Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing What Route Should I Take With My Barrel and Nut!!!!

Well this is my first rifle with a barrel nut and I need some direction on what is the correct direction to my goal. This is what I have, Shilen built DGR rifle in 243 Win. with a Remage barrel nut, 26" long, straight taper to a muzzle dia. is 0.82", Stiller action. Really is a beauty of a rifle, but WAY to forward heavy. I knew this going into the buy, but I have quite a few heavy weight 6mm's and I need a lightweight walking varmint rifle.
My goal is a sporter weight barrel at about 0.65" dia. and may elect to cut it back to 23" or so. Local gunsmith says he can taper it down, but due to stress in machining may not shoot very good afterwards. Is this true in regards to the stress. I do not have a barrel nut wrench or barrel vise yet. Not sure if it is possible and what may be all involved, but is it possible to get rid of the barrel nut completely using this barrel?
Just looking to really lighten it up on the barrel end and not sure if I like this barrel nut setup yet. One final note is I just love accurate rifles, and if it is not accurate in the end, it's going down the road.
What are my options with this setup? Am I missing anything? Also looking to keep the cost at a minimum.

Thanks for all the help.

Sell your current barrel and put the funds toward a new barrel.

This.

Or go though the motions of cut and contour, not be happy, and then sell it.

I would suggest keeping the shilen barrel. Especially if it is a good shooter. Buy a new sporter weight barrel set up with the shank to suit the remage barrrel nut. it won't cost that much depending on which barrel you buy.

Not a gunsmith but I would leave the nut on. You can order prefit barrels and mount them yourself at a considerable savings over convention shouldered fitting and head spacing.
I would order the contour you like from Shilen and see if that is what you want before altering the stock. I would also see if they can re-contour your barrel.

There would be some advantage to having a light and a heavy barrel set up if you can live with the stock gap. Another alternative is a custom contour to match your existing barrel till the fore end of the stock and then taking a straight taper to 0.650 or smaller from that point.

With your existing barrel a couple of ounces could be taken off by going 24 inches or shorter and a few more by fluting the barrel.

Regarding stress, many will say that it’s OK to carefully contour a button rifled barrel, not so much a cut rifled barrel. As an example, Hart will recontour one of their barrels, which are button rifled. I believe Shilen is button rifled. I would personally heed your local gunsmith’s advice and leave it alone, especially if it’s a good shooter. You might be able to get rid of your barrel nut if there is enough 1.2” diameter beyond the nut. Some Remage setups are on a shouldered “tenon”, but most are contoured starting at the 1.06 shank diameter. So, it depends. Again, your Smith could look at it and tell you.

There are some excellent prefits setup for Remage and you can order the contour you want. I’ve had good luck with X-Caliber stuff, but there are also others. There is nothing wrong with a barrel nut, lots of Savages out there that are deadly accurate. If you want rid of the nut and want a shouldered barrel, then it’s a job for your smith for sure. It’s been my experience that a prefit, by the time it’s done, really doesn’t cost much less than getting a conventional barrel install. Especially if you’re planning on buying a wrench, vice, and headspace gauges for a one time install. It’s really cool if your doing a lot of switching though.

Hope that helps. Looks like you’re starting with good stuff.

The whole point of the nut is to swap barrels as desired, for me it makes experimentation easy (calibers, rifling twists and style, contour, length, etc.). Here is what I started with: Everything can be swapped in and out as needed:
Savage Precision Target Actions. Many more have been added since:



Don't forget that the Savage, 783 Remington, and I believe the Shilen action, can have bolt heads exchanged for complete cartridge family swaps. Here is a dual port Savage action, loads from the left and ejects on the right, that was set up for .243 WSSM and is one of the most accurate varmint rifles I have, delivering groups of around .187" for 10 shots at 100 yards when I do my part and not shooting in gale force sleet in Oregon.



Then this can be extended to Remington 700 actions. This one was a bare 700 Action from Brownell's with a Pac-Nor barrel and nut that uses the Savage wrench, the action was equipped with Greg Tannel's dual pin recoil lug, and had the bolt bushed and sleeved:



The above rifle is shown here with a .308 Winchester Pac-Nor 1:10" twist polygonal rifled barrel, but also has a Pac-Nor .22-250 Remington Ackley Improved barrel, that uses the same .308 Win. magazines.

If you are a glutton for punishment, even the Remington 783 can be modified, here with a Criterion .25-06 Remington barrel and nut from Northland Shooter Supply, and Boyd's stock tricked out, the OEM .30-06 barrel is shown below:



And just for giggles and wows, even the ubiquitous AR-15 platform can be cobbled together with different barrels (made around separate uppers), such as this one with a Hart 24" 1:9" twist .204 Ruger barrel with no gas port so it functions as a bolt action. In this case a side cocking upper receiver is used. Since this photo was taken this rifle has blossomed into three, with uppers in .223 Wylde, all as bolt actions. All shoot at or below .5" at 100 yards, are not assault weapons and great for varmint:



Sometimes I feel like a nut, and it's just too much fun. Barrels are from Brux, Criterion, Hart, Krieger, Pac-Nor (their polygonal rifled barrels are superbly accurate) and Shilen. Have it your way. I was considering the Shilen action but never got around to buying one.