Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Reboring Barrels

The best I have found, only five US gunsmiths offer this service. Al Siegrist in MI, Wayne York and Jesse Ocumpaugh in OR, Norm Johnson in ND, and Danny Pederson in AZ. Randy Selby offers it as a service but farms the work out to the others. I spoke to Wayne, Al, and (I assume) Norm's wife today. Norm isn't not taking anymore rebore jobs for the foreseeable future. Al has somewhere between 30 and 40 barrels in the queue and Wayne has a 3-month backlog.

None of them are young, all are 65+. Who will replace them? I'm contemplating throwing my hat into the ring. I start a 10-month advanced machining course soon and then hopefully I'll have an opportunity to train with one the current reboring gunsmiths before I consider buying any equipment. In the beginning I believe it would be wise to just do .308 and 30-06 family bolt action rebores where I'd only have to neck and throat the chambers while I built the skills and confidence to do smaller calibers, complete rechambers, or other rifle actions.

Any other advice or thoughts I should consider?

Thanks, Dinny

That'd be a great idea if you can get it down, maybe
figure how to turn a 336 into a 444 like has been
mentioned in different posts.
Trying to find an affordable 444 is pretty tough
right now. Be a lot easier to find a serviceable
336 30/30 and roto rooter it


I don't know that I would try to venture real deep
into the mr sniper man rifles or the ARs right now
because of the competition. When I was trying to
get into gun work 3 decades ago, I was trying to
concentrate on shotgun work and such. I did some
work, but my finances were kicking me and I
finally let my license lapse and gradually sold off
my tools

Hopefully you'll be successful with it

Don’t restrict yourself the 308 and 3006. Re-chambering after the rebore is the easy part just about any gunsmith can do. The hard part is Rebore and you have to decide what caliber you will start at and what caliber you’ll finish. that’s where your tooling is gonna come in to play.

Mule deer did an article about rebores a couple years ago and mentioned that Pederson was looking to train someone up.

So why waste 10 months? Anything learned there can easily be taught by the smith you will shadow. They also may help you avoid bad tendencies.

The machining course was locked in already. The VA is picking up my tab via Ch. 31 VR&E. I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Besides I'll study grinding, modeling, CAM, and CNC programming and operation too.

I read that article after I spoke to Danny. He had someone lined up to sell the business too. I'm not so sure the deal went through. I'll keep calling him until he answers again. It might take me 10 months..

If you follow this advice,
learn how to exorcise the demons in the Remlins.

Do excellent work, don't be cheap.
Folks want to pay for good work, if it's cheap they will not value it as much.

I believe there would be much potential in turning crappy 30-30s into
DCLG (Dinny's Custom LeverGuns) 444s and 45-70s.

I had a 30-06 barrel from a 1903a3 and thought a 35 Whelen would be a good idea. Put the barrel back on the same receiver. I'll be an old man and will no longer want a thunder boomer before an opportunity opens up. If you learn the trade I'm sure you will have clientele.

kwg

In the latest RIFLE magazine (July 2022) Danny's advertisement for Classic Reboring still appears--and it still shows FOR SALE....

I had a similar discussion on a muzzle loading forum recently. Seems the 2 guys that are the go to guys for reboring/rerifling, are well up in age. Skills that you don’t see anymore. Barrel stubbing had some popularity for a while. Although, it seems it was more for single shots, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be done with a bolt, pump, or lever gun. Just need a donor stub, and a barrel to install. Any gunsmith with a lathe could do.

Stubbing is something else I have considered, but only for single shot rifles.

I've got his cell number

I had a S & W revolver rebored by Cliff La Bounty and a pre'64 M/70 by Randall Redman, perhaps two of the best of the old time rebore men. La Bounty sold his business several years ago and Redman is no longer accepting rebore work. Both guns shoot great and are the last that I'd sell.

I have a mod 70 Danny rebored for me. I'm using it as my main deer rifle on Kodiak. Just found some Superformance CX loads and it seems to like them. I used to spend a lot of time in his shop. He was on over his head at times with too much work. Super good guy though

What is the difference between reboring and stubbing?
Is that when you counterbore only about 6 inches of the bore at the chamber end and glue' in a new chamber with a portion of the bore? I hope I'm not way off on this one.

To me, stubbing is taking an old barrel with difficult to reproduce features, cutting it off and then boring it out to thread a new barrel into the stub. One example would be the Swiss Schmit-Rubin K31 straight pull which has special extraction cams. The barrel is removed and cut off in front of the receiver and then bored/threaded to have a new barrel fit and chambered to the stub. The chamber and rifling is all in the new barrel section and the old part is just a mounting device. I think the same is done with Contenders and other single shots.

For what it's worth, I've had two rebores done by Al Siegrist. I was wildly happy with both. He did a rechamber and a rebarrel on two other rifles. All the work is first rate. The guy won't talk your ear off, but he's a wizard at gunsmithing.

I have two 38 WCF rebores that Al did for me, one on a Ruger Flattop and the other on a S&W Highway Patrolman. They both shoot very well. My three LaBounty rifle rebores, 338-06, 35 Whelen and 9.3x62, all shoot very well too.

Nearly every good "old time" gunsmith is up in age. I often wonder who will replace them in the next 10 years or so.