I tried a search here but I'd like to ask all you guys to drop names of a good gunsmith to put a new stainless barrel on a rifle and match the contour of the existing barrel so no stock work needs to be done. The 'smiths I used to use are retired and I haven't had luck with new ones I've tried. I don't care what state he's in.

give jim kobe a call

Roger Ferrell. 770-460-0533

Have you tried Andy Hawk in Anchorage?

562-0881

No stock work may be a tall order for any dupliation depending on the current tolerance of the barrel inletting. A little scraping is no big deal though

Mark Penrod, he's the best there is.

Penrod Precision
312 East College Avenue
North Manchester, Indiana
(260) 982-8385

what kind of rifle is it?

Thanks a lot for the names. It's a Kimber 8400 Montana in 7MMWSM. It's never been a tack driver (3/4 moa is the best it's done with very carefully prepared loads, spreading out to 3-1/2 with some factory ammo). Now with 1500 or so rounds it's getting worse.
Which brings me to another question that ought to be another thread I guess but I've heard several times that short fat cases will wear barrels faster. Example: a 7MM WSM pushing the same bullet the same velocity in front of the same powder as a 7MM Rem. will wear out a barrel noticably faster. I've never believed it but now I'm wondering.

Another vote for Jim Kobe. He has rebarreled pre a 64 70, a number of Rem 700s and some Sakos for me. All turned out exceptional.

He is at 952 884 6031.

Saw him at a gun show two hours ago.

quote:

give jim kobe a call

X 2

From Lilja Barrels ; Some of you may find this interesting reading !.

What barrel "Life" in number of rounds fired, can I expect from my new barrel?

A: That is a good question, asked often by our customers. But again there is not a simple answer. In my opinion there are two distinct types of barrel life. Accurate barrel life is probably the type most of us are referencing when we ask the question. But there is also absolute barrel life too. That is the point where a barrel will no longer stabilize a bullet and accuracy is wild. The benchrest shooter and to a lesser extent other target shooters are looking at accurate barrel life only when asking this question. To a benchrest shooter firing in matches where group size is the only measure of precision, accuracy is everything. But to a score shooter firing at a target, or bull, that is larger than the potential group size of the rifle, it is less important. And to the varmint hunter shooting prairie dog size animals, the difference between a .25MOA rifle or one that has dropped in accuracy to .5MOA may not be noticeable in the field.

The big enemy to barrel life is heat. A barrel looses most of its accuracy due to erosion of the throat area of the barrel. Although wear on the crown from cleaning can cause problems too. The throat erosion is accelerated by he at. Any fast varmint type cartridge can burn out a barrel in just a few hundred rounds if those rounds are shot one after another without letting the barrel cool between groups. A cartridge burning less powder will last longer or increasing the bore size for a given powder volume helps too. For example a .243 Winchester and a .308 Winchester both are based on the same case but the .308 will last longer because it has a larger bore.

And stainless steel barrels will last longer than chrome-moly barrels. This is due to the ability of stainless steel to resist heat erosion better than the chrome-moly steel.

The benefits of deep cryogenic processing of barrels and the use of moly coated bullets in prolonging barrel life are discussed in our answers in this section on those specific subjects.

I thought it might be interesting to point out a few exceptional aggregates that I've fired with 6PPC benchrest rifles with barrels that had a number of rounds through them. I know benchrest shooters that would never fire barrels with over 1500 shots fired in them in registered benchrest matches.

I fired my smallest 100 yard 5 shot aggregate ever in 1992 at a registered benchrest match in Lewiston, Idaho. It was a .1558" aggregate fired in the Heavy Varmint class. And that barrel had about 2100 rounds through it at the time. Another good aggregate was fired at the 1997 NBRSA Nationals in Phoenix, Arizona during the 200 yard Light Varmint event. I placed second at this yardage with a 6PPC barrel that had over 2700 rounds through it at the time. I retired this barrel after that match because it had started to copper foul quite a bit. But accuracy was still good.

Incidentally, neither of these barrels had been frozen or had any moly coated bullets fired through them.

As a very rough rule of thumb I would say that with cartridges of .222 Remington size you could expect an accurate barrel life of 3-4000 rounds. And varmint type accuracy should be quite a bit longer than this.

For medium size cartridges, such as the .308 Winchester, 7x57 and even the 25-06, 2-3000 rounds of accurate life is reasonable.

Hot .224 caliber type cartridges will not do as well and 1000-2500 rounds is to be expected.

Bigger magnum hunting type rounds will shoot from 1500-3000 accurate rounds. But the bigger 30-378 Weatherby types won't do as well, being closer to the 1500 round figure.

These numbers are based on the use of stainless steel barrels. For chrome-moly barrels I would reduce these by roughly 20%.

The .17 and .50 calibers are rules unto themselves and I'm pressed to predict a figure.

The best life can be expected from the 22 long rifle barrels with 5000-10,000 accurate rounds to be expected. We have in our shop one our drop-in Anschutz barrels that has 200,000 rounds through it and the shooter, a competitive small-bore shooter reported that it had just quit shooting.

Remember that predicting barrel life is a complicated, highly variable subject. You are the best judge of this with your particular barrel. Signs of accurate barrel life on the wane are increased copper fouling, lengthened throat depth, and decreased accuracy.

As of January 2009 we have added some public domain articles published by the Australian military and their studies regarding barrel lilfe of small arms. You can download these articles as .pdf file by clicking on the title: barrel_life1.pdf barrel_life2.pdf barrel_life3.pdf These were brought to our attention by Sylvain Benoit.

http://www.riflebarrels.com/articles/barrel_life1.pdf

http://www.riflebarrels.com/articles/barrel_life2.pdf

http://www.riflebarrels.com/articles/barrel_life3.pdf