Thinking about threading the muzzle on your older rifle to make it suppressor- or brake-compatible? Want to ditch the iron sights and clean up the barrel for a modern performance look? We’ll show you how…
by Rob Reaser
The suppressor boom is on and you’re ready to go all-in on a sound-safe rifle upgrade. But that rifle you want to upgrade may not be threaded to accept a suppressor or any other muzzle device.
That’s the situation a lot of shooters and hunters find themselves in today. With the silly NFA tax stamp a thing of the past (at least for the moment), many folks are looking at some of their old favorites and thinking, “Yeah, I would love to be able to run a suppressor on that!”
Such was the case with my circa 1990s Remington 700 in 270 Winchester. Best deer rifle I ever owned; however, it has been collecting dust for many years because I always seem to have some other rifle to test during our rifle season.
When Dead Air Silencers announced their new Nomad Ti OTB suppressor earlier this year, I reckoned that it would be the ideal suppressor to bring my old 700 out of mothballs. The reason? Since the gun has a relatively short 22-inch sporter contour barrel, and since the OTB suppressor was designed to sit tight on the muzzle — actually sit back over the barrel to reduce overall length — I thought this would be the perfect foundation for making a “poor man’s” lightweight mountain rifle.
We’ll be covering that build project in September, so stay tuned to see how it went.
In the meantime, I got in touch with Silencer Central to arrange to have my 700 barrel threaded to accept a suppressor. This is a great service the company offers at an astonishing low price, and barring you having a personal gunsmith to do the machining work for you, it is an easy solution for anyone looking to bring their old, non-threaded rifle into the 21st century.
Since the Nomad Ti OTB suppressor is an over-the-barrel design, I would need to remove the front sight to prevent interference, along with the rear sight because…well…no need to keep it hanging on. The issue with removing open sights is that you must fill in those four holes in the barrel once the sights are removed. Yes, there are plugs for this, but I’ve never found those plugs to be an easy install in the front sight holes. The 1/8-inch 6-48 plug screws always sit proud.
What to do?
Check out this video and you’ll find the answer…
