i made a trip to tip burns' plce this weekend to see the eddystone enfield that he's building for me.... .. while he was working on installing scope bases on my chapuis, i was looking at other AR poster's projects.. saw mark starks enfield .338.... and 1 of rusty's....and i got to thinking.... ... how many of you re-use a barrel, that is rebore to another caliber, instead of buying a barrel blank????...what criteria do you use to determine re-use???... like length, contour, price????... ive been pleased with shilen products, but im thinking of using windriver on the next barrel as they offer a hexagon/round blank....

Depends upon what you mean by "reboring". If you are talking about cutting a new chamber for another cartridge that usually works okay depending upon the straightness of the bore you are beginning with. If you are talking about boring out the barrel to a new caliber (i.e. 30 cal to 338 cal) it can be costly as the new rifling will have to be done using cut rifling. It can be done though. Cost wise unless you can do all the gunsmithing yourself it might be a wash, but usually rebarreling costs a little bit more. The benefit of rebarreling is that you can get the barrel exactly as you wish.

Dan
www.mcgowenbarrel.com

I believe that unless you are trying to use a unique barrel, original barrel, or somesuch, you are much better off with a new barrel. I had a Guild barrel rebored because it had a neat full rib with the squiggly lines on it and a neat front sight. No way I could duplicate barrel from new at twice the price.
Butch

I wanted to keep the original barrel markings on mine so I had the .30 cal bored out to .338. Damn thing never did shoot good. Wish I had bought a premium barrel to begin with.

I've had numerous rifle barrels rebored to larger diameters. In the 1950's, 60's and early 70's when people weren't throwing paper and electronic/plastic money around like popcorn, it was quite common.

Mine have always ended up being even better shooters after re-boring. In fact, in the "old" days, lots of barrel "smarties" felt that rebored barrels were a better deal for accuracy because over time, they believed, the streeses whad been worked out of the steel by the firing of several years worth of rounds through them before they were finally rebored.

Whether that is true or not, I have no idea. I do know it is what many believed. I also know the most accurate big medium bore I ever owned was a .358 Norma Mag which was a Buhmiller .30-06 until Al Petersen of Riverhurst, Saskatchewan rebored and rechambered it for me.

Most of the cost comes from the chambering and turning of the barrel, the cost of the new blank will be negligible.

John

quote:

Originally posted by Big Bore Boar Hunter:
Most of the cost comes from the chambering and turning of the barrel, the cost of the new blank will be negligible.

John

Yes, if you consider $120 to $220 "negligible".

What I find amazing is that in the '60s, you could buy a new blank for $60, and get a barrel re-bored for almost exactly half that +/- $5.

Nowdays, it appears that all of a sudden the cost of reboring labor is taking up the vast majority of the cost. Frankly, I suspect that may involve some "whatever the market will bear" pricing.

After all, the hard part in making a new barrel is NOT the rifling...it is the cutting of a straight hole of the same, unvarying, correct diameter, 28" to 30" long. Once the deep hole is bored, the rifling is a snap and at least with buttons or broaches, takes almost no time by comparison.

With a barrel that is to be re-bored, the deep hole already there (the bore itself) acts as a good guide for the cutter pilot and the drill, and should reduce the time required to some considerable extent, no? Plus, with a careful chambering job, the re-bored barrel should not have to be re-threaded to fit the action off of which it came.

So, why does the price end up as nearly the same as making, threading, and chambering a whole new barrel? It never used to.......