Equipment & Gear > Guns and Ammo
Help- stuck action screw
Encore 280:
Use a good hollow ground gunsmith screwdriver to start with.
JDHasty:
Where do you live? At this point it’s not a big deal. You might be out an action screw, let’s try and keep it that way. If you have room in your freezer, put it in there for a day or so before doing anything more. When it comes out try and turn it.
If it’s still stuck, get a can of electrics duster. Turn it upside down and spray the screw and coat it with dry ice. Keep freezing it until it either works to break the bond or doesn’t. If it works, great. Spray the inside of the receiver too where the hole for this screw is. Steel has a high coefficient of thermal expansion and epoxy doesn’t. Sometimes this works.
If it doesn’t work then drill the screw head and twist it off then drive the screw and barreled action out with a large punch. If you have a woodworkers vise open the jaws to just larger than the barrel/receiver diameter and drive it down and out with both sides of the top of the stock supported on the wood vise jaws. If no vise, then make up a cradle to do the same from scrap wood.
My inclination is you have glued the machine screw threads into the receiver threads, but you might have glued the shank of the screw to the stock. If the former you might be able to pull it apart once the screw head is off, if the latter if the screw shank is smooth it will usually drive out fairly easily. If the shank is threaded you might want to have a machinist take the screw most of the way out with an end mill. If it is a factory screw, it’s probably smooth.
This is a woodworker’s vise
JDHasty:
In the future: Two coats of KIWI NEUTRAL paste shoe polish, buffed between coats or Johnson’s Paste Wax. Unless you have release agent from Score High or Brownells.
birdshooter1189:
I would also suggest putting the screwdriver on the screw, then hit the end of it with a hammer. Sometimes the vibration will crack the bond between the screw and the epoxy to help loosen it up. Maybe even hit the screw directly, but be careful not to deform the screw head or the stock around it.
After rapping on the screw with a hammer, and maybe doing the "chill the screw" process previously described, I would get a good fitting screwdriver, press hard, and turn until it comes free or the head breaks off or strips out. If it strips out, then move the the previously described process of drilling/milling off the screw head, then remove the stock, then use vice grips or other means to get the remainder of the screw twisted out of the action. And then get a replacement screw.
I've glass bedded a couple stocks usng JB-weld. For a release agent I used UNIQUE case lube wax. I smeared a coating over the entire bottom side of the receiver. I was careful to keep epoxy away from the action screws. This has worked well for me for 2 or 3 rifles now.
JDHasty:
Before doing anything more, get the scope off the rifle. This isn't the ideal situation, but unless there is more going on than the screw - it isn't that bad as far as "I glued my gun together" goes. Don't get impatient. Good advice on a screwdriver that fits the slot, Magnetip bits are cheap and can be ground to fit.
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