I think I have excess headspace

[ArtPahl]

I can only tell you what I have done in an instance like yours. I have a Rock Island with .025" excess headspace (it appears a previous owner ran a chamber reamer in too far). I expand the neck of the cartridge case to .32 or.33 caliber and then incrementally neck them back down until the bolt will close with some resistance. If you wish to use factory cartridges, you can dis-assemble them, remove the decapping pins from your dies, do the above re-sizing, and put them back together. Of course, if you don't reload---.

Your field gauge idea is a good one. If your rifle passes the field gauge test it would be safe to fire but the cartridge cases would be compromised and may not be suitable for reloading.

---------- Post added at 09:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:29 AM ----------

I forgot to mention: If your bolt closes on the No Go gauge with any resistance, the headspace is acceptable. But you probably already know that.

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[browningautorifle]

Your field gauge idea is a good one.

We had a long thread here before about this sort of thing and it was decided that the field gauge was the deciding factor. If the field gauge was OK it was more important than the other two.