I'm interested in my first "bolt action pistol" and want to go a semi-custom route. How are these Howa mini actions that come from Brownells? I was considering just buying one of these in 300 Blackout and having the barrel chopped to 9", rethreaded, and suppressed for a good forest gun. To my knowledge they are sold as receivers so no legal issue as far as the NFA goes, unlike if I bought a fully built rifle with stock.
Why not pay the $0 tax to put a real stock on it?
>>65091473That doesn't solve the interstate travel restriction or the need for fingerprints/mugshot either
>>65091461Not a bad idea anon, I stumbled across another virgin CZ 550 magnum receiver the other day so I might resurrect my "Rhonda the Range Broom" project which I had previously shelved.>.300 Remington Ultra Mag>10 inch barrel>10-shot bolt action using AI mags>The biggest, most obnoxious muzzlebrake I can find>Bright neon pink laminated stock>Handloads optimized for the highest possible muzzle exit pressure
Why use that meme round?
>>65091541why use 300blk for a short barrel suppressed rifle?gee I wonderwhat would you use?
>>65091541>Why use that meme round?he's not talking about 45acp lol
>>65091555NTA, but it's a question worth asking.If you want to plink or hunt small game then .300 BLK makes sense because it's cheap and widely available. However, if you want to shoot quietly there are other rounds which are a lot more effective than .300 BLK. Mass is king with subsonics and .30 cal is pretty smol.
>>65091541OP here. I was also considering 458 Socom which is the largest bore you can get in the Howa Mini Actions but that would be "fully custom" build where I'd need to order a barrel and mess with headspacing and bolt face(?) and I am not entirely confident in that.
>>65091461>To my knowledge they are sold as receivers so no legal issue as far as the NFA goesThat's not how the NFA works OP, sorry. You can't bypass SBR by assembling it yourself, that just means you're the one making the NFA gun and it's a form 1 instead of a form 4. Application is effectively identical either way though. I'm not saying your plan isn't fine anyway, because NFA weapons no longer have any stamp tax and the approval time is often days or at most weeks, not months or even over a year like in the bad old days. But you're describing making an SBR.>>65091566>effectiveNot op, but you're clearing equating "effective" with a specific definition involving kinetic energy. OP describes a "forest gun", and going to the trouble of doing an NFA weapon with a cut down barrel on top of it already been a bolt. So I'm assuming weight is a significant consideration, as is cost since he's not talking something crazy gucci like carbon, and in turn from all of that pleasantness to use (no brutal recoil). Like, sure, absolutely, you can go all the way up to something like 510 whisper if you want. But 300bo is a pretty decent>"subsonic, with option for supersonic if you want, still suppresses way better than 5.56, uses 30cal ammo/cans so all standard and cheap too, widely available"round which is why it took off. Going to anything more exotic is significant step up for not a lot. 300bo subs might not be that useful for hunting over 100yd, but in real forest I'd say the vast vast supermajority of all the deer we've taken has been under that, and you could still just bring a super mag and some earplugs for the just-in-case.
>>65091579>That's not how the NFA worksI think you're missing the point. If you build on a virgin receiver, which was never legally a "rifle" to begin with, then you are simply building a normal pistol. It's not an NFA item at all. It's just a pistol.
>>65091579OP explicitly mentions "pistol", not making an unlawful SBR.
>>65091579>ut you're clearing equating "effective" with a specific definition involving kinetic energy.That's correct. I have no idea what OP wants to do with his gun. Perhaps he wants to hunt larger game or he wants to larp like some super-solider punching armor at 300 yards or someshit. We simply don't know.>OP describes a "forest gun"Bold assumption. You seem really prone to jumping to conclusions.
>>65091590I suspect 300 chimpout is perfectly adequate for his needs, being that it's what he SPECIFICALLY ASKED ABOUT. IDK why you caliber fags have to shoehorn your favorite dead caliber into every conversation.
>>65091579Imagine being completely wrong and replying to someone this confidently.
