Building a Pork Sword – Part 2: Installing The Barrel

In the last post, I outlined the major parts of the Pork Sword pistol I planned to build. As it turns out, building a Pork Sword is very straight forward and I had fun doing it.

Research

As always, I did some research before I did the actual build. First off, Black Collar Arms has a nice “how-to” page and the following video tells you about 80% of what you need to know:

The only other thing I needed to look up was what to do for the trigger – as I mentioned in the last post, it has been quite a few years since I owned and installed a trigger in a Remington 700 XCR LR so I did some reading. This Brownells video really helped me visualize what was needed:

Armed with the above knowledge and a well done one page instruction sheet from Black Collar that comes with the Pork Sword chassis, I tackled the build. Let me again emphasize, this is very straight forward.

The Action, The Wrench & A Confession

You know, sometimes I’m not too smart. A cognitive bias is something where your brain plays tricks on you and there are a number of different ones. Today’s confession involves one known as a “confirmation bias” which is where you think one thing and then everything that confirms your belief you accept and stuff contrary to that belief is discarded. Yeah, that caught me here and let me tell you why.

When I bought the Big Horn Origin, I thought the scope rail was a machined part of the receiver. I assumed that – yeah, the old “you make an ass out of u and me when you assume” saying is alive and well. When the action arrived, I looked at it and thought “Oh, that looks nice” and in a little parts bag with the two trigger pins were three scope mount screws – “Oh, I wonder why those are there?” I literally wondered that.

Seriously though, the Big Horn Origin is a work of art. No sloppiness in the action and very smooth. The fitment of the parts is exceptional. Nothing was jumping out at my tired brain saying “hey idiot, the scope mount and receiver are separate parts!”

View of the ejection port side of the receiver.

Note the streamlined bolt release and how nice the scope mount is sitting on the receiver.

Here’s the recoil lug that screws in with the barrel. Note the indexing pin.

Half-asleep the morning of the build, I got out the action wrench, put it in the vise and added two layers of gorilla duct tape to protect the action. I installed the action upside down so I could juggle the headspace gages easier and then I cranked the action wrench screws down to 10 foot pounds each. Now I got lucky because I put the tape there to protect the scope mount.

Only after I installed the barrel and was more awake did I notice how very lucky I got. The scope mount was removable and only one screw had been installed so the big dummy (me) would see the missing screws in the mount, that they were in the baggy and know to remove the rail before installing the barrel. Yeah, I missed that one but got real, real lucky because of the tape and that not a ton of torque is needed for a new receiver and installing a new “Remage” style barrel.

Remage means you thread the barrel in like normal (the “Rem” part of the name), set the headspace and then torque down the barrel not like a Savage (the “age” part of the name).

Bottom line, my mind played a nasty little trick – because I thought the action and mount were one piece I discarded all information that was pointing out they were two pieces. Don’t be me – take them apart before putting them in the wrench.

This is the Wheeler Action Wrecnh #2 for the Remington 700 – part number 414521. It is basically a clamshell vise/clamp with a solid steel handle. It’s very beefy and I hear it is because the Remington barrels can be a real bear to take off. In our case, we just need the clamp portion and will install the lower part in a vise.

Boy am I glad I put in the two layers of tape to protect the scope mount. For everyone else, remove the scope mount first!! The tape definitely protected the finish though and that is what I was after.

This photo was taken before I installed the tape but is the best one I have showing the action wrench in the vise. The small center bolt is centering the action and is actually screwed into the action. The two big beefy bolts are what hold the receiver. They will be at 10 foot/pounds each. Again dear reader, don’t do what I did – remove the scope mount before putting it in the wrench.

Here, you can see the tape. I was careful to snug the wrench’s bolts down evenly and that the receiver was sitting properly to not get damaged. I installed it this way to make it easier for me to get the headspace gages in and out.

Installing The Barrel

The barrel is simply badass. Sorry, I love a huge solid chunk of steel that is beautifully machined and finished. I’m just weird that way 🙂 The guys at X-Caliber did a great job for me. The make a barrel that is made for the Big Horn Origin, they have tons of barrel profiles and just a ton of options – click here for the Big Horn page. Seriously, the next time I do another full on custom build, I’m going back to X-Caliber for the barrel. They make just a ton of different barrels is what it boils down to.

So you can see the muzzle nut over the 5/8-24 threads, the Savage-style barrel nut and the Remington-style threads peeking out from under the green rubber thread protector. By the way, see the small black scope mount screws in the silver tray above? Yeah, their purpose hadn’t dawned on me yet 🙂

In case you are wondering about the exact specs of the barrel, here they are:

Model: Big Horn Pre-fit
Barrel Steel: 416R Stainless Steel
Barrel Length: 12″
Caliber: .308
Twist: 1:10
6 groove
Contour: #11 Marksmanship Training Unit (MTU)
Threads: 5/8″ x 24 TPI
Finish: Cerakote Graphite Black
Barrel Nut: 1-1/16″ x 20 TPI for Big Horn actions
The total was just under $500

Per the instructions in the Black Collar Arms video, I coated the threads that would go into the receiver with Anti-Seize and the thread where the barrel nut would go with Blue Loctite.

Here’s the Clymer GO gage already in the bolt. I installed the barrel down tight and backed it off just a bit. Note how the recoil lug is in position as well. I carefully slid the barrel in through it. The pin seen at the 12 o’clock position helps keep it properly centered as you torque down the barrel.

I confirmed both GO and NOGO before torguing down the barrel nut. You can see the recoil lug is now firmly in position as well.

Building a precision rifle is not the time to go “Bubba tight”. The barrel nut needs to be torqued down to 55 foot-pounds and the barrel nut needs a 1-1/4″ crowsfoot wrench head to be tightened properly.

Okay, so you do the headspace before the nut and after torquing it down. My first try at tightening the barrel nut didn’t work out because I didn’t have a good enough grip to keep the barrel from turning. The second try worked – I hit the torque spec and the headspace passed with GO (meaning the bolt fully closed) and NO-GO (meaning the bolt would not fully close). Black Collar recommended testing the bolt to make sure it would close on ammo. I normally do not keep live ammo on my bench just to be safe but I went and grabbed some S&B SPCE soft point hunting ammo and Federal T762TNB1 130 grain open tip match. The bolt closed firmly on both.

By the way, the Picatinny Rail held up just fine. I’m convinced it was a combination of the tape, setting it up carefully, relatively light torque load and a ton of luck that kept me from screwing it up. If you are planning one of these builds, just confirm whether the mount is integral or not and simplify your life 🙂

Conclusion

That’s it for now. As a reminder, the first post has the links to all of the parts and tools you’ve seen thus far. The next post will be about installing the trigger and chassis. I hope you found this helpful.

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