Chatter in barrel chambering

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desertfox

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Hi


I just chambered my barrel blank with a straight flute barrel reamer.After chambering the entire walls of the chamber are convered with longitudinal lines (chatter?)quite deep tp the eye. Can you help me to solve my problem.I am quite discouraged.I s it possible to correct this with the use of a spiral flute reamer?


Thanks Desertfox

The cal is .223 Rem and the reamer is a Manson straight flute brand new
 
Set it back and wrap your reamer with wax paper then run it in and recut....or wrap it in wax paper, cut deeper until chatter is gone, measure, cut new shoulder and thread. You should try and eliminate BEFORE cutting the whole chamber. Wax paper method work well, can use a patch over the reamer as well.
 
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Manson has a good article on the causes as well as some ways to minimize and correct it . I've had chatter once and used pieces of heavy bond paper wrapped around the reamer soaked with cutting oil and very short cuts till the chatter disappeared. If you cut the whole chamber with chatter you will need to set the barrel back a good ways to correct or redo the chamber. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will give you some more ideas.
ht tps://mansonreamers.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/chatter-i.pdf
 
I have a .300 WinMag chamber that I have to redo. The chatter wasn't apparent while reaming, but it is sure there. I will ream with a packed reamer until the chamber is clear, then redo the shank and set headspace.
 
Describe how you chambered it... the full meal deal... perhaps there is something in your procedure that 'set' that reamer 'off'. Manson makes excellent reamers. I know I have experienced various reamers start to chatter on a undersized drilled chamber but usually stop when all the surfaces engage. Sometimes instead of holding the reamer dog and allowing the flex in my hand affect it I will let it sit on a solid rest. I also chamber at 45 to 60 rpm.
 
desertfox said:
Hi


I just chambered my barrel blank with a straight flute barrel reamer.After chambering the entire walls of the chamber are convered with longitudinal lines (chatter?)quite deep tp the eye. Can you help me to solve my problem.I am quite discouraged.I s it possible to correct this with the use of a spiral flute reamer?


Thanks Desertfox

The cal is .223 Rem and the reamer is a Manson straight flute brand new
Click to expand...

out of curiosity was the barrel blank hammer forged or cut rifled, stainless or chrome moly? thanks

(ht tps://mansonreamers.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/chatter-i.pdf .... good article from Hunter 5425)
 
I've usually chambered around 45-60 RPM as well. Any time I've encountered chatering it has been because I wasnt puting enough pressure on feeding from the tailstock. Once I got a bit
more agressive, and the reamer really engaged, it seemed to get better.

What's the idea around using wax paper around the reamer?
 
It fills in the chatter marks somewhat letting you slowly cut them out without inducing more chatter. You can use cotton patches or heavy bond paper like I have as well to do the same thing.
 
Almost sounds like you're turning the barrel to fast or feeding the reamer to fast. I noticed this happening to me when chambering a 45-70. I added a home made attachment to my lathe to slow it to 20 rpms and picked up a floating reamer holder. It worked for me but if you aren't doing several chambers it's hardly worth the effort or expense. Slow it down as much as possible. Some barrels like Black Star offerings are extremely hard and unless your reamer is extremely sharp it will skip and cause chatter.

I had that 45-70 reamer (which I borrowed) sharpened because it was visibly dull after trying to cut the initial chamber. It had cut several chambers before I borrowed it and likely should have been sharpened before I used it. Oh well. After sharpening it did the job very well but even then, I had to be very careful and use a lot of lube. Packing a reamer is OK but if you feed it to fast, it can bind and break. I saw that happen once to a mentor showing me the wrapping trick. Again, the reamer was not as sharp as it should have been. I don't borrow reamers anymore. Mind you I only do my own work these days so if I screw up it's my loss all the way.

That 45-70 barrel was going on a friend's rifle and he supplied the Black Star. I should have known better because cutting the threads on the tenon required very shallow cuts with a carbide tool bit.

Feeding in the reamer to fast is still up in the air as far as causing chatter. Mad-Mikee has a point. I have never had an issue with making cuts that were to shallow with a reamer. I suspect his reamer was not sharp or he was cutting some very hard steel.
 
bearhunter said:
Almost sounds like you're turning the barrel to fast or feeding the reamer to fast. I noticed this happening to me when chambering a 45-70. I added a home made attachment to my lathe to slow it to 20 rpms and picked up a floating reamer holder. It worked for me but if you aren't doing several chambers it's hardly worth the effort or expense. Slow it down as much as possible. Some barrels like Black Star offerings are extremely hard and unless your reamer is extremely sharp it will skip and cause chatter.

