What are these gunsmiths afraid of ????

Leeper said:
Sounds like you're going o have to get one of those US or UK 'smiths to do the job after all. If you have a PAL, you'll have no problem bringing your re-chambered rifle into Canada.
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CBSA is not the problem but ITAR and U.S border agents are.
I wouldn't do this....
 
Why not sell the factory barrel and get a quality contour barrel with the rifling your after...

Let's say you get $150 for the new unfired barrel,,, a custom couture III will set you back at $460 ish Cnd funds,,, = $310,,, now your in line with getting something your after and done here in Canada...

A win win,,, plus a guarantee it will shoot,,, another plus is getting the action trued while the barrel is off,,, another win...

Just my 8 & 1/4 cents since it works out close to a US Nickel... Ha

Good luck going forward with options to choose from...

Western Canada Don
 
well you have the reamer, make up a holder and do it by hand yourself.

If you bugger it up then get a new barrel and have a smith re do it.

I've been playing around with making and using a reamer for the last 3-4 years and never really got around to it.

But then my buddy shows up with a 30-30 AI reamer and a carcano in 30-30 and wants me to ream it out. Well I have a Savage/Stevens 340 in 30-30 that was just sitting around so it got done as well.

now I don't know how much meat you are looking are removing with your project but taking a 30-30 to 30-30 AI really didn't take long and I did it all by hand and eyeball and checking the reamer and cleaning the chips very often.

both rifles seem to be shooting just fine.
 
Trev. U hit the nail squarely on the head with that statement... reworked Sako and or Tikka barrels are a no go for me...They are made of such a steel that after they are hammer forged that alone tends to surface harden them... I refuse to ream or flute them anymore... If someone else wants to do it I say go for it... I personally am not happy with the results...
 
Grizzlypeg said:
They are probably afraid of it not turning out in a manner satisfactory to you. When you start with a blank barrel, the gunsmith has 100% control. When he starts with an already chambered barrel, the errors made by the factory (lack of concentricity and alignment of the chamber with the bore) will at the very least be continued into the rechambering.
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You would be surprised at the negativity out there when a custom barrel doesn’t shoot. If I was a GS I would also be hesitant.
 
And also, this isnt a public service business,
its a for profit private business that can offer or exclude
any service you wish.
I also never accept customers barrels, reamers or any tooling at all.
Selling take off barrels, albeit small, is part of what keeps the doors open.
And a chamber off axis is tough to improve.
 
Way I am seeing it, some Gunsmiths literally dodged a bullet, by not having the OP as a customer.

If he whinges like this about their not taking his work on, can you imagine the high pitched continuous whine from him if things did not turn out to his satisfaction, no matter the cause?
 
remington jim said:
My GS just did a Rem Sendero 7 Rem mag to 7 mm STW for me ! BUT he also did it properly resetting the barrel and cut a NEW chamber ! So many GS's just run a reamer in and bore it out leaving the shoulder ring around a fired case .

RJ
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Your smith did do it properly. There is no other way I know of to keep the reamer under control. Setting back the barrel by at least the length of the tenon allows for way more control. That being said, your original chamber must have been cut true in the first place.

As for leaving a shoulder ring. That just means the smith did do his due diligence and figure out how deep he had to cut to completely clean up the original shoulder.

I recently opened up a 260 Rem chamber to 6.5x55 Swede. It was done on a heavy profile Remington take off barrel. It didn't shoot well from the factory, or at least not as well as the owner wanted.

He bought a new barrel blank etc, etc and didn't want the factory 260 barrel cluttering his stuff. I traded him a bottle of Appleton's for it.

The barrel started out at 26 inches. It's now 24 inches. I cut two inches from the tenon end so that I could clean up a chamber that was slightly offset. Not much but enough. It can happen, especially with factory chambered rifles. Remington doesn't use piloted reamers. They depend on their CNC set up to give them proper alignment and they don't screw up often. These chambers aren't worth bothering with, unless you're doing it yourself.

The barrel was cut back right to the shoulder then it was chucked up, at the chamber end and the bore was centered with a dial gauge on a bore pin at both ends. The muzzle end was centered in a spider attachment at the rear of the lathes spindle. Then the remaining old chamber was cut out with an inside diameter cutting boring bar. This allowed the pilot on my reamer to enter the bore and center, without any side resistance from the old chamber.

I cut the chamber first, about .020 short, then cut the threads while it was all set up. Screwed on the receiver to make sure the printing was properly indexed, cut back a few more thou off the shoulder to where it would index properly and took measurements from there. Ran the reamer in again with my floating reamer holder and checked in all in place again, before releasing the barrel from the spider and chuck.

This is the way I do it. Doesn't have to be this extreme if the original chamber is cut true in the first place. All of this takes TIME and for most smiths, time is their bread and butter. This is why some smiths will just tell you to get a new barrel. The time cost can be more than the cost of a new barrel.

Then there comes the fluting. Most smiths I know don't have the tooling to cut straight flutes in barrels and that tooling, which is seldom used, is darned expensive. That means he would have to job it out to a sub contractor and charge for shipping both ways as well as the contractor plus profit price.

I made up an indexing barrel holder for my milling machine and used it for "one" job. It requires a constant flow of cutting fluid to keep things cool and for most mills such as mine, which is a manual machine, extreme care must be taken to make sure alignment to the axis of the bore is perfect, Again, this is done with bore pins and a shaft stub in the spindle taper device to measure the distance from the outside of the stub (Broken off shank from a 5/8" endmill bit). This has to be done horizontally as well as vertically to both ends and it doesn't happen in a few minutes.

There is at least an hour or more into the set up alone.

If this job were a frequent occurrence, then it would be prudent to set up special jigs. It's not and it isn't a job I relish doing. If the flutes are cut to fast the process will induce heat stress and maybe warping.

If everything isn't perfectly aligned the end result can be noticeably fugly
 
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