>>65091594Anon, I didn't reply to OP. My reply was to the question posed by >>65091555, "what would YOU use". The answer to that is "it depends on what the goal is". I said I'd pick .300 blk for cheap plinking and shooting smaller game, but that I'd pick something else if I had different requirements.Not only are you jumping to conclusions, you can't even keep track of the context of your replies. I think you should stop posting.
>>65091587OP never said it was building a pistol, not having any stock would suck for a 300bo bolt woods gun. If you're adding a stock to a pistol now it's an AOW which is more not less annoying. Cope braces still seem up in the air, I've been following it and as of one month ago it appears ATF is fucking STILL asserting they're SBRs and legal case is still ongoing despite a judge vacating the "rule" last year:>https://www.nraila.org/articles/20260320/doj-legal-filing-renews-concerns-about-atf-s-posture-on-braced-pistolsI mean, odds of being prosecuted are low but your call on that one. Personally with no cost and eforms making things so easy I no longer see any reason to gimp myself on stock choices, but other anons can disagree.
>>65091604>OP never said it was building a pistol,
>>65091607When he said "woods gun" I took that to mean he was going to do the pistol-brace-totally-not-a-SBR thing. If he meant an actual for-real pistol then sure never mind. But if he was doing it based on that ruling from last year just wanted him to know that the government are still being huge faggots about it.If he knows that and doesn't care, well based?
>>65091601>Anon, I didn't reply to OP.No way! Retard. You're only shitting up OP's thread with innane questions which have nothing to do with what he asked.>jumping to conclusionsyou mean like what you're doing?
>>65091590>Bold assumption. You seem really prone to jumping to conclusions.What? What OP wrote:>>65091461>and suppressed for a good forest gun"Good forest gun". How is that not the goal here? He's describing trying to build a really fun, reasonably quiet reliable and light forest gun. His plan sounds good to me, Howa makes perfectly decent stuff. Only thing I personally thought was worth considering was just stamping the thing so it could be stocked with whatever he wanted, but if he doesn't care then yeah he should just go for it. A suppressed mini 300bo bolt with a nice light receiver would be a great time.
>>65091610>>Anon, I didn't reply to OP.>No way! Retard. You're only shitting up OP's thread with innane questions which have nothing to do with what he asked.>>jumping to conclusions >you mean like what you're doing?>>65091624>>Anon, I didn't reply to OP.>No way! Retard. You're only shitting up OP's thread with innane questions which have nothing to do with what he asked.>>jumping to conclusions>you mean like what you're doing?why are you repeating yourself
after 2 seconds of research I found this dude who did an actual 11" SBR with 6mm ARC (definitely not a better choice than the 300 IMO)
>>65091630refresh the thread megamind
>>65091473
>>65091914Why not refuse to comply?
>>65091529I do remember someone on here talking about a similar project. Some anon crunched the numbers and came to the conclusion that the shock wave was enough to give you TBI after several shots.
>>65091914>haha i don't get a stamp im such a rebel against DA MAN!!!>why yes I buy it with credit card and fill out my 4473 like a good boyyeah
>>65091916that's not heckin wholesome chungus at all. as soon as an unregistered stock touches an unregistered pistol lower receiver an alarm sounds deep in ATF headquarters and they send a kill team to murder your furbabies.
>>65091461The mini actions are fucking amazing.
I actually know about this exact thing because I briefly worked CS for LSI which is Howa's US importer.>>65091461The Howa 1500 barreled actions are manufactured, exported, imported and sold as "rifles", so the workaround of doing a pistol build doesn't work. Howa is very specific about this. You have to SBR it if you are going to cut below 16".Also it's VERY IMPORTANT that you understand you are avoiding the warranty the instant you do this. The accuracy guarantee and any other service you might need goes out the window instantly.That's fine because it is your gun, but I recommend shooting it without modifications first to ensure that everything functions and that it delivers the promised accuracy. That way you can send it in for warranty inspection if anything is wrong. If everything is fine, you know that you are starting your project with a good rifle.Not that there are a lot of defective Howa 1500s, you should just assemble shoot and check just in case before doing any modifications.>>65091589You can't turn a rifle into a pistol. The barreled action is considered a rifle, despite not having a stock.This is a question we actually got a lot and yes we did have people send in rifles claiming "shit sux I can't get muh 1moa" only for a home bubba job to show up with an 8" barrel cut with a hand saw. Yeah no shit it doesn't group 1" you cut the barrel unevenly and didn't recrown shit. The company has since relocated to California where they can't have any NFA items on site, so if that type of shit shows up it has to immediately get sent back.
