Since Larry (trotterlg) seems to be the most knowledgeable on this topic, I have a question for him, and any others that may know the answer.
This may have been asked before, but here goes. Owning, as I do, several Savage rifles, I find one of their beauties, is that barrels/calibers are easily interchanged, and in just about 20-30 minutes. I did some measuring and it seems the outside of a Handi barrel is about 1.165" and the OD of the threads of a Savage (small shank size) is about 1.050. This doesn't leave much metal, but I am wondering how much is enough to use a barrel stub and screw a Savage barrel into the stub, set the headspace and "pin" it into place, since there isn't enough thread length to re-use the barrel nut.
Is that enough metal around the barrel to hold it safely?
If that COULD work, one could swap calibers as easily as swapping on a Savage by removing the "pins" and inserting barrel number two, as long as case head size were similar enough to re-use the extractor.
Or is this way off course?