shot out 30-06 should it be rechambered

[300sniper]

I think he was giving you a hard time about combining a dimentional measurement with an anglular measurement.... ;-)

 

[oscer]

Under 4000 rounds I would normally expect rifling to still be in decent shape- but you say it doesn't look that way.

Set-back and re-chamber is sometimes done, but I'm not as quick to say "go for it" just because it's a "free" barrel. Isn't your time, worth $$? You'll be kicking yourself if you spend hours on the work- more than you'd spend on threading and chambering a new barrel- only to find out that the bore/rifling is worn to the point that it wan't a feasible project from the beginning.

If it were sent to me, I'd use a gage pin in the bore to determine if it's still .300- or if it's worn. If that shows excessive wear, I'd slug the barrel and mic it to determine the groove diameter as well. No point in all that work if it's now a .309-.310 groove barrel instead of .308. Like I said, unlikely- but that's based on your observation.

Good idea, a.301" minus pin gauge won't go into the bore,so I'm going to go for it, as 300 sniper said the experience alone will make the time well spent. I was comparing the rifling with that of a factory Remington, when compared to an Obermyer barrel it doesn't look much different at all.

 

[paperpuncher]

Thanks for the replies folks,
It is a free barrel, I don't have a borescope. The barrel is about 30" long so I could cut about an inch and a half off the breech and 1/2" off the muzzle and recrown it and still have about 28" of pipe left.I'll only be using it to pop whitetails from the bench in my stand, so I think I'll give it a try and see what I end up with. I've never chambered a barrel before so it will be good practice,which was the original idea but I had hoped to end up with a decent shooting deer rifle when finished.

I think that is very doable and good practice, I have re-purposed several of my old match barrels to be hunting rifles for friends, cost me nothing but a little time. I will suggest that you take off as much of the chamber and muzzle end end as you can and end up at 24" to a max of 26" for an '06, the rest is just extra weight. (Most factory magnums are 26") There is a lot to
be said for short and stiff barrels accuracy potential.

 

[oscer]

I think that is very doable and good practice, I have re-purposed several of my old match barrels to be hunting rifles for friends, cost me nothing but a little time. I will suggest that you take off as much of the chamber and muzzle end end as you can and end up at 24" to a max of 26" for an '06, the rest is just extra weight. (Most factory magnums are 26") There is a lot to
be said for short and stiff barrels accuracy potential.

Thanks for the encouragement Paperpuncher, I didn't mention that I don't want to end up with an '06 though,planning to thread this barrel onto a 700 Rem action that I blueprinted a couple of years ago. It was of an '06 but I'm either going with an Ackley improved '06 or a .300 Win., thats why I brought the old Rem. .270 to .300 Win Mag. thread back up. Leaning toward an M16 style extractor and the .300.

 

[Monarchist]

It's his first time chamberibg a barrel so the time wouldn't really be wasted anymore than if it attempted it on a piece of bar stock. The value of cutting a first chamber is worth more than time, in my opinion.

+1 Nearly ALL my deer hunting was in Western PA and WBGVA. We'd zero for 150 yds, expect to take shots at 5 to 100 yds, NEVER take a shot over 200, so jest hold dead-on without worrying about range and it was more than close enuf (8 mm Mauser - several, 7 mm Rem. Mag, .300 Savage, all with Balvar 8's dialed to about 2.5X)

That's just the way the woods and lay of the land be out that way.

Still basic .30 Win / .32 Rem iron-sights meat-getter country, not like Texas or Arizona atall.

Bill

 

[oscer]

+1 Nearly ALL my deer hunting was in Western PA and WBGVA. We'd zero for 150 yds, expect to take shots at 5 to 100 yds, NEVER take a shot over 200, so jest hold dead-on without worrying about range and it was more than close enuf (8 mm Mauser - several, 7 mm Rem. Mag, .300 Savage, all with Balvar 8's dialed to about 2.5X)

That's just the way the woods and lay of the land be out that way.

Still basic .30 Win / .32 Rem iron-sights meat-getter country, not like Texas or Arizona atall.

Bill

True but Col. Whelen's Quote "only accurate rifles are interesting" still applies.

