308-358 99 conversion

[MadDog]

Need a smiths point of view here.

I'm planning on having a 99E in 308 converted to 358.

Measured the muzzle the other day and had .580, with the .358 subtracted that leaves me with .222 divided by 2 gives me .111, is that a thick enough wall thickness to consider safe?

I heard a rumor that I need .125 minimum.

 

[guntech]

I have seen a few light rifles with 100 thou wall thickness at the muzzle. I don't know if that is considered minimum or not.

 

[MadDog]

Thanks Dennis, do you have the means to rebore the barrel to 358?

 

[bigbull]

As far as I know Ron Smith aka RKS is the only one in Canada reboring barrels. By the way my Winchester FWT barrel is .560 at the muzzle, that's only .012 over your dimensions.
bigbull

 

[Noel]

Joe, Ron Smith does a great job. He is reluctant to guarrantee anything with some Savage barrels because they can chip.

He did mine anyway and it came out great, not including the boo boo we had with me and the chamber, but that's another story.

I had a Ruger Ultralight in 308 Win. The barrel was about 20" and there is no way it had the .125" wall thickness. They weren't kidding when they said light weight barrel!

 

[icedog]

Ron Smith did mine too, and I'm very happy with it. Ron is an extremely busy guy though, and because the Savage barrels can be a bit troublesome, my understanding is that he's not super keen to do them (my back up plan was a rebarrel). All that, together with other work I had done by Corlane Sports meant a long turn around time for my .358...a year or so as I recall...but worth the wait.