Operator Error

Being monkey curious, there was something I wanted to see on my Savage's bolt head last night.

I took out the bolt looked at how the extractor worked, satisfying my curiosity, then put the bolt back in.

While putting the bolt back in I decided to play with the safety which will trip from lock-bolt to just safe while reinserting the bolt.  It did!

I put it back on fire to function check...

Whereupon the rifle would not dry fire.

The trigger was locked solid.  Pushing the safety to the bolt-locked position didn't lock the bolt.

You cannot access the screws that let you get at the trigger unless you can push the bolt release, and you need a live trigger for that.

I was stumped!  I'd somehow broken my rifle putting the bolt back in.

Then I noticed...

FOWARD is FIRE.

I was trying to dry fire with the safety in the bolt-locked position.

Operating the safety correctly shows that there's nothing wrong with the rifle at all.

DUR!