Shorten barrel on a Browning X-BOLT COMPOSITE STALKER .338 Win.

bat119

bat119

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Hunting in a blind with a 26" barrel is a pain, Would it cost much to have a barrel shortened 4" from 26" to "22?

There's no front site, just wondering if you have to remove the barrel from the action to recrown?

Any recommendations where to have it done? I'm in Lloydminster.
 
A .338 Win Mag? You'll lose a lot of velocity, but you should have to remove the barrel just to cut it. Epp's charges start at $75 to cut and crown. Local smithy's will be close to that.
 
The loss from barrel length vs velocity is not as much as most people think

From field and stream magazine

Ace Texas rifle maker Charley Sisk recently published an experiment where he barreled six rifles with 27-inch tubes and chronographed them, cutting each one back an inch at a time.

- .22/250, 27 to 24 inches, from 3, 469 to 3,407 fps
- .270 Winchester, 27 to 21 inches, from 3,115 to 3001 fps
- .300 Win Mag, 27 to 22 inches, from 3,055 to 2,960 fps
- .340 Weatherby, 27 to 22 inches, 2,834 to 2,755 fps
- .338 Win Mag, 27 to 20 inches, 2,806 to 2,656 fps
- .257 Roberts, 27 to 20 inches, 2,860 to 2,717 fps
 
Depending on the ability of the lathe to handle that length through the headstock with the action on... $40 would be reasonable.
 
nanuk said:
hacksaw, file, a 300WinMag Lee case trimmer, some electrical tape, light oil, a few grades of emery, cold blue... and some time


do it yourself, and save some $
Click to expand...

Oh good god. No. Have it done properly by someone with the right tools. You will never get that crown straight or flat this way; at best it will look like a hack job, and at worst, you will have to get someone to do it properly. Skip the BS and have someone with machining experience do it right the first time.
 
My 21" 338WM barrel produces 2700+ with 225gr SSTs on a sub max load with H4350. And does handle very well off hand.

FWIW. As a die hard DIYselfer I tried a bubba crown once just to see how it would work on a screwed up hunting barrel. Shortened with hack saw, filed flat, just barely cracked the crown with brass screw and valve grinding compound by hand. That barrel shot sub MOA at 100m. Then had a crown machined and to my surprise it shot about the same.

May I suggest a recessed crown for bush use. Elky....
 
I bought a mauser 98 that had been rebarrelled to .270 about 40 years ago, someone had left in a gun case for a few years, the gun was perfect except for 2 inch's of barrel
and the front sight were badly rusted. My cousin and I found a NRA home gunsmithing book, we used a piece of angle iron for a guide cut the barrel with a hacksaw then filed it flat,used a brass screw with valve grinding paste to crown. The gun shot 1 1/2" groups and went on to harvest many deer, I still have it in my safe.

I really prefer to leave the critical parts to gunsmith's I'm happy doing stocks and glass bedding if that goes south I can throw it away and start over.
 
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