Thread: Weatherby becomes a gunsmith!

Bought a silly cheap .270 Browning Xbolt from way down south with help from @Tentman. You know that when it seems to be too good to be true, often it is exactly that. Anyhoo, got my hands on it made some loads up and off down the range to sight in and begin load development, was a little worried about the trigger because I'd heard a lot via the net about them, no cause to be worried, a little heavier than I'm used to, but really clean and consistent, easy to shoot with and it turned out load development done and dusted first time out - 110TSX, 130 Speer Hotcor and 150 SST all went 3/4" and same windage, with decent velocity for loads not pushing it, happy as, but........

It was too good to be true, it had a problem, one the previous owner clearly knew about but chose not to disclose, just flogged it silly cheap.

It didn't eject cases, they jammed in the side of the mag well stuck on the ejector claw, the only way to get the cases out was to drop the mag and push the case from underneath to get it off the claw, just what you want in a hunting rifle. Jam ratio was 80%.......

So investigating I go, somewhere I had heard about Xbolts having ejection problems, pinging cases back into the action off the scope turrets so fast you couldn't see it without slow mo camera work, but these don't even get out, so WTF!, then I got a magnifying glass on the extractor claw.... some bubba had taken to the claw with a grinder, cause that's a bubba fix to change the eject angle.

Managed to get my hands on a brand new claw, didn't have a tool to drive the retaining pin out, so stole a nail off one of my nailgun strips, perfect fit, put a strong magnet on the spring end of the claw so it didn't suddenly bugger off when it got free and and then a pair of needle nose vice grips and a claw hammer became bubba weatherby's new best friends - got the thing out, cleaned out the crap behind it, fitted the new extractor, had a bunch of sized cases handy so hold my breath and away we go..... 20 times through and cases biffed clean out just like a bought one.

Pro Tip from the master gunsmiths bench: retaining pin has a spline one end, make sure it goes back the right way around, it will fight you if you don't ( not that I know this, just sayin...)