Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Ever had a custom barrel that just plain doesn’t make the cut?

I agree! Load development would probably be "favorite loads off the net" or something similar. He has a great opportunity to learn here.

There have been a LOT of Carbon Fiber barrels that were junk. You can not get around machining basic principals. When you take a 1.250" barrel blank, turn it down to skinny, the bore diameter MAY open up, how much and how uniformly they open up is key.

I opt for saving weight in the stock, and working with a #2 or #3 contour, short vs Carbon wrap.

2"-3" groups at 600 is not difficult from a hunting rifle, and stuff is not hard to kill with good bullet placement.

Stick is indeed a psychic. Stick, for all his strong personality traits, has been a good help to me on items dealing with photography. When he chimed in on this thread regarding my barrel issues I messaged him.

He was generous enough to give several suggestions and I took a look at them. As it turns out, my front floor plate screw was making contact with one of my my bolt lugs. Not a little…a lot. I made an assumption that this was looked at when my new barrel was screwed on (or before) but it wasn’t. I made damn sure to make the gunsmith aware of this.

I had recently ordered some Hammer bullets for this 300 mag and loaded a few rounds up. Nothing too scientific. Just backed off two grains from what the rifle’s “some of the time” preferred load was with 165 grain Ballistic Tips. I ground off the excess screw length. Smoothed it up and ensured enough was removed to eliminate contact with the bolt lug.

The thrown together load shot a four shot group just a hair over0.4” c to c.

She seems to have settled down now and I made sure to message Stick thanking him for his suggestions. Comments made by others contributing to my thread were sincerely appreciated as well.

Moral of the story: never be too proud to ask for help.

Pic below shows the offending floor plate screw polished by my bolt lug. Deer Lord…

Nice! I guess if you worked that bolt enough the problem would have gone away. 😂

YUP, Stick has helped me in the past too. He knows rifles.

Stick is worth having his own TV show or at least his own Gun Gack publications.

'Stick helped me out recently with brass that I was in dire straits for.

I've said it on here before but once again....thanks, 'Stick! -Al

Not on network TV…..too much to censor.

Agreed! Work that bolt a few more thousand times, a little valve grinding compound and I’d be good to go!

I've loonngggggg been in the business of procuring used rifles that "don't shoot" and I've yet to see it be the barrel. Hint................

Have your gunsmith slug the barrel then scope it …

he should be able to tell you if it has problems or not…

Slugging tells you the most on performance….

How/where do you Drooling CLUELESS Fhuqktards Dream this schit up?!? Hint.

Fhuqking LAUGHING!..............

You just might talk me into a .264 Win Mag.

Got any pictures of game in the field?

Shall I prime the pump?

Squirms,

That isn't a Pre-64. Hint.





You are doing "Great!". Hint.

Fhuqking LAUGHING!..............

No that's an old school McMillan G-30 back when Kelly was alive and Rock was making the actions.

But your .264 Win Mag pictures still are not loading.

More pump priming? Notice Gold Rings?

Squirms,

I've multiple Gale handles,as well as Kelly and lastly Ryan. Dick Davis mediated much and I've multiple M40A1 returns thusly. Hint.

Rock botched receivers and was sued. Hint..............

LOL.

Those are just names to you.

I sat in Kelly's office and discussed stock design with him and Dick.

The Rock produced G30s are the best 700 cloneish actions. Button and blade ejectors. Proper Fluting.

But all that aside your .264 Win Mag field pictures are still failing to load.

It's like watching two retarded monkeys slinging shyte at each other ...

It's sickening but you can't look away because it's fkn hilarious ...


Ahahahahahahaaaa !

Pardon reality. Hint.............

Here's a low mileage barrel that I'm repurposing right now. It's from a late '70's-early '80's LV BR rig....this barrel has been rattling around in my barrel rack for a long time. It was originally done by noted BR 'smith H.W. Creighton as a .222. Later on, it was redone to a 223-38 by none other than Ferris Pindell. It was done as a glue in floating action setup....no recoil lug and the barrel was glued into the stock and the action was free of any contact. You can still see the evidence of the epoxy on the barrel. Note the .010 headspace 'shim' that was common in that era. The nastiness on the threads is dried up anti seize.









Here it is now, reborn and rechambered to a big case .224. Since no recoil lug was used initially, all that was needed was to work the math backwards. A .250 lug thickness on the Mack Bros. and taking into account the non-existant recoil lug thickness....all that had to happen for proper bolt nose clearance was to bring the shoulder forward .040. The light orbital sanding preserved all the history markings on the barrel. Initial f-forming went well. I added a center action screw to the Mack Bros. Gen1 single shot action and the tang will be floated. 'Moby Grape' got the nod as a stock.

Damn, I am going to go against my better judgment and make a comment here.

Dead critter pictures and mechanical expertise can be mutually exclusive. I am not sure if AL N poses in hero pictures, but if someone wants to say he doesn't know rifles because of that, they are dumber than a box of door knobs.

I ain't kissing Stick's ass here, but the man knows rifles and kills schit too.

John B, you sure have taken some nice critters. So what. You crazy too.

I have a 1:8 Krieger in 223AI @ 26" Rem Varmint contour that's been the most finicky aftermarket bbl I've had. In FF'd Lapua brass using 75gn A-Max it didn't like H335 or R-15 powder. Tried H380 and it's very accurate.

I don't have enough examples of any bbls factory or aftermarket to start drawing hard and fast conclusions on any of them. Couple from Brux, a Rock Creek button/production bbl, and several from Lilja. Lately I've ordered Lilja because they have so many factory duplicate contours available without any drama. Everything except the Krieger previously mentioned has shot well with pretty much anything I've tried whether it's been FF loads or "experimenting". Typically I have an idea of the projectile I want to use, just need to find preferred powder in the correct burn rate.

I've got a 700 SPS Tact. 308 factory bbl that looks like rumble-strips on the side of the highway but it shoots 155gn Scenars very well, it's an easy rifle to hand to anyone and expect them to shoot it well.

1st step on either a new rifle, new bedding/stock, or new scope mounts is to check bbl/channel clearance or mating depending on your bedding method. Make sure you're action-screw holes in the stock are clear so you're mating the lug/stock properly and not "headspacing" the whole works on the action screws and some hardened goo not meant to be there. Those are quick and easy, this next one gets skipped FAR to often. Remove every scope & stock mounting screw. Polish/lightly grind the bottom of every screw shiny. Pull out the sharpie, run every screw in, then back out and look for anywhere sharpie has been removed thus denoting contact where it ought not be. Depending on what you're working with, screws of improper length can contact the bbl tenon, bolt lugs, or the bottom of the action itself, feigning "tight" when what you've actually got is an inadvertent tuning fork from which no good will come.