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Howa Hinged Floor Plate Rifle Build
I had an idea I just couldn't shake. I wanted to "build" a Grendel bolt action hunting rifle to replace my 9.5 lb savage 308 heavy barrel. I don't however like protruding magazines or plastic on hunting rifles. I started thinking about hybridizing a Howa Mini action to some other internal magazine system. The CDI bottom metal kit uses 308 mags for the Howa mini so why not use a 308 internal box mag?
I bought a NOS take off Howa SA 308 bottom metal and box magazine off of GunBroker. If I could get this to work it would kill 2 birds with one stone - No Plastic on the outside - and no ugly magazine. I knew that the action screws were going to be spaced differently but it seemed like an interesting challenge.
I got my 20" barreled action in today and couldn't help working on some prototyping. At first I tried the 308 box magazine and follower. It sort of works but it is much wider than the opening at the bottom of the receiver so it would constantly bind up. I also tried a 223 Howa SA magazine and follower but this did not work either. Just because I could I tried using the stock plastic magazine well as the internal magazine itself because it is a similar size to the 308 box mag. It's hard to explain but you will see in the video.
I also want to note that this is a ziptied rough rough prototype just for testing the ability for the bolt to strip rounds from the bottom metal and box mag combo. In this video I still have to cut the magazine box down. At the moment I haven't trimmed it down at all so the trigger isn't even able to sit in the triggerguard but that's easy enough to fix.
The bolt can strip rounds reliably. In the video I don't cycle the bolt completely because they are live rounds (I have the gun pointed in a safe direction). Because I don't cycle the action completely they don't ever get grabbed by the extractor. KSwhitetails on here has some dummy rounds for me to pick up tomorrow so that I can do more testing.
I think this might be doable. I will keep updating this post once my Boyd's stock comes in and I start inletting for this odd setup.
I bought a NOS take off Howa SA 308 bottom metal and box magazine off of GunBroker. If I could get this to work it would kill 2 birds with one stone - No Plastic on the outside - and no ugly magazine. I knew that the action screws were going to be spaced differently but it seemed like an interesting challenge.
I got my 20" barreled action in today and couldn't help working on some prototyping. At first I tried the 308 box magazine and follower. It sort of works but it is much wider than the opening at the bottom of the receiver so it would constantly bind up. I also tried a 223 Howa SA magazine and follower but this did not work either. Just because I could I tried using the stock plastic magazine well as the internal magazine itself because it is a similar size to the 308 box mag. It's hard to explain but you will see in the video.
I also want to note that this is a ziptied rough rough prototype just for testing the ability for the bolt to strip rounds from the bottom metal and box mag combo. In this video I still have to cut the magazine box down. At the moment I haven't trimmed it down at all so the trigger isn't even able to sit in the triggerguard but that's easy enough to fix.
The bolt can strip rounds reliably. In the video I don't cycle the bolt completely because they are live rounds (I have the gun pointed in a safe direction). Because I don't cycle the action completely they don't ever get grabbed by the extractor. KSwhitetails on here has some dummy rounds for me to pick up tomorrow so that I can do more testing.
I think this might be doable. I will keep updating this post once my Boyd's stock comes in and I start inletting for this odd setup.
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