Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Rebore vs rebarrel

Besides cost, is there any advantage to reboring? If money is not an issue is rebarreling always a better option? .308 to .358 if it matters.

My rebore .30-06 to .35 Whelen shoots as good as rifles that I have rebarreled, I was always been told that one advantage of rebored barrels is that the steel has already been stress relieved by years of firing in original caliber. At any rate I would do another rebore before I would rebarrel.

I had a rebore done once. JES did it on a Remington 700 30-06 that was Douglas barreled. It shot patterns instead of groups. After JES
returned the rifle to me it shot very good groups as a 35 Whelen.

The re-reaming process probably does at least as much "stress-relieving" as previous shooting, and probably more if the barrel didn't shoot well in the first place. That's what I've been told by more than one rebore guy, and so far my experience backs up theirs.

Plus the rifling in a rebore is cut, not button or whatever else, which generally creates the least stress in a barrel.

Can a Win M70 featherweight .308 be rebored to .358? Is there enough “meat”?

Back in the day Featherweights were made in .358 so there is enough wall thickness.

Something to consider is the original barrel. If it’s off a run of the mill standard offering, then you can gain a nicer tube at your specs.
Length, fluting, no plugged iron sight holes, stainless or CM.... the list goes on.

However, if the barrel is something special - expensive full length rib and sights, octagon, octagon to round, engraving and so forth....
Then, it’s a much better course of action (imo) to rebore and retain the original tube.

My .358 is a Sako carbine. I wanted very much to retain the original barrel and front sight, so the rebore was the way to go.
Had it been the half stock rifle version, I probably would have had PacNor tube it in SS in 22-24” length - whatever length I needed to put the balance at the front action screw or just a bit forward.

My rebore .358 is a practical gun.... not a varminter or paper puncher. It does really well with the Nosler 225 pt and even better with the Sierra offering in the same weight.

Pick your poison.......

SDHNTR,

In my experience, Jessie at JES is PEERLESS in reboring inaccurate & pitted barrels from various calibers to yet larger bores, which shoot beautifully..

My old Remington Model 760 in .30-06 shot poorly with every sort of JSP or GCCB & every sort of load that was tried in it. = When it returned from Jessie's re-boring in 9.3x62mm, it cuts one ragged hole at 150M (presuming that I do my part), using 285 grain PRVI PARTIZAN factory ammo. .

Based on my experience, several former soldiers (from what my lady calls "the Old Fart's Group") sent other rifles to Jessie.
(All of them liked the work that Jessie did for them. - I guess you could say that we are members of the San Antonio Chapter of the Jessie Fan Club.)

Also, I bought another Model 760 one afternoon before Christmas, which has a badly pitted barrel at a garage sale, for 100 bucks. - The previous owner shot a lot of corrosive WWII service ammo in it & W/O properly cleaning the rifle.
(That "garage sale reject" will before Summer will go to JES to be reborn as a .400 Brown-Whelen Improved, which is the largest bore/most powerful wildcat caliber that .30-06 brass can be reformed into. - That cartridge is a "ballistic twin" of the .404 Jeffery's.)
While I really don't need such a powerful rifle, I've always wanted one & for about 350.oo complete, I cannot resist the temptation.
It will wear an old 2.5X Leopold scope, which is also a garage sale item.

yours, tex

SDHNTR,

Btw, I don't trust any "variable power scope" to take on any creature that seems capable of mauling/clawing/stomping/eating my fragile "overage in grade" body..

ALL of my riflescopes are 1.5 to 6X fixed scopes by B&L, Kahles, Leopold or Redfield & most are over 4 decades old. Those scopes ALWAYS work as designed.

yours, tex

Have you thought about a reline instead of reboring?

I subscribed to the stress relief theory even if not accurate. The difference between a high end new barrel and most re-bores is the lapping. Most customs get drilled then lapped and rifling cut or swagged and then lapped again. A re-bore without lapping may take longer to break in or need a swabbing with JB and then borecoat to reduce fouling. After about a hundred or so rounds the differences will diminish.

"Standard" school of thought is .100" minimum on each side of the bore after reboring. Hence, a .308 + .100 + .100 = .508 min exterior barrel dia.

FWIW, add me to the list of JES rebores. I've had 3 done, and all shoot better as rebores than they did in their original caliber.

.550 is the minimum barrel diameter, he will rebore.

had one barrel done by jes would do another.

Ed

I would check the chamber and if to maximum specs I would get the back of the barrel faced off and then rebore the chamber enough to clean it up. No need to if it shot well as a 308.

I'm a newbie to the whole re-boring issue. I've only used rifles as issued. by the factory. May I ask - how much does a quality re-bore cost? I'm intrigued.

Interesting topic. I've been wondering about something similar to this. What about taking a 6.5 creedmoor and just having the chamber reamed to something like 6.5 prc and keeping the existing rifling? Obviously you'd have to do some bolt work etc.

I sent a 30-06 to JES and rebored it to a 338-06.This rifle was sent back to Remington because it shot very poor.I got it back with a new receiver and barrel and it shot a little better but not that much better.That took five months for that warranty work.I sent the rifle from Texas to JES in Oregon and had it back in less than two weeks.That rebore was well worth the $250 he charged me.It will easily shoot 1\2" groups now.I sometimes even get one hole groups.I am very pleased with the job he did for me

I have always kinda tossed around the thought of getting my mod70ot6 crf classic sporter rebored to 35 whelen.
Factory 200 gr ammo is out their easily available.
Kinda like the 200gr loadings seem like a pretty good overall hard hitting round.
Jes offers 3 4 and 5 groove rifling.
I'm geussing they recrown with the rebore service as a needed step.

4 groove seems like a good choice????
Do you just send em the barreled action w/ bolt to head space?
Or complete rifle for them to head space and test fire?

Call JES and leave a message.Jesse most likely won't answer because he's busy,but he will call you back.I had a nice chat with him about what I wanted and what his recommendations where too.He said just send him the barreled action.I added a letter with it telling him what I wanted done.He sent it back with a note that he test fired it,included the load and bullet used and it shot good.He was right,it does.