>>65092952To cut things off ahead of the pass some FAQs we'd get>Why doesn't Howa send receivers?Japan has very strict regulations on civilian arms exports in that they can only send sporting rifles and shotguns. No pistols, no receivers, never. Howa 1500 barrels are also factory headspaced with extremely tight tolerances, which Howa takes a lot of pride in and doesn't want people fucking with.For instance LSI would never remove or install barrels, if a barrel was bad they'd have to replace the entire firearm. There are very few gunsmiths who have experience doing barrel swaps on 1500s and it's widely known to be an absolute bitch.>Are the barreled actions that Brownells sells better/worse/different than the ones that complete 1500 rifles have?For the most part they are totally identical. Every Howa 1500 in the US arrives as a barreled action and is then assembled into a stock locally. Some that don't get sent to Brownells instead.The only difference was a few batches of re-imported 1500s meant for other markets originally, such as a small handful of stainless mini actions and a handful of 1/2x20 threaded ones that came from New Zealand. Those weren't suitable for builds and went straight to Brownells. They were not defective, just unusual.>What do I do if my rifle can't shoot good?They are guaranteed to group an inch or better at 100 yards with premium factory ammunition, usually Hornady Black or Precision Hunter. Yes that ammunition is expensive but you should check your accuracy using it anyway. No, not your hand loads, nobody cares how good you think your hand loads are.Also if it's a barreled action make sure you assembled and torqued everything correctly. Going off memory the action screws on a mini action should be at around 35 inch pounds, the plastic cracks around 45.>Why no hinged metal trigger guard on the mini?I don't know. Oregunsmithing offers it.>Can I adjust the trigger?Absolutely not. It's factory set with a tamper evident paste.
>>65092952Not OP but thanks for the detailed info anon.>The company has since relocated to California where they can't have any NFA items on site, so if that type of shit shows up it has to immediately get sent back.Kinda surprised by this though, I thought federal law overrode states on this one, that if you actually had a manufacturer class FFL and SOT2 you were able to do NFA stuff in your own secured areas, just not sell it to anyone in-state. Like, there's a lot of military defense contractors out of california, lockheed, l3harris, general atomics etc. Maybe there is some sort of exemption for military weapons though.
>>65093019You need additional permits from the CA DOJ to touch anything NFA in California and they are not very generous with them. Basically unless you are a movie armorer, sell to police or manufacture for the military exclusively it's not going to happen. As an importer/manufacturer of sporting arms specifically for the civilian market rather than military/police LSI would very likely not be able to get such a permit.Incidentally Howa 1500s cannot be sold directly to any military or police contract. They can buy it from a store or distribution, but not LSI itself. That's a binding agreement LSI has with Howa, which is required by the Japanese constitution. The civilian firearms that Howa exports can't be sold to any military or paramilitary force.It also doesn't help if some guy just hacksaws a shotgun/rifle at home and sends it in for warranty without it being a registered NFA item. That's not something you can really book in.In any case the move to California is an idea that's just as monumentally idiotic as you think it is. Without sharing too much information which could doxx myself I left before that happened.
>>65092952>>65093015these are the first actually good and knowledgeable posts I have read on this shithole for years. Thank you anon.
>>65093037>The civilian firearms that Howa exports can't be sold to any military or paramilitary force.Hey anon, think there is any chance howa might push a couple "sporting" type 20s stateside any time, or did you hear anything about that as a possibility ever? I remember seeing pictures of it with "Made in Japan" written on the side of the receiver in English and was curious why that would be done if there was no intent for export.
>>65093037>>65094303Actually found the exact pic I was thinking of, with one of our crayon enjoyers getting his digits all over it, but there's quite a few pics out there with the same markings.
