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BarrelingIt seems like the technology age has carried over into the custom rifle industry and a lot of benchrest techniques have carried over into the custom hunting rifle. My philosophy is; take a top quality barrel and install it straight and its going to shoot extremely well. What’s that you say – No hocus pocus – no smoke and mirrors. Not really, the main ingredient here is a good barrel. What I mean by installing it straight is; first, we prep the action by squaring up the receiver and bolt face, next I lap the bolt lugs to 80% plus contact. Once the action has all the work done to it including trueing, smoothing, new components fitted, I make up a detailed breech drawing with the proper clearances calculated for the type of rifle we are building. Now we’re ready to begin working on the barrel. Ideally, I want to machine the breech in one set-up and the first step is, to indicate the bore of the barrel in a 4-jaw chuck to plus or minus .0002”. Then I turn the external dimensions and singlepoint thread. If there is one secret to precision barreling it is; the chambering reamer should always be under fluid pressure. I accomplish this by pumping cutting oil through the muzzle. With the chips being carried away the reamer is cutting, not tearing. There’s no chatter and the reamer cuts to minimum dimensions and requires minimum polishing. Chambering is complete when the bolt just closes on the go headspace gauge. The last major step is to flip the barrel around and indicate the bore again and cut the crown. I’m sure the procedure for fitting barrels sounds simple, I can assure you its very labor intensive and time consuming, but there are no dark secrets or witchcraft.
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