I never had any of the screw barrel rifles but a Savage 99. it was tight due to no having been disassembled much. I did hear several fellows over time mention that the Winchester take down did wear over time, but I assumed that was the rubbing of the two faces that came together at the right place. Winchester, did, put an adjustment screw on the those rifles for the eventuality. Nobody mentioned the threads unless treated badly. So, is the Stevens system really wearing the threads, or is it some other possibility. 
Just food for thought..............

Sure, most people have no troubles.  None of my CPA's have had any either, but I've heard of a number of people shooting silhouette with them ( perhaps because of the greater recoiling cartridges used ? ), that had the rifles sent back to have the action threads "tightened up" somehow.

It seems to me that problems can only happen if slack is in the threads and they get hammered repeatedly.  The slack could simply be from people not keeping the threads clean, barrel shoulder, or the action face.  It would probably take only a little bit of grit in there to cause trouble I believe. 

But I'm more interested in the geometry of the conical set screw.  Depending on the design and machining tolerances it might not act to keep the threads tight at all.  The Steven's design seems kind of odd to me.    

Chris.

I wouldn't think the screw, properly done, is doing anything besides insuring the barrel is correctly seated in the action threads so that the extractor, headspace and intended load on the threads. Question:...
Would it be such a scary thing to fire the rifle with the screw loose or missing? Not as a regular way to use the gun, but just once or twice. I am certain that it has been done inadvertently.

My 2 cents, while anything listed above could happen in theory, let's remember that the barrel retention screw has one purpose and that is to keep the barrel from unscrewing and there is not a lot of rotational force on the barrel when fired. Presuming the rifle is head spaced correctly (which is a function of the shoulder, the breech face, and the actual chamber depth or lack of) the barrel screw has nothing to do with it other than making sure the barrel doesn't back out and increase head space. We are not cranking the screw down, just tightening it. Now if the screw was offset (right of left) to the recess could tightening it result in screwing the barrel in or out in some small way, I suppose. I have done many of them, but I am not an engineer so I will defer to them if they think otherwise. Regards and interesting question, Chris.

If you want to test the offset screw theory just apply some dykem blue or even a sharpie will work to the tapered area in the barrel then screw the setscrew in place. Remove it and look to see where it was bearing on and that should tell you. I did this on a 44 once and it was indeed bearing on the rear most area of the recess which would "snug up" the barrel so to speak.



JMH

It's all pretty interesting and I could imagine a couple of ways for that screw to be set up.   

In the end I have to wonder how much it matters. It seems important to me, but if you look at this thread and scroll down to Jerry Hartwig's post it'll make you wonder.  He's a heck of a good shot. 

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Chris.

nineteen76 wrote Today at 11:53am:


Yeah I've seen that one.  It's nice to see some CPA videos on youtube!

Chris.