Magazine a stressed part?

[papaboomboom]

When single firing ammo over magazine length, do you need to leave mag in action? My savage mod 10 precision is easier to load without mag

[subscriber]

All the mag does when manually loading into the chamber is stop you from dropping the round through the mag well onto the ground.

If you have a controlled round feeding bolt rifle such as the older style Winchester model 70, then placing the round on top of the mag or in the chamber may be stressing the extractor or its spring more than usual. But for any push feed action such as th Remington 700 it makes no difference at all.

The mag may get slammed around when in the gun from the firing event, depending on caliber, mag length and action type, but the mag does not "protect" a manually operated rifle in any way. In a self loader, firing without the mag has the bolt slam shut on an empty chamber. Some people would laugh that off, because on some guns it happens all the time, after the last round is fired: A 10/22 not only does not lock the bolt open automatically on an empty mag, it gets most people to dry fire it every time the mag runs dry; on a rimfire. Fortunately, Ruger seem to have figured out how to prevent the firing pin tip from denting the chamber mouth.

Based on the Savage manual, it seems that single loading with a mag installed is OK. Ditto for with it removed - except for dropping ammo in the dirt:

https://savagearms.com/DAM/assets/pdf/Manuals/manual_10_110_le_varmint.pdf

They show a case of loading the chamber over a full, installed mag. Then you want to press down the top round of the mag, or risk feeding its bullet tip into the primer of the round you manually loaded into the chamber. Your question is different, but if the above is OK, then what you are doing is OK.

The only other potential concern is that the longer bullet still clear the lands by a small distance when you close the bolt. If the bolt is hard to push fully forward, or to rotate into full lockup, your rounds may be too long for the throat on that barrel. This tends to result in significant increase in peak pressure on firing; and is frowned upon for good reason.

If you have fired the ammo in question in this rifle, and there is no hard extraction, no flattened case heads, no flattened primers with raised craters around the firing pin indent, then that suggests there is no problem shooting that ammo. The converse is also true, for potential signs of excess pressure.


If I am looking at the wrong manual; here are all the Savage manuals: https://savagearms.com/content?p=manuals

[papaboomboom]

Thanks for info

['ol shooter]

The Savage is a push feed, and EABCO makes single shot followers that you can use in place of the original to facilitate easy feeding of single rounds.
Link:

https://www.eabco.net/Bench-Rest-Magazine-Follower_p_13407.html

[subscriber]

The Savage is a push feed, and EABCO makes single shot followers that you can use in place of the original to facilitate easy feeding of single rounds.
Link:

https://www.eabco.net/Bench-Rest-Mag...r_p_13407.html

Perfect!