a complete disassembly

of the Savage bolt assembly to parade rest, and then you simply reassemble it

with the bolt face size you need for your cartridge.

THE MODULARITY FACTOR

In fact, you can change just about anything on a Savage rifl e yourself, including the

barrel, bolt face, trigger, magazine, fl oorplate assembly, stock, etc. You can’t make a

short-action into a long-action (or vice versa), but, hey—boundaries build character.

(^40) | GunDigest the magazine AUGUST 2019 gundigest.com

S AVAG E

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OVERHAUL