old firing pin and shroud... i've heard it described as a rutting nightcrawler before (4 oz):

and the new (note the spring isn't as bunched - 1.9 oz):

note the weight difference. a hair over 2 ounces shaved by merely swapping out the pin and shroud. not bad for 6 or 7 minutes of tinkering!

shroud comparison (please excuse the blurriness). the shrouds are placed so that the face that rides the bolt is flush. doesn't look like it because of the shadows, but they are indeed indexed the same:

i'll put a few more pics up later this afternoon of the completed project. whaddaya think about the shroud?

complete rifle:

shroud & trigger (look ma! no j-lock!):

shroud, bolt, and trigger:

but i missed my weight goal by 4 ounces :

and here's what i started w/:

in order to round out the black-and-silver theme, i am thinking of having the stock painted w/ silver webbing, and having the flutes done up in black.

i'm not sure when or where to stop w/ this thing, so if ya got any input, i'm open...

NH_Hunter wrote: Did you weigh the big bird cup before you placed your rifle on it

everybody's a comedian! lol! yeah, the cup was put on the scale, and the scale was re-zeroed, so the weight is true. by the way, the cup only weighed 2 ounces, so even if i did forget, the rifle still came in fat.

to change the shroud on a rem 700:

hook the cocking piece of the bolt onto your boot lace and pull. no, harder than that. no... really hard. now, stick a dime in the slot milled out for that purpose. ok, now twist the shroud a bit, and unscrew the shroud like any other nut. once it comes out, you will hold in your left hand a complete firing pin assembly, and in your right a nekkid bolt body. spray your favorite cleaner very generously into the bolt body and set it aside.

now, to change the shroud, the easiest way to do it is to get a firing pin compression tool, but if you are cheap enough and ambitious enough, you can do it w/o tools. best thing is to just call sinclair and buy the mainspring tool: http://www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=search&item=03-4000&type=store - www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=search&am p;am p;am p;am p;am p;item=03-4000&type=store  take care not to buy the firing pin tool - all that does is compresses the shroud so you can remove the assembly from the bolt body.

so, tool or not, you need to push the firing pin towards the bolt shroud quite a ways. if you have the tool, drop it into the tool and start twisting. in a couple seconds you will see a roll pin clear the shroud on the firing pin. take this out. now, unscrew the tool, and ease the parts out of the tool. if you do not use the tool, come back and post after you find all the parts that just sprung everywhere.

now, what you will have is the mainspring, shroud, firing pin, and roll pin. put your new shroud and firing pin in place, drop it back into the tool, compress the works, slide your new roll pin in, and undo everything. note the firing pin is held to the shroud by this pin, which is a friction fit piece.

now, swab out the bolt body, and hose it down again. this time scrub out the body until you are satisfied it is clean, then dry it out. a quick squirt w/ your favorite spray oil is nice, too. you know that grease you keep around for the back of your bolt lugs (you do grease your bolt lugs, right???), lightly apply that to the threads of the bolt. now, a quick squirt of oil on your new firing pin assembly...

screw your new firing pin assembly into your bolt body (cocked position), grease the back of the bolt lugs, return the bolt to battery, and dry fire your weapon. you should note the firing pin drop. if it drops, you are done. if it doesn't drop, congratulations, you somehow fooled up a foolproof assembly.

it really is that easy.

you do grease your bolt lugs, don't you?

(edit: there are a number of ways to remove the pin ass'y from the bolt... another popular way is to hook the cocking piece onto a very hard right angle - say an anvil or vice top, and push the bolt down, and twist the bolt body. when this method works, it is far easier to do, and doesn't tighten your boots up so much to cut off the blood flow to your toes, but, when the bolt slips, and it will, there is a good risk of causing yourself undue trauma).

how much that there little assembly cost ya, dak?

brand name?

source?

there's a bunch of ways to skin this cat... do you want to keep the j-lock, or not? keep the regular pin, or go lightweight, or... basically, you're gonna have to pound a little pavement on your own to see the way you like it - start at brownells for the basics.

a really hands-free way of doing this is to get the pierceision assembly. it is already pre-assembled w/ a light pin, light shroud sans j-lock. all you do is remove your old assembly, and drop in the new one - nothing more to it. probably take you longer to read off your credit card number than to swap assemblies. http://www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=search&item=22-70X&type=store - www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=search&am p;am p;item=22-70X&type=store
the thing that's neat about the pierceision set is that you can get the shrouds done up in a number of colors... i've seen red, blue, black, silver, and yellow, though i'd be surprised if there weren't more available. these sets go for about $70.

the route that i went for this project was a little more expensive because i wanted the octagonal shroud. so, i had to piece mine together. i started w/ the speedlock pin and spring http://www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=search&item=22-5X&type=store - www.sinclairintl.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=search&am p;am p;item=22-5X&type=store  for $70, then i had to track down the shroud - which was a royal pain. brownells used to have them, but they dropped the line. so, i tracked down the 'smith who developed and marketed/sold the line to brownells... i finally found him:  http://www.kodiakprecision.com/index.htm - www.kodiakprecision.com/index.htm  - and it took awhile, but talked him into selling me a shroud. so, i sent my check off and waited. and waited. and waited. and waited. after about a dozen phone calls, i finally got my shroud. if you wanna roll the dice, he makes a really nice shroud, though i will never buy from him again, nor would i commission him to build a custom. his shroud was around $60, but i really don't recall for sure - may have been 40 bucks, but $60 sticks in my mind. there is no lighter rem 700 shroud on the market that i am aware of...

you could also go the gre-tan route, or... there's a lot of ways to do this. for the easiest (and i believe least expensive), go gre-tan or piercision (doubt it is as inexpensive as gre-tan, but the color choices would be nifty for someone who had a colored stock).

never mind my question on the pm, then. thanks. wow: $110-$140 to save a quarter pound.

i'm more interested from the looks end of things rather than the lightening end. hmm ...

yeah, for me it was for appearance - the weight savings was a bonus.

if you go w/ gre-tan or pierceision, you'll come in at around $70 for the same thing...

should also be pointed out that you do not have to do the lightweight pin... you can just get a replacement shroud from brownells or whatever for about $15 and be done w/ it...

like i said, there are a lot of ways to skin the j-locked cat.