Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only Ordering A New Barrel

When ordering a new barrel do you prefer to have your gunsmith chamber and thread it or have the barrel maker do it?

How much of an accuracy nut are you ?

How far do you want to shoot ?

If you are trying to improve accuracy, get a good barrel and a good smith…

I think everyone wants the most accurate rifle for their chambering.

In the following order:
1. get a good 'smith
2. get a good barrel
3.Ask yourself who's the most motivated insuring your rifle build is successful, barrel maker or 'smith?
4.Act accordingly.

A good barrel tends to make all the bullet weights group better.

A good chambering job, helps get the most of the barrel…

In general if a guy wants to shrink well below an inch, I don’t recommend having the barrel maker do it, some of them outsource, and many of them that have good pricing are dealing with volume work… and that will NOT match what a good smith will do.

The other big component is that a good smith will look at your rifle for other things that can impact your performance, a barrel maker probably won’t do that unless it’s a safety issue.

I thought maybe the fellow at the barrel makers must be really good at it-with all the experience or number of barrels that go through them.

Think of it as mass produced vs one off custom.

I’ve had 3 rifles rebarreled, and in each case the gunsmith ordered the barrel. Here is what they put on the rifle and how it shoots with the new barrel. All 3 rifles are built with Winchester model 70 actions, 2 of them being pre-64’s. All three wear Brown Precision stocks.

.264 Win Mag. 26” Krieger Stainless barrel with 1 in 8” twist. Shooting 127 grain Barnes LRX at 3,220 FPS, I get 0.33” groups
.338 Win Mag. 24” Lilja Stainless fluted barrel, 1 in 10” twist IIRC. Shooting Barnes 225 grain TTSX at 2,800 FPS, I get 0.75” groups.
.416 Hoffman. 22” Shilen Stainless barrel, I don’t recall twist. Shooting 370 grain Cutting Edge Raptors at 2,380 fps, I get 0.80” groups.

In each case, my gunsmith handled everything.

i want a good machinist to chamber and fit barrel to my receiver . i have had these cartridges chambered in new barrels > 17 Rem. , 22-250 , 22 B.R. , 6ppc , 2 - 6mm-284`s , 2 -243`s , 4 - 257 Weatherby`s , 2 - 6.5 - 284 , 6.5 Creedmoor , 2 - 257 Roberts , 350 Rem. mag , 257 Creedmoor , just ordered a another 25 caliber, # 4 contour , 7 1/2 twist to make a long range 257 Weatherby mag. barrel from Brux barrels too. i have used all barrels mentioned and a few more , my 2 favorite barrels are Krieger and Brux .

I think there are more lands in the bore of my Douglas 458 barrel compared to other barrels and that might stabilize the bullets better.

Pac-Nor does a pretty good job IME.

I've got two 458's with Pac-nors and two double rifles they are not bad however my two Krieger 458's shoot better and so does the Douglas.The Pac-nors all had pits or defects in the metal when new and viewed under a borescope.The Douglas was perfect under a borescope.

i have been very lucky with my Ruger #1 `s my 458 Lott shoots excellent ,458 Winchester , 416 Rigby ,405 Winchester all shoot good enough so i never have had to rebarrel these rifles ,but to be honest i don`t really enjoy shooting these rifles that much anymore .either. good luck, Pete53

Find a good smith......... Let him choose the barrel.....

My dream is to shoot my Lott offhand, with open sights, many times and get all my shots in a two inch circle at 100yds.

hope you can do the 2 inch circle at 100 yards , when i was younger maybe then but not anymore free-hand at 100 yards, good luck Pete53

Here is a pic of the CZ 550, 458WM that I want to rebarrel and touch up with some small modifications.In addition to the Douglas barrel I will be adding a red Silver's pad, cross bolt,Recknagel rear tension sight,and a Recknagel banded front sight.I might also refinish the stock with a special hand rubbed oil finish and increase the LOP of about half an inch.I've already changed the trigger to a Timney and got a new bolt handle.It had some feeding work done to reduce the size of the magazine to 458WM.I still have not decided if I want to keep it as a 458WM or rechamber it to a Lott-I already have a Lott reamer and I think it might feed better with the larger cartridges.

Have always used Pac-Nor....prob 2 dozen barrels over the years

Most recent...Savage prefit barrel only...heavy varmint SS SM 20 Practical

This was in October 2020.......today is July 15th....paid in full..along with another rechamber job

Still no barrel(s) to this day...seems always some excuse...suppliers...tooling.......

Rather disappointed..........

Just ordered one from Douglas.... three to four weeks tops.

Here is a pic of one of my three modified Rugers.This is one of the two that has a Pac-nor.I shoot cast with it and use it to practice offhand shooting with.
The second one is the one I use to shoot at the Libby shoot.I shot it yesterday and it shoots a little low at 100yds and therefore I ordered a new shorter front sight for it.