>>65093037Makes sense.>In any case the move to California is an idea that's just as monumentally idiotic as you think it isYeah I do think that, though I suppose I can also sorta see the executive logic maybe? Like, for all we rightly shit on commiefornia the gun laws are still much, much MUCH better then Japan's are. So if they're restricted as fuck anyway by their own government and their own autistic commitment to tight manufacturing (which I do appreciate) ANYWAY then maybe they figured that it's better to be close to the most ginormous Pacific<>US area shipping gateway. Dunno, oh well though. They're nice actions anyway, though I like Tikka's a lot as well.>>65094309nta but the select fire there is katakana and 3 position, dunno moon gun markingsk and what "A"/"Ta"/"Re" means but sounds like "auto"/"tri"/"safe". Japan mixes and matches with english sometimes on kit that involves international stuff so "made in japan" doesn't necessarily mean that picture isn't from a marine over at okinawa base testing something intended for the jsdf.
>>65092952>The Howa 1500 barreled actions are manufactured, exported, imported and sold as "rifles"I am hearing something different after a quick search... are you sure anon? I do want you to be wrong on this, of course. I will try getting in touch with Brownells to confirm
>>65094674Seconding this. I have always heard that stripped receivers or barrelled receivers (without furniture) are simply a "firearm" for legal purposes. It doesn't become a rifle unless the FFL doing the transfer checks "rifle" instead of "other" or "pistol".
>>65094674>>65094717Yeah ultimately this is something that would be worth calling and clarifying someone dealing in it directly. That said:>I have always heard that stripped receivers or barrelled receivers (without furniture) are simply a "firearm" for legal purposesYes but I'm not sure how it works if it's ever checked as anything else. On the transfer iirc Box 16 is "other firearm" and Box 27 is just "firearm" and if you went with something direct from a domestic manufacturer that was classified that way from the start. But import stuff might make things weird? Like, if Howa specifically classifies a given serial # in the ATF system as a "rifle" on import, I dunno if anyone else can then just reclassify that with a box. 18 USC 921(7) is the rifle definition, it's just:>The term “rifle” means a weapon designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder and designed or redesigned and made or remade to use the energy of an explosive to fire only a single projectile through a rifled bore for each single pull of the trigger.But even if Howa arguably could classify differently if they don't then they don't so maybe that makes it harder.At any rate the law is too fucking convoluted so yeah no harm in just asking salespeople directly about it.
>>65094871how long ago was your experience and what import form was used?
>>65093015>Absolutely not. It's factory set with a tamper evident paste.Wat. 1500 triggers have screws for adjustment and IIRC both Timney and Jard both make drop-in triggers for the 1500.
>>65094871>I dunno if anyone else can then just reclassify that with a boxI have heard of some type 7 FFLs "remanufacturing" rifles into "other" type firearms, however I'm not sure what that process entails. It might necessitate legal destruction of the receiver and then refabrication for it to be legit.I do know that it has been done more than a few times for people to then register those "others" as NFA AOWs so they can be possessed in NJ, which despite being a ban state still allows that classification for some weird reason.
>>65095067You can physically adjust them, but scraping the paste off the bolt to do it voids the warranty. Howa specifically does not want people doing it.If you replace it with an aftermarket trigger and reinstall the factory one before sending it in for warranty service they wouldn't have any way of knowing unless you fuck it up and cover everything with idiot scratched or something obvious like that. The factory trigger is a module that's easy to remove or install.This is only an issue for warranty purposes and safety if you go full retard and fuck up the trigger trying to lighten it to nothing.>>65094674To my recollection they are booked in/out as rifles so if a dealer subsequently books it as a receiver they should not be doing that. If you decide to pistol build it, that somehow gets questioned and turns into a legal issue your defense of "it was a receiver that I cut the barrel down on and built as a pistol instead of a rifle" will probably not hold up under scrutiny. That's assuming you pistol build it, get caught with it and whoever takes it into custody questions it enough to bother prosecuting. If you want to fully CYA you should SBR register it especially now that it's free, but if you want to ride dirty with either a fully unregistered SBR build or a "pistol" build you are free to do whatever you want as long as you are aware of the risk you take doing so. The warranty is moot because it would be voided once the barrel is cut.
