Repairing a Horribly Machined Rifle Barrel

A few months back I bid on a few rifles that I was told were built by my wife's late Grandfather. He was a master gunsmith and builder of many custom hunting, long range, and bench rest rifles along with being an accomplished shooter and competitor. When I won this rifle I was quite excited about getting my hands on it. A few months went by before I was able to travel to pick it up and a few weeks back, I finally got it.

Upon initial inspection of it, the rifle looked the part of what he used to build. However upon closer inspection, some things didn't add up. First and foremost, it has been bead blasted on both the bolt, barrel, and receiver before it had been re-blued. I worked with the original builder quite a bit, and learned quite a bit of what I know from him. I have also closely inspected many rifles that he has built, and he tends to have some features that only he does, and a quality that is better than everyone else in the area at the time. On the flip side, I also worked with another gunsmith in town for a few years and got to learn about how he did things and his quality of work, which to say the least, wasn't up to par with my wife's granfathers work.

As I looked closer and started pulling things apart, things weren't adding up. The action looks correct to what I thought, but the barrel was not looking original to the original work on the action. First thing I noticed was the extractor cut was done with an end mill of some sort. I know the original builder didn't have a milling machine, and didn't use a milling attachment on his lathe. Second, there was a chamber designation mark which was consistent with the later gunsmith. Final factor was that the receiver ring had a truing cut made on it, which the original builder rarely if ever did. I saw him do one, once which had a repair done to it, but other than that his motto was to leave them be. The nail in the coffin was the bead blasted exterior on the entire rifle.

Next was when I started looking at the stock. The original builder used to use of all things Fiber Glass with fiber flock for bedding material. It is a very good bedding material believe it or not, and I have seen some extremely accurate rifles with fiberglass bedding jobs. The nice thing about it is that it sets fast! The stock even though it was a Boyd's, could have been used back then, and it had been bedded with fiberglass.

The best that I can come up with is that the receiver was originally done by my wife's late Grandfather. Later at some point, the rifle came into the second gunsmiths shop for a re-barrel. He then proceeded to put a new barrel on it, trued up the receiver ring, and refinished the entire barreled receiver.

That would have been just fine except for what was to come when I pulled the barrel off. First thing I noticed was there was some red stuff on the threads. First thought was axle grease of some sort. That quilckly got solved when I touched it and it was rock hard. I knew then exactly what it was, Loc-Tite! The red stuff non the less. The only reason it was on there was because he messed up when he cut the threads. The major diameter ended up being 0.008" under what it should be, and the minor diameter was 0.018" deeper than it should have been.

There is no reason to be off this far with square threads.However, it is still enough to thread onto the receiver and be fairly safe. The reason for the loc-tite was to take up the slop in the threads and give it a nice tight fit when it was cranked down. This was just the tip of the iceberg!

The crown looked like someone took a dull spoon to the end of it and the metal instead of getting a clean cut, was torn. The geometry of the crown was good, just a bad cut. Next was the cone had two angles in it and it had a bad C shaped ring scored into it. After checking bolt clearance I decided to clean up the cone. When I put it in the lathe I used the chamber to zero the barrel out because I do not currently have a rod long enough to reach the bore. The chamber was very concentric, however the threaded shank was 0.006" off from the chamber. WTF I was thinking to myself.

This is the point where I knew the correct solution is to cut off the barrel and set it back to correct both the chamber and the threads. However I decided to clean it up best I could and see how it shoots because I was able to bore scope it, and it has maybe 500 or so rounds left on it. When I cleaned the cone up with a SINGLE 45 degree cone, it cleaned up from the chamber to the threads without going deeper into the chamber. This tells us that when he was chambering, he needed to go deeper to set head space and cut a second 49 or so degree cone to get the depth. Why he did this.... I don't f'ing Know!

Upon further ispection, the chamber was scratched up and had a light score in it which cleaned up without much effort. On top of all that the original cone was cut off center.

When I flipped it around to clean up the muzzle there wasn't much surprise except that it too was cut off center.

Moral of the story, It wasn't what I thought it was. I am happy to have the receiver built by the Grandfather, but the barrel was completely F'ed up by the second gunsmith and it was just sloppy work. I never teally agreed with how the second smith did a lot of things and this barrel reflects it. I have shot several rifles built by my wife's Grandfather and they are all extremely accurate rifles. Many of them mind boggling with today's methods of barreling.

I now have done all I can do besides setting it back so we will see what happens.

Check Out both videos on my Youtube channel to see what I did!
 Part I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5d39M7fTE
Part II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9f2m70bUdE

Summer time New Projects and a new Clausing 8520!

As always the spring time and the start of a new Trimester is always busy for me. Getting things rolling with school and getting back into the swing of things along with all the extra yard work that comes with summer time! I have decided to make a few equipment changes in my shop. Although the Clausing 5914 is a great lathe and well suited for doing barrels, I made the decision to sell it and replace it with a Clausing 8520 milling machine. I still have my Rusnok for now, but I am really in need of a larger machine for doing gunsmithing work. Being that I'm still in the basement, I'm not ready to jump into a full size Bridgeport. I'm also very partial to US made machinery. I ran across a guy a few months back that had an 8520 and we decided on a price and he held on to it until I was ready to pick it up. A couple weekends ago I went to pick up the machine. A few days later the 5914 lathe was sold and out of my basement.



In with the New!

I have some plans with the guy and it will allow me to do much more than the little Rusnok. The main advantage is the adjustable knee! I can actually fit something under this guy and do things such as drill and tap a receiver, inlet a stock, or mill something longer than 6"!

I'm also just about ready to start 3 new large exciting projects that will be covered in a 3 videos series on my youtube channel about gunsmithing.

Stay tuned and check back regularly!