Best actions and barrel-nut systems for changing your barrel without a gunsmith
Researching options for upgrading my long-range rifle, and it brought up this question, which has likely crossed the mind of anybody who has ever had to deal with rebarreling a bolt action. Why does this even matter? Mainly due to the time, expense, and hassle of having to give your rifle to a gunsmith for rebarreling. It would be awesome to be able to quickly change out your own barrel, with no impact on safety, reliability, or accuracy. If you scan threads on the Hide and other places and shop around a bit, you realize that the old school approach of getting an R700 pattern rifle and then being permanently dependent on a smith for rebarrels, is quickly fading. There are lots of new options to change out your own barrel.
Options
In no particular order, and no attempt to be complete, just some I'm aware of:
* Savage: their well known barrel nut system and floating bolt head has always made home barrel-switching easy. Not a huge fan of Savage actions, but their design is definitely interesting and now there are imitators.
* Bighorn TL3: this is an interesting hybrid action that is R700 footprint, but pulls design ideas from many great actions out there. Including that it allows you to use Savage prefit barrels and their small shank barrel nut system. Bighorn also, due to their floating bolt head idea (another Savage innovation), enables you to do something really cool: you can buy multiple bolt heads and barrels for the same action, for example a 6.5 CM setup, and a .223 trainer setup, and switch between them in minutes. I'm looking at a Bighorn now. Similarly, the Curtis actions are supposed to make barrel switches easy.
* Ruger (RPR, American). Also uses a type of barrel nut that borrows from the Savage idea, and there's a growing market for prefit RPR barrels.
* Action-specific prefit barrels. Seeing more of this for the most popular action types. Example: A lot of companies now make pre-shouldered, prefit barrels (in some case, no barrel nut required, others do) for the Tikka T3 and other actions. Criterion, Bugholes, Patriot Valley Arms, Proof Research, many others.
* Barrel-nut systems that can be added to existing rifle actions. There's quite a few of these now:
* Patriot Valley Arms. Their barrel nut system can be used on Tikka T3's, Remingtons, Savages, ARC, Curtis, and Bighorn actions to name a few.
* The 'Remage' barrel system. Lets you setup an R700 with a barrel nut like Savage, so you can swap out barrels on your own.
* The Barloc system. Designed by American Rifle Company, lets you add a device to a variety of actions so that you can swap barrels using only a hex wrench and headspace gauge. However, this one has reportedly had some recent issues with POI shifts for some users.
* The West Texas Ordnance Switchlug system. This one is available for a lot of custom actions, and factory R700 and T3/T3x. Sounds awesome on paper, the device enables you to switch barrels using only an inch-pound torque wrench.
* And probably many others I haven't heard of.....
So.....
* Does the idea of being able to switch barrels quickly have any appeal? I think for match shooters especially, and people who go through a lot of barrels or who want to run different calibers on one rifle, this is the way to go. On the other hand, if you get one rifle say .308 with long barrel life and don't shoot a ton, this is probably a non-issue.
* Does anybody have experience with any of these options I'm interested in: the Bighorn TL3 action and its approach to running multiple calibers in one rifle; Patriot Valley Arms; and the West Texas Ordnance Switchlug system.
* What are the drawbacks of this approach? One known example: potential POI shifts. As noted, the Barloc system has had a few users report that. And obviously, potential safety issues if the barrel tolerances are off or you don't get it torqued down and headspaced correctly, for the systems that require headspacing.