>>65091461They are solid, accurate actions. They've gone up in price recently but still worth it. I think the KRG bravo stock is the best bang for buck.
>>65091461Ignoring the retards, and legality aside, the Howa 1500 barreled actions have been excellent in my experience with a 22" 6.5CM, and with my chassis, I shoot dimes at 100m. HOWEVER, for your purposes, I'd highly recommend building a Solo 300 upper and putting it on a pistol braced AR lower. They're lighter, mags work way better, its way more compact, whole thing comes out cheaper, and its just a bolt action .300 blackout AR which anybody can put together.I'm biased, but I'm also working on a special project that would introduce an integrally suppressed barrel to the market specifically for the Solo 300, if that floats your boat.
>>65091529I like you… your my kind of people.
>>65092952How important is the barrel "break in" procedure y'all recommend? I built a 6.5 creed and followed the instructions to a T cause I'm anal like that, but I did wonder how important that whole hoopla was. Love the rifle btw.
>>65095924It was in the manual so we recommended it, but I think it's mostly voodoo. Didn't bother on mine and it shot fine. Could it have printed slightly tighter groups if I did? We'll never know.
>>65095891I agree, as someone who went down the rabbit hole of chasing a customized howa mini action and then bought a solo 300 because I had a spare lower lying around. Other than the primary extraction being comparatively stiff the solo is much nicer to stomp around the woods with.
>>65095924>How important is the barrel "break in" procedure y'all recommend?NTA but barrel break-in is both real and bullshit. The real part is that when you fire bullets down a virgin barrel you're lapping the bore (including the throat) and filling in low spots with jacket material and this can produce some effect on accuracy by evening out microscopic defects. Whenever you have a new barrel, you want to clean it first to make sure that the only fouling produced is going to be copper and not flash-fried packing grease or whatever. There are also some other very niche and very autistic concerns like work hardening changing the point of impact, but we're talking about fractions of an inch at hundreds of yards.The bullshit part is that all other things being equal the improvement in accuracy in a barrel that isn't trash to begin with is so small that you basically need laboratory conditions to measure it and for top-shelf barrels the manufacturing process is so careful that there IS no measurable change and any deviation observed is going to be within the margin of error.I'm convinced that the origin of this is just generational fuddlore; if it's 1960 and you're having a surplus 03A3 re-barreled and re-stocked, there's a non-zero chance that your barrel's performance will measurably improve after the first 20 rounds or so. Maybe it was the last barrel before they replaced the cutter or maybe there was a flaw in the metallurgy or something but the point is that there's a difference that gets noticed and "my rifle was all over the place for the first few boxes and I almost sent it back but then it settled down so I'd better do that from now on" enters the folk wisdom of the gun community. These days? Not really the case. If you buy cheapshit you might well get cheapshit results but given that a fucking $500 Savage will shoot sub-MOA out of the box with the right ammo you have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel.
>>65096248>>65095924>>65095928Its fuddlore squared. Howa barrels are hammer forged, and its pretty standard to lead lap a broached barrel. And with how the bullet is swaged within a barrel any "low spots" you'll have in a barrel don't affect accuracy much. What matters is the consistency of your rifling, and how uniform the grooves are, as they engrave the stabilizing wings into your bullet that determins your final accuracy. Which no amount of cleaning, shooting, then cleaning again can fix.>>65095718KRG stocks on the low end suck ass to shoot, and MDT are within the same price point while being better built. The MDT XRS feels great and shoots great, while my KRG feels cheap and uncomfortably bulky.>>65096072Ive been curious of how a butchered LMT bolt or the Surefire reliabolt that had the modified cam path, would extract. But honestly good luck getting your hands on one just to chop it up. I might try 3D printing something and seeing how that works, maybe even float some quotes because you could make the bolt out of aluminum if you really wanted since its no longer bearing pressure.
