Interesting little post from a guy here in Australia on the PWS T3’s
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PWS T3s
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Post Tue Jun 04, 2019 10:05 pm
Many of you have either come across or have heard of the PWS T3s, Summits etc. You would have also heard mixed views regarding accuracy, ejection etc.
Many of you would also know i have screwed around with rimfires for BR50 and HunterClass etc and some would have seen the dual pin front locking WEC rifle i built over 20 years ago. Never in all my years of beating my head with a house brick have i come across a more frustrating rifle than the PWS T3. I have become extremely lazy since i bought the T1x and expect every rimfire on the market to shoot like it.
Let me help those of you that have a T3 now that i have dragged one of mine out of the reject safe.
Extraction issues. Simple fix any smith can help you with so i won't waste time.
Ejection. As above.
Accuracy issues. This is the number one real issue with these rifles. The carbon tension tube needs to be dumped and replaced with an alloy one. The reason is because of resonance. Something i have gone into great detail with stretcher tubes over many years where titanium and carbon fibre should never be used because of the inconsistent way they deal with resonance. It is for very good reason that state of the art carbon fibre BR stocks have both or either balsa or cedar to deal with the issue, or in the case of long range BR, use laminate stocks. I will add that while i strongly advocate the benefits of stretcher tubes (aluminium only) on a centerfire rifle, they absolutely categorically without any exception i have ever seen, do not work on a rimfire. As such the only thing they do on the T3 is look cool. Fashion over function at work again.
Headspace. This is confusing if you go to youtube etc in search of cures to misfires and poor grouping. If the bolt face touches the barrel tenon when locked up, this is the death knell for accuracy and POI shift as temp varies. You do not ever want the shock wave of a hammer or firing pin (both in a T3) strike travelling up and down the barrel, especially in something as pedestrian as a 22 lr. The best way to do this is to jam the bolt face into the tenon. Instant death.
Now this is where it gets hairy but is most important. The correct cartridge rim headspace for a 22 lr should be around 42 thou. The problem is that the bolt face to where the cartridge case recess is exceeds this in every T3 i have measured. To fix this the bolt face has to be machined to give around 30 thou rim recess depth. The remaining 12 thou is set by the barrel tenon depth, either by shimming or machining the shoulder.
When all this is done the toggle and bolt closed on an empty chamber should cycle tension free, preventing the known toggle link arms and pivot bearing failure. Ideally a chambered cartridge should just have the tiniest amount of feel. If you cannot cycle the action with the forefinger alone, you have an issue of the bolt face, extractor or ejector jamming into the tennon. One or all has to be alleviated. This should fix 90% of T3 accuracy issues, but not all.
The chamber. I have looked at a number of T3s with a bore scope. The one that shot well had a neat throat, not great, just OK for a factory jobbie. The others looked like the reamer was blunt or was used dry as the leade had flatted lands with an overhanging burr on the trailing side. This causes a land to cut a wide groove on the bullet that allows gas blow by leading to erratic velocity thus vertical spread. Also as gas vents unevenly at the bullets base at the muzzle, it causes bullet dispersion. Combine both issues and two, three or four inch groups at fifty yards are the norm and many owners of these rifles say as much. The only fix, generally, is another barrel because the unique method of barrel clamping, same as Ruger 10/22s, means you cannot set back the chamber.
Those that are rebarrelled still need the other stuff fixed or it's status quo. I do have a couple of very long half degree forcing cone type reamers to try and clean these throats up, but whatever reamer was used at the factory is very short of being a match chamber and is not that successful.
I have heard some rather bad comments about the triggers. I have no idea what the standard trigger is on the range of these rifles, but on my own i have found it to be adjustable from 4 ounce to a few pounds without creep or too much over travel. They are in my view the best from factory trigger i have played with”
Kind of makes sense when you look at it that way.