Savage Grendel Options

[Frontier Gear]

From another thread, but a great idea.

I thought about the lack of feed lips being a problem and thought that a setup similar to a browning A-bolt with box mag attached to floor plate may be the best route. Not ideal but they feed reliably and don’t stick out. Just a thought

http://www.65grendel.com/forum/showthrea...post220197

So I checked and a Howa mag fits perfectly inside a Savage mag width wise. In my Savage 7mm mag body, the How mag slides right up inside it. It looks like the Howa feed lips would go right to the same level as the Savage feed lips (see item 1 below for more details). The idea being that you cut down a Howa mag and spring but toss out the bottom plate. Remove the follower and spring from the Savage mag and insert the Howa mag along with it's follower and spring. Cap it off with the Savage bottom plate. You could probably even window the front of the Howa mag and position it back a ways so that you could use longer bullets. Positioning the Howa mag front-to-back would be easy enough with some blocks on either end. I did some playing around by positioning a Howa mag right where I would want it in a Savage action and it works.

Here are the three gotcha's that I can see.

1. The Savage mag has some bends in the sheet metal in front of the feed lips to help prevent the follower from tilting. These get in the way and would have to be dealt with. Probably best to grind them out.
   
2. You might get three rounds in the Howa mag after cutting it that short. Two would be easy, three maybe. You would just have to try it and see.
   
3. When cutting down the height of the Howa mag, you would have to get it so that the bolt head just skims over the top of the feed lips. The Howa feed lips come up pretty high on the case so there isn't much room for error. Cut it too short and it is a throw away.