[tonyben]

Thanks for the review. Do you have pics?

 

[brassmagnet]

Thought I'd write a review on the forged bolts 7.62mm is offering. With the help of Ripsaw got it installed and running like a top. This was a replacement for the rifle with the cracked USGI bolt I posted a while back. I work overseas so it took me some time to get back and get it installed.

The good, it seems to be very well made and is very close to USGI specs, and very close to TRW overall. Also it looks to be heat treated properly. Being that the receiver is a 7.62 and the bolt is 7.62 they mated perfectly and took very little lapping to fit and head spaced perfectly.

The bad, it needs a chamfer on the end of the bolt where it enters the chamber and the bolt roller was 20 thou wider than USGI and was causing binding with the brownell's op rod. The chamfer was easy enough to fix. The slightly wider roller was easy to fix as well, and if it'd been a USGI op rod it may not have caused a problem. In any even it wasn't hard to grind 20 thou off the roller and stud.

All in all a very nice bolt, especialy for a forged bolt for the price and any decent smith should not have any trouble installing it. Glad I bought one as a spare.

Thanks for the review. I ran into the same issues with the one I got awhile back too, along with an out of spec machining problem. Chris installed a replacement bolt, and it was much better, but I still had issues with the chamfer and forcing cone, which I could remedy on my own. I;m not savvy on all the procedures that go into creating a bolt, but right now I'm reluctant to pop for another setup from Chris, until I'm sure things are "put in order" over there. My build, BTW, is just beautiful, aside from the bolt issue.

 

[Blademaker]

Here's some pics, you can see where we beveled the bolt face and shortened the roller. I didn't notice at the time, but on the upper surface of the left lug there is a slight surface blemish. Both bolts have this, looks to be from forging.

Another note about the bolt, it looks like they basically copied the oversize TRW bolts that were made for when the USGI receivers stretched but never did. To correct head space the bolt is a few thou longer on the tail and the bolt face is a few thou shorter, or deeper. It all works out very well. I'd say the quality is as good as USGI, but it's just a little out of spec, but tolerances stack in your favor, at least with 7.62 receivers.

This my second 7.62mm build. The first had a TRW bolt and it needed a little TLC as well to run rite. This one needed very little work. If I do another m14 I would not hesitate to go with 7.62 for bolt and receiver. I hope Chris gets the minor bugs worked out, they make a good product, with a little work they will make an incredible product. I would add that looking at the bolt and the receiver I can't decide which would be more difficult to machine. The bolt has a lot of compound cuts in it.