Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Ordering a barrel

I am going to order a stainless 6.5mm Benchmark barrel for my model 7. Is there any advantages to ordering it finished to length, fluted, threaded and chambered? I see that some barrel makers offer these services. Or is it just better to get a blank and get a gunsmith to do it all?

M7R, in my opinion ,,, the short answer is to ask your gunsmith.
I have had 4 custom barrels put on my hunting rifles and with each one the gunsmith had their own request.
One guy wanted to do all the work himself...another guy wanted the barrel to be delivered 90% finished so he only had to install and chamber it.

Find out the smiths preference. If you trust him go with it. If you don't get a new smith.

Personally I would put in the order for a fluted blank and let the smith do the rest.

If something was to go wrong it falls back on the smith to make it right. With a prefit the smith could blame Benchmark and vice versa. Nobody wins in that situation.

When your smith does the work he can thread the barrel tenon to precisely fit your action.

I have mostly put on tapered barrel blanks, but I have put on some short chambered and long chambered barrels.

I have not got involved with renting reamers, but I have seen it with other guys chambering rifles. They rent a reamer. It takes forever to show up, they are only supposed to have it for 3 days, it is the wrong reamer, they get the right one, it is dull.....what could go wrong?

Most of the better gunsmiths, any that I would want working on my rifle, will want to thread, chamber, cut and crown it themselves so they can control the quality of the operations. The exception is the fluting, generally I think most would rather have fluting done by the barrel maker because doing fluting right takes equipment that most don't have. The advice to ask your gunsmith first is right though.

Jerry at benchmark would do a good job but if I were doing it I would want to cut the chamber threads and all....

Thanks for the info guys, I ordered the barrel fluted only.