iv been doing some calling around now for a few weeks and talking with people at rice barrels,tvm muzzel loaders october country ect and noticed alot of the real big stuff 10 bore 8 bore 4 bore the barrels are coming from http://www.thegunworks.com/ made by joe williams im gonna be having a few guns made over the next few months a 58 caliber early virgina rifle from tvm and possibly a 8-4 bore rifle by joe williams if i can get some more info on his rifles october country uses his barrels on there 60-72 english sporting guns and on there 8-4 bores but charge considerably more for guns made with barrels made by the oregon barrel company wich i assume is because who ever october country has making there guns charges more for labour ect plus the fact there buying the barrels not making them in house.

any ways any info is helpful thx in advance

Joe and Suzi Williams own The Gun Works, they are great people to do business with. I've been using his barrels on most of my big bore rifles for over 10 years, they are very good quality. Joe uses a sine bar rifler so he can cut just about any twist rate to just about any depth of rifling you could want in the caliber he lists on his website. The only down side to Joe's equipment is the length, the longest he can rifle on his machines is 34 inches. That's not really a problem for most big bores though since you usually don't want a really long barrel on them anyways.

I can't remember exactly when but Joe hired Dave maybe two years(ish) ago to help make the barrels and I've yet to see any drop in quality.

Just for information's sake, I've never ordered a finished contoured barrel from Joe, I always order unfinished blanks, I do all of my own profiling in my shop so I can't speak to the outside finish quality but I've never heard anything bad about it so I am assuming it is as good on the outside as the inside.

Hope that helps,

Colin

thanks for the info ill have joe and his wife build me the 4 bore and tenn valley muzzelloading build me the long rifles now all i have to do is deside if i want the 4 bore to be percussion or flint all my muzzeloaders right now are flinters

Read this awhile back, been waiting on someone else to post more info and haven't yet.

Some yrs ago I had a .72 w 38:1, 38"s made for me by Ed Rayl in WV. He's not online though, here's his
ph# 304/364-8269.
The bore is beautiful, the outside was pretty rough though. My local smith said that would take way too much filing to be worth doing and suggested I have some kind of coating put on instead. Not being able to find anyone that would rough shape the stock, I've been sitting on it for at least 15yrs now. Sure would like to get it shaped so I could finish it up.

I don't know the length he can turn, I had this and a 12" just like it made and kind of think he made them all one piece then cut it off, don't know for sure. Seems I paid $330 shipped for both and had them both relief bored too, seems like that was another $25 each.
George

I really like Ed Rayl's barrels they are very good quality BUT...The last barrels(3 of them) I ordered from him, I had to cancel the order, he couldn't deliver after 3 years wait. And as I understand it from talking to a few others builders lately his backlog is worse now.

That's what happens when a person does such great work and the word gets out. Sounds like you have the same problem, right?
As I recall the only problem I had with the one's I got from Rayl was he listened to one of my butt in friends that called n changed my order around. He tried the same with a varmint rifle my local 'smith was building. This guy told Jack to btf out George know's what he wants.

I wanted this .72 to shoot slugs not balls. Jack tried to get Ed to make the twist longer for balls. Ed called me to find out just what was going on etc. We compromised on a 38" twist so I can shoot both. Still need to get this stock made so I can finish it up.
Am looking at back surgery fairly soon. IF I had it roughed out I could sit n whittle on it while healing up.
George

Yes I'm 3 years backlogged with custom builds.

Maybe I didn't say it correctly, I wasn't saying anything bad about Ed, I was simply conveying that delivery time is 3+ years. So unless you need the length that Ed can provide that Joe can't you would be better off ordering from Joe because his quality is equal and his delivery time is much shorter. Months instead of years.

I like Ed and the quality of his barrels. I have used his barrels many times in the past and if I have a need for a long barrel I would order from him again. The reason I canceled my orders with him was because after waiting 3 years when I called him to get an estimated delivery date he couldn't even give me a guess when he would be cutting the size I had ordered. I was out of time and needed those barrels for my customers so I had to find another barrel maker to fill the order so I could keep my shop on schedule.

I understand that like most barrel makers he machines them in batches to save swapping tooling in/out of his machines. So .45, .50, .54, .58 are going to get more attention than the smaller bores and the bigger bores and the special twists/depths. I don't hold it against Ed that he holds his production of big bores until he has enough to make it worth while to make a run of any given bore. I just couldn't wait any longer or it might have cost me business.

I waited about 18 months to get my Ten Bore barrel from Ed. Colin suggested calling the Oregon Barrel Company. Six weeks or so later, they shipped it.

I had them build a .54, 1-66 twist barrel for a Renegade stock. It is an extremely accurate barrel. Inside finishing was top notch. Of the 7 sidelocks I have, including 4 Green Mountain barrels, it is the most accurate. Sent them the stock, it all came back in about 4 weeks.

Downside, the outside finish was pretty rough. Not horrible, but not as well finished as a production barrel. It took about 3 days to finish it by hand with a sanding block. The end of the barrel was not "finished", just cut off square. No stamping of caliber. Lastly, I wish I had known that there was no clean out port on the side of drum.

I am sure most of those could have been resolved beforehand, had I known about it prior. All in all, I was happy with the barrel, the folks there were extremely easy to deal with and friendly.

Like someone else said, you can choose the twist and depth of rifling.