quote:

Originally posted by piniongear:
When one wants to re-barrel a rifle:
1) What do you get with the purchase of a barrel....a blank that needs to be threaded and chambered?
2) What does a gunsmith do to fit it to the receiver? Just cut threads and ream it for the desired chamber?
I see where I can purchase a reamer for $116 and a guide for $59. If I bought these, would I be able to do it myself? I own a 10 inch South Bend lathe and have a 4 jaw chuck. My thread turning talent is just a little on the light side for getting a really good fit however.
What other tools might I need to do it myself? Barrel vise? Receiver vise? Some type of barrel wrench?
Any comments are appreciated......pg

quote:

Originally posted by piniongear:
When one wants to re-barrel a rifle:
1) What do you get with the purchase of a barrel....a blank that needs to be threaded and chambered?
2) What does a gunsmith do to fit it to the receiver? Just cut threads and ream it for the desired chamber?
I see where I can purchase a reamer for $116 and a guide for $59. If I bought these, would I be able to do it myself? I own a 10 inch South Bend lathe and have a 4 jaw chuck. My thread turning talent is just a little on the light side for getting a really good fit however.
What other tools might I need to do it myself? Barrel vise? Receiver vise? Some type of barrel wrench?
Any comments are appreciated......pg

quote:

Originally posted by Marc_Stokeld:
I would not stick one of my reamers in a piece of mild steel as practice. But it is great practice for threading the bbl.

I heartily encourage you to pursue this. If you understand going in that it will cost you more money to do it yourself (if you only do a couple), but you will come out on the other end knowing more, and are happy with that understanding, then it is a worthwhile project for you.

Where do you live? I strongly suggest you watch some one do a barrel or three. Everyone has their own little ways of doing it, and many of the ways are equally good. It also depends on what level of accuracy you are wanting to achieve. Some of it is total overkill for a sporting gun, but many like to do everything possible anyway.

Some other things you could need, depending on how you set up, will be a reamer holder, a throater, indicating rods, bushings for that bore, a dummy round, Go and NoGo gauges, a hand reamer holder, a hand throater holder, lug lapping tool, valve grinding compound, depth michrometer, test indicator on solid stand, travel indicator on solid stand, a fish and form tool ground for a 55° Whitworth thread (assuming Mauser, otherwise usually a 60°cutter and fish), good cutting fluid (I use DoDrill for chambering) and dispenser, air compressor w/ little hand held nozzle, form tool for crown, form tool for breaking edge of chamber, old tooth brush, papaer towels, piece of paper, pencil, duct tape, a spider for your lathe, cleaning rod w/jag and patches, denatured alcohol or other solvent, Wintergreen Skoal Long Cut and/or Wintergreen Beechnut, something to spit in, a good coach, and a lot of books.

Some good books are:

The Modern Gunsmith; James V. Howe
Gunsmithing; Roy Dunlap
Riflesmithing; Jack mitchell
Gunsmith Kinks I; Bob Brownell
The Mauser Bolt Actions, A Shop Manual; Jerry Kuhnhausen

All of these books do a good job of explaing barrel related activities. There are other good ones, but these pop to the front of my mind right now.

But none of the books are as good as watching soemone and asking them why they do each step. What I do when I am learning soemthing new is to read everything I can on the subject and THEN watch someone do it or have them coach me through it. That way I already know some background and can at least have an intelligent conversation with them. Basically you know what questions to ask.

PM me if you are really serious about this.

Good luck!!!

quote:

I would not stick one of my reamers in a piece of mild steel as practice. But it is great practice for threading the bbl.