Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Old Apex barrel on a New Model 7 Build in .284

So I am in the middle of a build that started with seeing a barrel for sale. A local gunsmith with a great reputation was selling a barrel pre-threaded and chambered for a Remingotn 700 in .284 Winchester. I happen to like both, and when I found a Model 7 SS for a great price the wheels started turning quickly. I contacted the gunsmith, and he said we should give it a whirl. Sooo, I now have a 22" roughly #1 contour Apex barrel installed with 0.000" run out. I have a Wildcat Composites UL Model 7 blank on its way.
I'll post a pic later, but I am trying to understand everything I can about the Apex barrel.I understand that it is cut rifled, that the old guy that built them was out of Prescott, AZ and had a name for himself doing gain twists. Any other info someone can lay on me would be great!

One of my .221's has an old Apex barrel. It began as a .222 and was probably at least 10-15yrs old when I got it in the mid 80's. I believe it's button rifled. An excellent barrel, very accurate.

I am 99% sure Apex is still in business in Flagstaff, Az. Now run by Steve Webb, the guy who bought it from Sam May.
I have two phone numbers for them, and I am not sure which is the most current.
520-526-3671
928-853-0502

Apex started with either Sam May or Joe Pfeiffer in Californa back at the end of WWII or maybe earlier, the history is not very clear. There are photos of some of the machinery in Roy Dunlap's book, when Joe Pfeiffer was running the machinery. I have a bunch of KodaColor prints of the machinery I took when I visited Apex.

Sam May moved the business to Flagstaff sometime way back.

Then Randy Brooks bought Apex in the 80's and moved it to American Fork Utah.

Lex Webernick ran the barrel shop and built rifles for a time at American Fork, then he went on to his fame with Lightweights.

Randy Brooks decided to sell Apex in the early 90's, I happened to be in Provo at the time and toured the Apex facility when it was shutdown. Beautiful old school barrel making machinery: Two Pratt & Witney twin spindle gun drills, two P&W twin spindle reaming machines, and the prize, a huge Builders Iron Foundry cut rifling machine, looks like a Pratt & Witney "Grashopper" on steroids. And several lathes, grinders, milling machines, tool grinders, hundreds of gun drills, reamers, rifling cutters. The rifling machine was equipped with straight sine bars for constant twist and curved sine bars for gain twist. It could handle barrels over 8 feet long and bore up to 2 inches or so. I think it was a WWI vintage machine.

Steve Webb bought Apex and moved it back to Flagstaff, last I heard he was making Titanium A-10 30 mm barrels. Lost track of him, anyone know a contact? I would like to purchase some 45 and 50 caliber gain twist barrels if he is still in the "small bore" stuff.

The Late Apex barrels were known to foul. Your barrel will need a good lapping, they were lapped after rifling at Apex but could use some more, especially if a gain twist. I have lapping tools for the Apex Gain Twist barrels, a straight cast lead lap will not work. I will post photos if needed.

I think they pulled buttons when Apex was at American Fork, if so, Steve Webb wound up with the button pulling equipment. The big cut rifling machine had been converted to hydraulic operation and it could also pull buttons.

Wow, that is a history lesson and a half! Thanks fellas. I still owe you all pics and I will get that done.
This is not a gain twist, but a 1-10" I believe. I havent used the rod to check it yet.
As far as lapping, make a cast plug and push it back and forth with JB? I am not a lapping type of guy.
So it is likely that this barrel was last made under Randy Brooks' ownership then? It better shoot the TTSX's I have.....

For a long time, Sam May was cutting the rifling using a broach. This allows a single pass rather than the repeat cut in modern cut rifling as used by Kreiger, Bartlien etc. It is not the same as button rifling which does not remove material but swages the imprint of the rifling into the barrel blank. The broach removes material.

I would not be shocked to learn that Randy Brooks converted to button rifling but the machines described will cut or broach.

