Headspace

[KUJO]

I was planning on building (assembling) some C&R rifles. I wanted to find out if headspace is really that big of a deal? Should I buy some Gauges for them, or just build them and shoot them? I plan on building some enfields, and mosin nagants. Thanks

[grammaton76]

Probably not a huge deal.

But, I discovered that midsouth shooting supply, in addition to having the best price on the RCBS Chargemaster that I needed for 50 DTC, also had 7.62x54r no-go and field gauges on their website. $16.90 apiece I believe.

[AJAX22]

Dang I wish I'd read this post a month ago..

I paid 35$ for my 7.62x54R headspace gauge.

[neomentat]

building some nagants? with what? is there parts available for the nagant? if you're buying it from big5 the mosins there are pre-headspaced by the importer (century)

[maxicon]

Headspace gauge is best, especially for multiple rifles the same caliber, but there's an old trick for a rough check using electrical or masking tape.

Put one layer of tape on the back of a new cartridge, and that's the go gauge. 2 layers is the no-go gauge. If you're cautious, you may want to remove the firing pin or pull the bullet and powder.

It's not very precise, since different cartridges can have different rim dimensions and tapes are different thicknesses, but it's been pretty close in my experience.

If you have a caliper, you can measure the layers of tape and compare it against the dimensions of the go/no-go gauges to double-check.

I have Mauser headspace gauges, and tested them against the tape trick, and it turned out tape reflected the results of the gauges pretty well.

[wilit]

The tape method does work. I tried it on my AK and then tried it with actual gauges.