Can anyone give there experience they may have had with reboring a barrel? I am thinking of reboring to a .358 from my .308 ultra lite. Cost ,accuracy etc.. Thanks

The ultralite barrels tend to be too thin. Put a set of calipers on the muzzle, if it measures less than .658, most smiths won't rebore to .358. There are factory .35's and 9.3's with muzzles as thin as .600, but they will have been put thru the stress of boring only once.

Greg,

From an earlier post...

"One problem you will want to consider if you were to choose to have the barrel rebored is the very likelihood of warpage. Over time a barrel will develope internal stresses from the continual heating, cooling and pressure of shooting.

When you start removing metal as in re-contouring, fluting and reboring, you begin to relieve these stresses as you begin to peel away the layers and you run the likely risk of having things go south when you least expect it. This is not always the case as I've seen some rather exceptional accuracy from rebores, but on the other side of the coin I've seen some loose and out of whack bores as well. You need make yourself aware of all possible consequences before you plunk down good money."

Malm

btt

Here's my experience. I have had Cliff LaBounty rebore two rifles for me. One from 270 Win to 338-06 about seven years ago and the other from 30-06 to 9.3x62 about a year ago. The upside, his work is flawless, they are both superbly accurate. The downside, I am told that his turnaround time can be long (not the case with me) and the cost is not a whole lot less than a rebarrel. I would recommend a rebore only if the existing barrel is "special". One of mine had a really set of NECG sights and the other was an octagon to round integrally ribbed shot out barrel from a J.P. Sauer Mauser. I believe there are a couple of others who rebore. By the way, the above mentioned Sauer was rebored to 35 Whelen and measures .550" at the muzzle and I have an early factory Ruger M77 in 35 Whelen that measures .550" at the muzzle as well.

[ 12-26-2002, 22:03: Message edited by: Ed ]

when i spoke to cliff he told me minimum specs are add .200" to diameter of bore. i did not ask if that included the lands or just bullet diameter. i think that will give you a starting point. i am glad to hear high praise of his work. i have not given up on my project yet.
as far as turnaround goes, call him and ask what caliber he is tooled up for at the moment. that will speed things up considerably. if 358 is the last one he did then you will probably be waiting awhile.
price he gave me was $100 to re-bore, barrel alone. if you send him the whole gun and he is using the same parent case for new cartridge/bore then it was $285 which also included bedding the stock i believe. his prices may have gone up but i think they are pretty reasonable.
woofer