After Thanksgiving dinner, I proceeded to spend the rest of Thanksgiving weekend at the shop working on the much-anticipated bolt head for the 8.6 BLK Mosin! Unfortunately, it did not go as well as planned. After meticulously programming the part and spending close to $2000 on materials and tooling, I discover that the lathe I was using began presenting issues resulting in an abhorrent surface finish on my brass prototype. As such, I was sadly unable to run the steel ones as I had originally planned. I am calling a tech out to look at the machine this week, and hopefully I will have the machine back in working order soon!
The good news is, I was able to at least proof my program and verify my geometry was mostly correct. Honestly, the loose clearances on the Mosin means I probably could have run the steel parts looking like trash, and they would still function 100%. However, I could not conscientiously sell a product that was not of the utmost quality. I would rather release an awesome product later than a crappy product now.
The other thing that having the brass prototype bolt will allow me to do is finish developing the interrupter/ejector that will be needed for positive ejection of these rimless cartridges, since they are much smaller in diameter than the original 7.62x54mmR round. So the weekend was not all for nothing!