I have a nice Army & Navy Dutch 6.5 x 53R sporter. I bought it years ago and found when firing it, that it keyholed at 50 yards. I had some .268 Hornadys that I loaded and it would shoot pie pan groups at 100 yds with the irons, bullet holes point on. I dug it out for the first time in years and stuck a .264 bullet in the muzzle, flat base first, and it went in with no resistance approx 5/8".
My question is, instead of cutting off 1" of barrel, which would entail removing the original front sight and resoldering it and also moving the soldered barrel swing swivel stud to keep the proportions right, and then probably having to re rust blue the barrel, is there any way to have a deeply recessed crown done to avoid all this trouble? I'd like to keep the gun as original as possible, but I don't know how to do this job and don't mind paying a pro to do it. Thanks for any advice and Merry Christmas!

Sounds like you have typical milsurp muzzle wear due to over-energetic cleaning rod usage. The armories would counterbore barrels like this to restore military accuracy. That entails drilling out the bore back to good rifling to create a new internal crown. Usually 1-2 inches. That leaves your gun outwardly unchanged. Needs to be done on a 4 jaw lathe with a piloted bit by someone who knows what they are doing.

Many thousands of surplus military rifles were counterbored by importers like Interarms, Century arms, etc, to correct for such muzzle wear. (Poor countries' Armies tend to clean their weapons a lot.) They did not set them up in any lathes; they were just drilled out, and usually will shoot without tumbling. I recommend you use a piloted reamer however. I have a 1917 Winchester barrel sitting right here now with the first two inches roughly drilled out. I removed many barrels from them in the 1990s.
Don't you have other rifles to shoot?

Lots of Mosins were counterbored.

Tom, surely you know by now, I cannot abide having a non-functional firearm in the mix. As to the piloted reamer, Where would I find one as Brownells hardly sells any gunsmithing tooling anymore! Where would I get a reamer with a .264 pilot and what is the official name of this reamer so I can find one? Also, I assume it will cut the ends of the rifling square as opposed to a tapered drill bit. Thanks for any guidance!

https://pacifictoolandgauge.co...hole-crown-tool.html

Pricey. Your best/economical course would be to ship it to a 'smith who has the tooling and pay them to counterbore it.

I idly wonder about the effect on barrel vibrations. Earlier in the year there was a rimfire target barrel on ebay that had been counterbored.

Just take a sharp 3/8ths inch drill bit, chuck in your DeWalt, and drill back to good rifling. It will work fine. Don't worry about crowns, vibrations, setups, or anything else. It will cut your groups in half.

Bobster, I had looked at PTG and did a search for deep crowning reamers and got nothing but the regular crowning tools on their site. The one you have the link to is for 30 cal and up, I have a 6.5 and that looks to be pretty big. The reason that I had asked what the reamers are called is that some of the search engines won't find it if the nomenclature ain't perfect. And apparently PTG only makes their #3 size. I went on line and looked at piloted chucking reamers, but could not find a close enough size combo which, to me, would be like a .264 pilot-.270- ish reamer O.D. I don't mind spending the money for the tooling, just cannot find it. I have the lathe, just want the right tool.
Tom, I believe what you say, but I can't quite bring myself to do it, and I would chuck it in the tailstock for a bit of precision, I may be a Bubba, but I'm not so bad as to use a hand drill!

In doing more research, I found an old post on another forum by Jack Belk who said that when necessary for a deep crown he used a neck cutting, not a throat cutting, reamer. He said it made a fine hunting grade crown. It looks like PTG has them in stock, I will call and check on Tuesday. What do you gunsmiths think of that, good idea?

Waste of money and time for what is just a blaster old military rifle anyway that you are just going to shoot ten times and set it back into the corner forever.
Not like it is something you are actually going to use for any serious purpose.
I have fired too many imports with crudely drilled crowns to think it really makes any difference in this case. All you need is a clean sharp crown.
Whatever you use has to be big enough so the bullet does not hit the new bore. And that is a factor of how deep you make it. Remember that the rifle is still recoiling with the bullet traveling in your counterbore.
It's not my money though.

You can make a cheap piloted reamer out of a chucking reamer and a brass pilot. You can cut the reamer by first grinding it, and then cutting the shank with carbide tooling. Either cut a groove for a C clip, or just epoxy the pilot in place.

OK, if you read the first post, it clearly states that this is an Army & Navy C.S.L. retailed rifle. It is based on the Steyr- Mannlicher barreled actions that were bought new, from Steyr (contract overrun) . Everyone from H&H, Gibbs, Jeffery, etc, bought them, stocked and finished them and retailed them as the .256 Mannlicher. 6.5x53R.
It is a very nice rifle that just suffers from a bit of over-zealous cleaning from the muzzle end. The neck reamer is $75 and unless there is a good reason not to, it seems like this will put a very nice, not in-expensive rifle back in service.

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
Just take a sharp 3/8ths inch drill bit, chuck in your DeWalt, and drill back to good rifling. It will work fine. Don't worry about crowns, vibrations, setups, or anything else. It will cut your groups in half.

That post will create a LOT of heartburn! Maybe even hemorrhoids!!!


.

That is what I am here for! From the hate mail I get, I must antagonize a lot of guys. It's not my blood pressure.
And no, I do not read the posts before responding; no time for that.
If it is a high quality rifle, then yes, treat it accordingly.

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
Just take a sharp 3/8ths inch drill bit, chuck in your DeWalt, and drill back to good rifling. It will work fine. Don't worry about crowns, vibrations, setups, or anything else. It will cut your groups in half.

I did exactly that using a 7/16' bit (from Bill Calfee writings) in a South Bend Heavy 10 with a Remington 521T barrel I bought from ebay. It was corroded pretty bad for six inches from the muzzle, cut a few inches off it and drilled back to decent rifling. It is not a 513T but close enough...

A friend of mine routinely recesses the bores of his rifles as part of his rifle tuning process. He just runs a chambering reamer into the muzzle to the length of the neck. Works for him, and he does some darn good shooting.

John

Just thought I would give an update. I talked to Pacific yesterday and Pete advised me to use a muzzle brake piloted reamer that will allow me to recess it as much as I want and will also cut an 11* crown at the same time. $85 for the reamer , awaiting its arrival.

Perhaps this: https://mansonreamers.com/prod...zzle-crown-cutter-2/

Or maybe this: https://mansonreamers.com/prod...e-crowning-tool-kit/

OP needs to counterbore, not just re-crown.

quote:

Originally posted by Jim@IMReps:
Or maybe this: https://mansonreamers.com/prod...e-crowning-tool-kit/

This practice should at least not increase muzzle blast the way cutting off two inches of barrel might. Is there likely to be trouble from gases billowing around the bullet before it gets away?