GUNSMITHING SERVICES: Tombstone Lug Retrofit on Tikka Actions (inlcudes lug)
The addition of a tombstone type recoil lug to a Tikka action is born from the experience and painful lessons learned on an international level. I once watched a close friend have his dreams and hard work shattered at the World Fullbore Championships due to a rifle that failed to manage recoil effectively.
It was later discovered that the action was moving in the stock under recoil.
The gun would shoot exceptionally for a few rounds and then erode into a rifle that would barely stay inside the 8 ring. It wasn't a Tikka, but the two designs share commonality with regards to recoil transmission and management.
It is for these reasons that we offer this service for Tikka actions being fitted to a conventional composite rifle stock. The tombstone style recoil lug has been around for a century because it works. The factory Tikka recoil lug is little more than a steel wedge that is press fit into the rifle stock. While this certainly works, we feel this is a better option when starting from scratch on a full build.
This service involves mounting the receiver to a mandrel type fixture and facing it until the chamfer feature is removed; leaving a broad, flat surface for the recoil lug to mate to. When the barrel is installed, the lug is timed to match the contour of the action, and the assembly is complete.
When fitted to a stock, the lug well is machined in the commonly seen format for actions like the M700.
The lugs are machined from chromoly, contoured with edge breaks, and surface ground to .250" for perfect parallelism and surface finish.
Understand this is a bell than cannot be unrung. Your action will no longer fit ANY rifle stock inletted for a factory Tikka action. It will have to be modified. Ensure you understand what this means before having this work performed.
Pricing on this service includes the cost of the recoil lug. The LRI Tikka recoil lug is available separately and can be found here:
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