Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Quality gunsmith to rebarrel a Kimber Montana

Howdy all, I have a Kimber Montana in 223 that I really like. It shoots 50gr V-Max really well but the 75 HPBT is proving more inconsistent. I will continue to work on the 75's and shoot a bunch of 50's but in the case that I want to rebarrel to a faster twist barrel I was hoping for some help.

1. What is a top quality gunsmith who will do the work on a Kimber Montana?

2. What brand of barrel maker, # of grooves, and twist (1-8" for me) would you choose.

3. What contour, stick with the factory or go up a tad i.e. SAS's Lilja contour which extends to .610" from the forearm to the muzzle.

Thank you all very much.

PacNor

Since you are a Pa boy and if by chance from Western Pa, Google Dave Bruno.

BR Shooter and makes more than a few for the BR crowd. Re barreled a Kimber for me along with a couple others that turned into solid shooters. Tell him what you want and you should be happy.



www.Davebrunorifles.net


One was a model 70 classic that he made into a .308W with a Bartlein. Solid 3/4 rifle and sometime scary accurate

Kimber was turned into a .300Savage with a Douglas. Hangs at an inch consistently. If you are looking for the campfire all day, every day 1/2 inch Kimber then you best buy one on the campfire. Although mine has done it, doesn't mean it is.

Battues always has GREAT recommendations!

Another for comparison is Tim Smith (www.smithscustomguns.com). Tim is building first class rifles for the 1000yd silhouette competitions in Ridgway, PA and has done several hunting/competition rifles for me and all are first class!

PennDog

I had Pacnor do mine. It's a 3 groove, 8 twist factory dupe .223AI. It shoots little groups. My .243 Montana will be headed there for a 1-8" twist .243AI barrel sooner or later. After a lot of thought about the Lilja with the heavier contour, I have to say I would not do it.

That must mean that you prefer the balance as it is which is totally understandable. It feels good to me from the factory but just looking at all of my options. The reason I am hesitant about a 223 AI on the Kimber is the feeding and having to notch the action port and modify the extractor and magbox for the 75 A-Max. Seems like some stuff can go wrong or it won't feed well. Lastly, what does a 3 groove do? It seems they are popular. Thanks.

Thanks everyone for the recommendations so far!

Not just the balance but the weight as well. The mods are pretty simple, but could be f'd up I suppose. You wouldn't need to modify the extractor. The ejector needs to be shortened though.

If you're gonna shoot 75 Amax in the SAAMI .223 you'd want to do the mods anyway. I lengthened the mag box a little too far back and am at the outer limits of the ejector and bolt stop, but it still works great.

When you see what the extra velocity and faster twist does on soft targets, you'll be glad you went with the AI. It's a pretty fun ride.

Try 70 grain VLDs in your current rifle. If they shoot well (and there's a good chance they will), you'll save a bunch of money dinking around with a new barrel. You will never see the difference between a standard 223 and the Ackley in the field.

With 50's at 3,725 and 40's at 4,030 you sure will.

And when you blow the bolt through your head from being overpressure you'll notice the difference, too.

223 AI gains something like 20 or 30 fps over the standard 223, when loaded to similar pressures. I.E. about the same as an extra inch of barrel.

How much pressure does it take to do that?

Totally depends. Plenty of reading out there on pressure related subjects, look it up. Needless to say, it's pretty silly to push the limit just to give some higher numbers on the chronograph. But everybody has to find that out for themselves. You'll figure it out someday, hopefully you don't hurt yourself getting there.

Just curious if you knew how much pressure it takes to blow a bolt out the back of a modern firearm is all.

Pacnor has done 3 for me and they all shot well. They'll do whatever contour you want.

Oh some other nasty things will probably happen before the rifle full on explodes, and I'm not really interested in finding out just when a Kimber will go full nuclear.

There's a pretty good safety margin built in to modern rifles.....and our ammo is part of that safety margin. Using borderline loads can go just fine for quite some time......but every once in a while something can happen. Too much neck tension, throw an extra grain of powder in on accident.....a little moisture in the chamber or dirt in the barrel....and suddenly you have an "incident".

Will it blow up the gun? Maybe, maybe not. Quite often not. But it doesn't take a catastrophic failure to ruin a hunt or a day out shooting. Stick a case in the chamber and tear off the rim trying to extract it. Blow a primer and get a face full of gas. When a guy sees a few of these things in person, the desire to load at the ragged edge goes away quickly.

It's not even so much about my own safety, but the safety of kids or friends when they shoot my rifles.

Yet you went straight to telling me my bolt with fly out through my head.

[bleep] it. I give up. It's like talking to a teenager.

Sure the bolt through the head might have been a bit of hyperbole. But what the hell is the difference between a bolt through the head, an exploded action or barrel, or an 80k psi blast of gas to the face when you're the shooter? It's bad news either way, doesn't really matter about the details. And the rifle coming apart and sending the bolt flying isn't just speculation.....there's a pretty good dent in a building made by a rifle bolt, behind the shooting bench at Western Powders just up the road from me, where one of their guys was testing a wildcat....the rifle came apart due to an overload and blew pieces all to hell and gone.

I re-barreled the Kimber for two reasons. One, the original in .338Fed was too much fun out of such a light rifle. The other was balance. In original form the front floated around more than I like. Never handled a smaller hole .223 and it may not be that big of a deal in that case.

However, have a Nula .223AI and wish I would have gone a little heavier on the barrel for balance. Don't have to mash a .223AI to have fun with it. Especially when I go 5plus rounds and forgo the the trimming. About the only advantage I see between the two, in that a friends Daughter has taken a few Deer very cleanly with her .223 and TTSX bullets. But even a little extra speed with negligible recoil increase, isn't a bad thing when it comes to shooting Deer with either.