In Hamilton Bowen's site, the latest news is that the new owner of LaBounty is in the process of setting up to re-bore with a little help from Hamilton Bowen. Don't know how long it is going to take before the guy starts to re-bore rifle and handgun barrels. So all those who were thinking of reboring to a bigger caliber instead of rebarreling, there's hope.

You have to make sure the fellow re-boring your rifle is very good at what he does. I've won one and lost one. It's almost better to re-barrel most of the time.
Take care,
Dave

470, I agree with you. I plan on waiting on the guy doing at least a 100 barrels or so before I'd send anything to him. I'm sure that he'd do very well with Hamilton Bowen giving him the inital impetus since HM is one of the PREMIERE Gunsmiths in America. He does beautiful conversions on revolvers and Ruger No.1's. He's been known for regular boltaction rifle work when he has time.

I believe Jim worked side by side with Cliff LaBounty for quite a while. If Jim says he's ready I would not hesitate to place a job with him.

I don't know about Jim working side by side with Cliff everytime I was there Cliff was the only person in the shop. The one thing I have been wondering is did Jim move the shop off the mountain side . Nothing like driving up an old logging road..

475Guy: are you saying that Clif LaBounty is no longer the owner of the company..?? that'd be a pity. he is a first class gunsmith.

Cliff sold the reboring business to Jim. Unless there was a communication glitch, Jim was there learning the craft some of last year.

Cliff's profession prior to this business was basically a metal shop teacher. I wish like heck I could have been one of his students.

LaBounty sold his business and retired for about a couple of years now.

quote:

Originally posted by 475Guy:
I plan on waiting on the guy doing at least a 100 barrels or so before I'd send anything to him.

You probably WILL wait until he's done at least that many before he gets to yours, whether you planned it that way or not. (Based on my experiences waiting for rebore jobs to get done!!)

E D

I guess he'll get it right after that. I'd want him to get a bit of practice anyways.

When I last spoke to him he was busy with a backlog of reboring for Hamilton Bowen if I'm not mistaken. He said he'd be ready for mine in about a month and promised a much faster turn around time than anyone else. That was a bit over a month ago.

I eventually disovered a flaw in the original bbl that made me decide to just replace it. I had no qualms about using him though.