Steve Webb is/was doing cut rifling, and according to him they had Sam May come in to teach the in's & out's of his tooling.

Sounds like a neat build who is your gunsmith?

An original Apex custom from late 50s - early 60s.

Mitch Kendal did the metal work. I am going to wrap up the stock. Talley's and a Zeiss Conquest with Z600.
Should weigh roughly 6.5lbs all in.
Like I said, I need to post some pics!

I saw a couple of broaches when I was in the Apex facility, but I would say nearly all of the brarrels were cut rifled. Dozens and dozens of rifling cutters in racks on the wall adjacent to the big rifling machine.


The capability was there to pull buttons, but I am pretty sure no button rifled barrels were made for selling. From talking with Randy I think they were getting close to setting up a button puller about the same time when Apex was shut down. There was a big hydraulic broach in the building that had not been set up in production, it came from Ogden surplus. It could pull broaches or buttons. Also in the building were two tracer milling machines from Ogden, they were to be set up for machining drop boxes for big bore bolt actions. But Alas, all the plans went astray when Lex went out on his own and Apex in American Fork ceased to be.

Apex was a real neat old school barrel shop. They had made many big bore gain twist barrels, a pair of .750 barrels had just been completed and sent off to Europe for the building of a .750 double, this was long before H&H came out with their .700.

That may well be a Joe Pfeiffer built rifle. Joe was one of the best in his time, he was called "The California Rifle Maker." He had maybe 6 to 10 machinists/gunbuilders working for him, they did it all from making the barrels to carving stocks from the blanks.

About 12 years a guy walked into my shop with 4 Pfeiffer barrel blanks in a wood box, straight cylinders with no threads or chambers. Pfeiffer and the bore/twist was stamped on the end of each. Wow! what a find. One is on my 35 Whelen.

Straight twist works OK for a cast lead lap. I would run a bore scope down the barel first to see what you have. JB is pretty fine, you may need to start with a Clover brand lapping compound in fine grit and see how it comes out.



My lapping tool. Big handles and there are two angular contact ball bearings back to back with a spacer inside the body. Note the grease fitting!
The sleeve on the barrel is threaded to fit the barrel, it guides the rod and has an adjustable stop inside to keep the lap in the bore on the return stroke. A empty case is drilled for the rod and is held inside the chamber by a teflon spacer, this keeps lapping compound out of the chamber. And there is an adjustable stop on the rod to keep the lap in the bore at the muzzle. I can get a barrel very warm to the touch with this rig, a cleaning rod is not sturdy enough!

I have rods for different bore sizes, they screw into the lapping handle spindle and are secured with a setscrew.

A 1950 Popular Mechanics article about Joe Pfeiffer's operation.

http://books.google.com/books?id=r9...mp;q=joe%20pfeiffer%20rifles&f=false

As I promised, here are some pics as of today. Its looking to weigh in at 106oz all in. That is..... 6 5/8lbs

The .284 feeds slick as it ever has for me.




Wildcat Composites Model 7 UL (weighs 17oz pictured with 13.5" LOP. Bolt is 8 helical flutes, with the shroud put on a diet.
22" Apex
Talley Lows and Zeiss Conquest 3-9x40 Z600

Man that is gonna be slick, but I am partial to the model 7s.

That looks like a really nice build. I have heard good things about your gunsmith hopefully I can get him to do some work for me in the future. The Wildcat stocks are supposed to be as good as anything coming out of the U.S. these days how do they feel and handle?

If my memory is correct, I seem to remember Jack O'Connor using both Apex and the other barrels mentioned here. I can't pronounce the names and I sure am not going to try to spell them.

I might be wrong, but I don't believe that any of the well known barrel makers used a broach. If they did, I don't think they would have used a broached barrel on one of their top of the line barrels.

Be nice. It was a long time ago.

How well are you liking the Wildcat Composites stock?

I have one on my .280AI,it's very light and stiff.Finishing the blank is similar to finishing a Bansner. Monashee