Joe, Your forensic analysis of the high wall failure has got me glued to these pages. Your comment "...Most good gunsmiths have been trained to not cut their barrel threads to an oversize force fit..." particularly caught my eye as I think there must be a broad range of opinion on the fit of the barrel/receiver threads. I worked at a shop years ago (almost 40 now) that it was deemed desirable to cut the threads to what was termed at the time, "Cincinnati fit", which was basically a course finished thread that resulted in significant resistance when screwing the barrel up to the receiver. Other smiths I had contact with at the time cut the threads so that barrel could be hand threaded, or the weight of the action wrench would turn the barrel without any additional force. These were mostly bolt guns. After reading your comment above, I believe the use of tight fitting threads was more of a time saving approach on barrel/caliber configurations that it was not considered critical. Would this issue be more critical on single shot actions than the bolt actions? Thank for the great insight on this subject. Terry
