Thread: Win. Model 77 barrel loose

Just got a model 77. love the gun, but the barrel is loose. as in I can grab the receiver with the right hand and the barrel with the left and move the barrel, with out any effort at all, about 1/8"-3/16" at the muzzle. Any thoughts on what one could do with this? Going to see a smith this afternoon, but I am hoping for some sort of quick/semi-easy fix.

never mind got it fixed.

What was it?

took it too my local smith and he told me what I thought was the right thing to do. Basically the barrel just slides into the receiver and is held in place with a pin. Its kind of like how an AK barrel is held in, except to remove the bolt and other assorted bits you have to take out the barrel. So I took a hammer and peened the end of the barrel just a tiny bit, then took a cold chisel and displaced a bit of metal at 90° increments parallel to the bore axis around the outside of the part of the barrel that slides into the receiver. It came out a little tight, but I would rather have it a bit tight than too loose. Its kind of a cheap fix, but it works. I had someone on RFC suggest using a loctite product of some sort, but I am not fond of that for this type of thing. I just see it failing over time and I kind of only wanted to do this once.