I looked into this a few months ago with the Tikka. My gunsmith says......its better to bush the 308 size bolt face and open that up, then try and open up the 223 bolt. Apparently, opening up the 223 bolt removes too much metal from Sako extractor and causes an extraction issue.
Dont know if this actually true but, hes seems competent and has been right on a host other issues so far, and that is what he tells me!
YMMV!
I will tell you from first hand experience, I built up some dummy Grendel rounds with 120 Gold Dots out to 2.400 COL, longer than they probably should be for good bearing surface/neck interface and they fed perfectly fine into my 6.5 Creedmoor using the regular stock short action mags! The creedmoor action picked them right up every time so, there you go!
Tikka parts are not cheap, the want $369 just for a bolt assembly!
I may be tempted once I burn out one of these Tikka 243s. Until then, its not worth the money or effort for me when I can continue to use reduced loads in the 6/6.5 Creedmoors with H4895 and get identical Grendel performance and similar recoil. Granted, its NOT as efficient as the Grendel but OTOH, its way more versatile too.
There have been some decent deals on Gunbroker on Tikkas of late. I picked up another 6.5 CM Lite Blued version last month for $489 + CC fee & shipping. Theyve since gone back up to $539, which IMO
, is still a pretty good deal for a Tikka action and Trigger! Could probably sell a factory new Creedmoor barrel for $150-200 and recoup some of the outlay. Anyway..............good luck and keep us posted!
Dont know if this actually true but, hes seems competent and has been right on a host other issues so far, and that is what he tells me!
YMMV!
I will tell you from first hand experience, I built up some dummy Grendel rounds with 120 Gold Dots out to 2.400 COL, longer than they probably should be for good bearing surface/neck interface and they fed perfectly fine into my 6.5 Creedmoor using the regular stock short action mags! The creedmoor action picked them right up every time so, there you go!
Tikka parts are not cheap, the want $369 just for a bolt assembly!
I may be tempted once I burn out one of these Tikka 243s. Until then, its not worth the money or effort for me when I can continue to use reduced loads in the 6/6.5 Creedmoors with H4895 and get identical Grendel performance and similar recoil. Granted, its NOT as efficient as the Grendel but OTOH, its way more versatile too. There have been some decent deals on Gunbroker on Tikkas of late. I picked up another 6.5 CM Lite Blued version last month for $489 + CC fee & shipping. Theyve since gone back up to $539, which IMO
, is still a pretty good deal for a Tikka action and Trigger! Could probably sell a factory new Creedmoor barrel for $150-200 and recoup some of the outlay. Anyway..............good luck and keep us posted!