My ‘smith is out of town until Wednesday so I thought I’d throw this out here if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity because I’ll obsess about it until then anyway.

I’ve got a CZ-550 Varmint in 22-250 that I’m looking to rebarrel in 6XC. My issue is the barrel diameter. The factory barrel has a 1.1” shank for 2” at the action. The OD of the action itself is roughly 1.30”. The barrel that I’m looking at (selection is limited because I’m looking at a 1:7.5” twist) is 1.25” for 5” then it it’s a straight taper to .9 @ 31”. Herein lies the problem. My smith said he’ll turn down the shank on a barrel but does not re-contour. Considering we’re talking about roughly 5” of barrel shank that is going to have to be reduced ~.15 I’m thinking that this may be something he doesn’t want to do and his secretary even said that it might be pushing it when I talked to hear earlier. For me too, there’s the question of how much can we take off in that area without having to have it stress relieved. Also, if it’s a relatively mild taper, as you start turning down the shank, the “B” dimension gets longer. So what originally was a 5” shank, now potentially becomes a 6” or 7” shank. I’m being dramatic there, but for the purposes of my query I want to be, to make sure that it’s covered.

Should I get the barrel, then have it sent out to a machine shop to have the shank turned down on it, THEN give it to the ‘smith? Having a machine shop turn it down should be a relatively simple operation and not cost me a whole lot as I understand it. Would it then need to be stress relieved?

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Order the barrel from the manufacturer in the dimension you want. If it isn't already a standard contour that they offer, send them a drawing showing what the finished dimensions should look like.

There is that. I'm trying to avoid a custom bbl order if I can, and snag something off the shelf in a stock contour just so I don't have to wait 3-4 months to have a barrel custom made.

Its best not to involve machine shops or welders who are not already gunsmiths or gunmakers.

Find another 'smith. One who will adjust the contour to what you want. How long will the finished barrel be?

I hear you pennfly, and those were my thoughts as well but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Westpac, the barrel that I found in stock, a Krieger is 31". I'll probably have them finish it at 29". The contour/profile of the barrel is fine. Only issue is the shank. Need to go from a 1.25 down to 1.10" for the Mauser action.

quote:

Originally posted by Kingfisher:
Westpac, the barrel that I found in stock, a Krieger is 31". I'll probably have them finish it at 29". The contour/profile of the barrel is fine. Only issue is the shank. Need to go from a 1.25 down to 1.10" for the Mauser action.

Barrel manufacturers always suggest cutting material from both ends. Ask them to take the majority of the material from the breech end. That, plus the amount you will lose for the thread tenon, you may end up with a more pleasing looking length cylinder after the barrel is turned to 1.10.

Re contouring is not a real big deal, but can be time consuming. Wouldn't worry about a Kreiger barrel for "stress releiving".

Have you approached Kreiger about re-contouring their own barrel? They can do it for WAY less money than the average gunsmith.

I haven't Duane. I'm going to call the gunsmith tomorrow once he's back in town and talk to him about it. I had already been considering what Westpac was talking about, i.e. cutting the barrel down from the breach end to shorten things up. I figure 29" should do for my purposes so now we're down to a 3" straight section, minus the tenon length, say 3/4", so now we're down to 2 1/2". 2 1/2" is probably a number he my smith can live with.

As for the stress relieving, I know that all good bbls have been stress relieved but I just wasn't sure how much re-profiling you could do before you had to do it again.

Why are you stuck on the 7.5 twist? An 8" twist will handle the 115's just fine in a 6XC and probably open up a lot more supplier choices, but that Kreiger is at the top of the heap.

As to re-profiling and stress relieving, as long as you don't induce additional stress into the barrel during the process, a Kreiger shouldn't need to be relieved again. I've got a couple Kreiger 13" twist .308 Palma barrels that I am going to re-profile and fit to mini-mauser actions. A lot of metal will be removed. I spoke to a Kreiger employee about it at a match last year and he said to not worry about it.

Gzig5, thanks for the heads up on the turning... good info.

As for the 1:7.5, I've "read" <cough> of possible issues with the 1:8’s and was going to rock the 7.5 just to be sure. I’m having Dave Kiff grind the reamer specifically for the 115 DTAC and I didn’t want to take any chances. I figured I’d have more than enough velocity to stabilize without any issues, but the 7.5 makes it certain. That’s all. Otherwise, I would’ve already ordered an off the shelf bbl in 1:8 from Shilen or similar and just been done with it.

Ok, I admit that maybe I am missing something here, but it seems that all we are talking about here is cutting the shank (straight cylinder section) to match the existing barrel's shank length, then turn down the remaining shank to 1.1"? That will take what? 5 minutes?

Why would the entire barrel need to be re-contoured? If the customer is wanting to match the existing barrel exactly, then buying a barrel of the wrong contour and asking a gunsmith to match the existing contour seems like a really bad way to go about the project. Everyone would be miles ahead to just buy the correct barrel contour in the first place.

CAS you're not missing anything. I'm sure I'm mindfudging it but not being a gunsmith myself I don't know how much complexity is involved with all of the different tasks.

I don't need to match the shank length, that's not an issue at all. The issue is the shank diameter. That's all. I just wasn't sure how big of a deal it was for a gunsmith to turn a 5" shank section down from 1.25 to 1.1, and technically it wont even be 5", it should be less. The overall contour of the barrel is fine. Only issue is the shank diameter.

I agree with what you're saying about buying the right bbl, and on previous builds I've always done just that. Again, the issue stems from the fact that I'm trying to get an off the shelf barrel if possible rather than have to custom order a 1.10" blank from Krieger or whoever, pay a surcharge and then have to wait 2 months or whatever the current backlog happens to be with that mfg.

I strongly suspect that there is nothing more than a communication gap between you and your smith.

lol, well I did say he was out of town. I hope to resolve that today.

CAS is right, a simple 5 minute lathe job if you are only turning down the shank diameter.

What I think I got out of this thread is that I should have a secretary. Hmmm, where to find one? Malm, where did you find yours? Duane, how 'bout you?

BTW, thanks for humoring me on the quetions. The 'smith is back in town and obviously he confirmed the same. Unfortunately now the Krieger bbl I was looking at over at Bruno Shooters Supply is now out of stock. Krieger is quoting a 28 week lead time on their website. lol Pass. I'm going to put in a call to Bartlein in the morning and see what they're running. Keeping the fingers crossed.

You better get on Kreiger's list as Bartlein may be further out.

Fortunately, I found a shop with a Bartlein in stock. Good to go. Now it's just a matter of waiting on the reamer.

A smith could also face the action and headspace on the face instead of the inner ring.
He could also recess the face of the action, the diameter of the shank to hide the joint and use the inner ring for headspacing. Kenny