I picked up a 700 in .30-06 for a steal of a deal that someone had built as a match rifle some time ago. It has a 26" Douglas barrel on it, was blueprinted, had specialty high end sight bases on it (3 bases–one at the rear, one at the front, and one in between), stripper clip guide cut in the receiver, etc. so a lot of work went into it. Flaig’s was the shop that built it. I took it to my gunsmith to get looked over and have the muzzle threaded to run my suppressor on it. Everything looked good except the chamber is tighter than usual he said and the headspacing was so tight it wouldn’t fully close on a Go gauge. I’ve long held with the conventional wisdom that if it won’t close on the Go then you don’t shoot it. Yet clearly it had been fired a bit as is (with plenty of life in the barrel left) and I don’t know how it would have worked then but somehow gotten tighter–I’ve heard plenty of them getting looser but not the other way around. With this level of work on it I wouldn’t expect the builder to have messed up on the headspacing by accident. I took it home anyway and put a resized shell in it and it fit quite easily and extracted without any indication of a problem.
What do you guys think of this? Should I take it back and have him adjust the headspace by a pull through reamer? Or keep it as is, work with starter loads and be wary of pressure? I’m looking to run 195 and 208 grain Hornadys out of it for 600+ yard work. I’ve had this gun since January or February and am sick of waiting around not shooting it, but don’t want it blowing up in my face either.