I had that 45-70 reamer (which I borrowed) sharpened because it was visibly dull after trying to cut the initial chamber. It had cut several chambers before I borrowed it and likely should have been sharpened before I used it. Oh well. After sharpening it did the job very well but even then, I had to be very careful and use a lot of lube. Packing a reamer is OK but if you feed it to fast, it can bind and break. I saw that happen once to a mentor showing me the wrapping trick. Again, the reamer was not as sharp as it should have been. I don't borrow reamers anymore. Mind you I only do my own work these days so if I screw up it's my loss all the way.

That 45-70 barrel was going on a friend's rifle and he supplied the Black Star. I should have known better because cutting the threads on the tenon required very shallow cuts with a carbide tool bit.

Feeding in the reamer to fast is still up in the air as far as causing chatter. Mad-Mikee has a point. I have never had an issue with making cuts that were to shallow with a reamer. I suspect his reamer was not sharp or he was cutting some very hard steel.
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Bearhunter has a lot of good points.
My lowest RPM is 30 in my lathe and that's what I am useing for chambering. Sharp reamer and moderate feed works for me every time. Don't advance the reamer more than 1/16" before cleaning the metal particles.
Massive amount of thread cutting oil is mandatory, mine is Rigid brand Nu-Clear.
Manson reamers are very good quality, I had the best "luck" with Hugh Henricson.
I stay away from Walter barrels as well, they are very hard on reamers.
 
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Chatter problems!!. New reamers with course sharp edges, job set up misalignment and barrel blanks above 25 points on the Rockwell scale. All a mixing bowl for disaster.
1. Take an old copper penny to the cutting edge of your brand new reamer and run it length ways back and forth to dull the aggressive attack of the digging nature your reamer is forcing into the barrel
2. Make sure, or revisit the alignment of the barrel turning in your steady rest and make super sure that the tail stock or your reamer drive is not pulling something off center.
3. Hardness of barrels!!. Some alloy steels just don't want to yield all that easily to your cutting edge. I have found that more and more we have access to quite a few more unknown and perhaps off shore barrel makers who's quality varies from batch to batch. And the harmonics introduced while trying to cut these steels only amplifies when the reamers taper starts to vibrate against the chamber walls.
4. The word in the machine shop trade when it comes to reaming is, "Half the speed twice the feed" I ream at around any where from 90 RPM and up depending on how the chips are flowing.
When you have that reamer bounce coming back at the tail stock with a straight fluted reamer about the only thing that you can clean it up with is a spiral fluted reamer in the same chambering or go in with a dull drill below the shoulder diameter to knock the chatter marks of that area and begin again, slowly with your reamer. And I mean slowly.
Regards David Henry.
 
I have had my issues with chatter. Using large Manson reamers I once had chatter so bad that my JGS floating reamer holder fell apart! I have also used Manson for smaller cartridges and had awesome accuracy. My standard for reamers is now JGS. I just did a 300WM and about 250 thou from the end chatter started. The only way I have stopped a chatter situation is to get in there with abrasives (sand paper). I fixed the 300 this way. I started the chamber on this one with a rougher and it started to chatter as soon as the shoulder was in the barrel. The barrel was a Lilja. I have a Rockwell tester and I should keep track of these problems. I have also found that if you have chatter it will usually be removed with a different reamer if you have one. Cut out the chatter and them go back to the reamer you need to use. A while ago I was doing a 6.5x284 and had terrible chatter. A friend loaned me his JGS reamer and it cut out the chatter and cut a perfect chamber. Did I say I only use JGS now??
 
The most chatter prone reaming jobs I have encountered are AIs. Maybe it is the sharp shoulder and minimal body taper.
 
While I've not cut a lot of chambers, the ones I did haven't showed any chatter at all. Not by good management/experience or any other choice other than my lathe doesn't have a slower speed than 90 rpm. I slow feed and clean often, more often as more of the reamer is engaged. Every reamer I have use had cut at least one other chamber before I used it so Dave's point of taking the absolute edge off before use worked in my case.
 
fingers284 said:
While I've not cut a lot of chambers, the ones I did haven't showed any chatter at all. Not by good management/experience or any other choice other than my lathe doesn't have a slower speed than 90 rpm. I slow feed and clean often, more often as more of the reamer is engaged. Every reamer I have use had cut at least one other chamber before I used it so Dave's point of taking the absolute edge off before use worked in my case.
Click to expand...

Consider yourself lucky, but it will happen one day. I used the cleaning patch method when it happened to me.
 
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