>>65096248Fwiw anon in PRS at least it can be a real thing, but whether it's happening or not is 100% objective. If you care about very long range accuracy then you almost certainly will want a chrono (ideally a radar these days, but even old style rabbit ears is better than nothing) which gives a lot of valuable information on your gun and loads. The pattern for a barrel with break-in is simply that you'll see rounds gradually speed up over the first 50-200 rounds, then the velocity will level out and be stable, which is what you want for accurate shooting. The absolute velocity doesn't really matter but variance does. Then eventually you'll see the velocity start to change again dropping, this will be the point when the throat is eroding enough and you're reaching the point of the barrel burning out. It's useful to actually be able to "see" that happening before it becomes really noticeable in shots if you're planing to go to a competition or something.>I'm convinced that the origin of this is just generational fuddloreYeah, but that's what happens without tools yet. People can get a feel for it happening but can't measure it so they invent rules of thumb, but now we can be objective so it's obsolete (plus quality has gone way up). If everything is stable enough for your purposes then that's it, you don't have to do anything. If it does that oob great, if it needs a few boxes fine, point is not to waste ammo on voodoo for sure.
>>6509149816.25 inch is long enough to be stampless for a rifle.
>>65096248
>>65091498>That doesn't solve the interstate travel restriction or the need for fingerprints/mugshot either>>65096346>16.25 inch is long enough to be stampless for a rifle.If OP is planning on suppressing all the time anyway then another option (beyond of course just doing whatever) is to pin+weld or something similar the can to the barrel. Any muzzle device permanently attached to the barrel counts as part of the barrel length and OAL for NFA purposes, so 10" of barrel + 6" of suppressor = 16" barrel. Assuming that also brings OAL >26" now it's a one-stamp (suppressor) gun.Downside of course is you're stuck with that suppressor, and when the barrel does burn out have to replace the whole deal. But 300bo lasts absolute fucking ages, like, easily 20k rounds. In a bolt woods gun that might well be a lifetime. So it's a more viable approach.At shotshow this year or last year or two years ago or something, some company presented an interesting hack, basically a suppressor handguard that acted as a muzzle device with an internal threaded attachment point too, so you could p&w that, now you have a "over 16 inch barrel" but you can still swap around the can. Simple, clever hack, though dunno if it made it to market or not and don't remember the name.
>>65091461I kind of want one so I can have a Japanese rifle.
>>65096373That and Miroku, they make really nice (but expensive) Winchester rifles and also some O/U shotguns.
>>65096365>At shotshow this year or last year or two years ago or something, some company presented an interesting hack, basically a suppressor handguard that acted as a muzzle device with an internal threaded attachment point too, so you could p&w that, now you have a "over 16 inch barrel" but you can still swap around the can. Simple, clever hack, though dunno if it made it to market or not and don't remember the name.that was over a decade ago and ruled illegalunless somebody is trying to do it again
>>65096422I think he is referencing this sort of thing.
>>65096422I wasn't talking about a suppressor itself obviously you goof, I said a suppressor handguard.>>65096495Yeah that looks sorta like it (though not sure if it was that exactly or not), thanks anon. The idea seemed like a fairly straightforward but effective one, lots of us tend to either put a wrap of some kind around our cans or if possible have them inside the handguard anyway just because of the heat. And a simple cover can be cheap and unregulated. So making that the integral part and the suppressor itself "merely a replaceable core" to avoid sbr status could make sense.I guess in some ways that's ironically sorta similar to what a lot of suppressors themselves have ended up doing, where they have the serial number on a steel or whatever durable shell in a hard to damage spot, and then the core (be it 3d printed or traditional baffle stack) and cover are all replaceable and just "parts". That means as long as the outer part is fine the whole thing is easy to fix and theoretically even upgrade without any new stamp. I'm almost surprised short barrels with 6-8" of shroud haven't been a thing for awhile, particularly back when stamps were both $200 and a real pain in the dick.
>>65091461tikka, howa, and bergara are all very good bolts and generally considered default recs for someone getting into it on a budget. opinions vary on exactly best value personally imo tikka is best out of box option but you wont be unhappy with any of em