 

[Monarchist]

True but Col. Whelen's Quote "only accurate rifles are interesting" still applies.

.35 Whelen was considered the Cat's PJ's for 'brush cutting' in my mis-spent youth. Dad held onto the 8 mm Mausers (roughly .32 cal..) and heavy projos for similar reasoning.

I think resistance to twig deflection is over-rated.

BTW - my .300 Savage? Orren Bellows work, upstate NW PA, 1960's. 1/4 MOA @ 150 yds. Naturally he REFUSED our request to re-chamber to .308. Nine successive single-shot neck-shot kills for nine rounds touched-off proved him wiser that we were.

I should frame his test target one day.



Bill

 

[paperpuncher]

Thanks for the encouragement Paperpuncher, I didn't mention that I don't want to end up with an '06 though,planning to thread this barrel onto a 700 Rem action that I blueprinted a couple of years ago. It was of an '06 but I'm either going with an Ackley improved '06 or a .300 Win., thats why I brought the old Rem. .270 to .300 Win Mag. thread back up. Leaning toward an M16 style extractor and the .300.

When you order the reamer, you might consider having the throat set up for the bullet (brand and weight)that you will be using. Otherwise the reamer will come long throated for the old 220g round nose and the bullet will have a long way to jump before it kisses the rifling, IMHO the .300 is the way to go, Very accurate with the right loads, and no problem buying ammo if needed. Also I have M16 / Sako extractors in several magnums and mine have worked well for a lot of shooting. Also a lot easier than trying to cut that tiny-a**ed groove for the Remington

 

[oscer]

That's a good point Paperpuncher, I already have a PPG 300 win reamer, bought it used a while back. After reading your post ,I set a mic. to .300 and slid it back toward the case mouth on the reamer till it touched. The freebore appears to be about 1/4". Im not sure where the ogive begins on the various bullets though. probable will be shooting 180 grain partitions.

I decided to go with the .300 and ordered the M16 styl extractor from Brownells this morning.

 

[oscer]

The Badger M 16 style extractor arrived the other day and I got around to installing it today.It went pretty well,except there are some discrepancies between the print that comes with the extractor and the one I downloaded from PT&G. I went by the Badger print,don't think the PT&G would have worked it calls for a 45* angle where the Badger print says 30* plus or minus 30'.

 

[wesg]

Most of the Winchester cartridges (maybe all) have a throat that's a straight taper from a bit over bullet diameter at the mouth of the case. No 'freebore' as we know it, which is present on most of the Remington cartridges FWIW.

The straight taper appears to go way back in cartridge design, as a lot of the old time stuff has it, as well as the 30-06.

If 'I' were going to spec a .300 chamber for myself, I'd go with the freebore type throat just because ...

 

[GGaskill]

For what it's worth, I would use a 1° leade and only enough freebore to allow seating the heaviest bullet I would use at the seating depth I want. It is best to engage the rifling as soon as possible.

 

[oscer]

For what it's worth, I would use a 1° leade and only enough freebore to allow seating the heaviest bullet I would use at the seating depth I want. It is best to engage the rifling as soon as possible.

My reamer appears to have a slight taper as you describe. I may end up buying a throating reamer before I'm through.

 

[paracongo308]

You need a bore scope to really see how torched and the depth of the throat erosion. I have a 6.5x47L rifle with 4,747 rounds fired through it, even though the erosion is close to 3" long the barrel still will hold less then a 3/8" MOA on average. Even setting back my barrel a inch would never give me a good throat. You have to determine what your accuracy needs are before doing anything to your rifle.

Got a chance to re-chamber the throat on my barrel that was heavily eroded. Setback was 3 inch which leaves me with a 24 inch long barrel now. This barrel has 4,747 rounds fired through it and is just to extend the barrel life until I re-barrel with a new Bartlein that I have. This is a sectional view and looking at the throat area with a bore scope you can see the heat cracking in the grooves.

 

[oscer]

Thanks for posting that paracongo308, I can only cut about 1 3/8" off of this barrel and it may be an endeavor in futility as far as accuracy goes but I want to do it for the experience. I Have a 6.5 Obermeyer barrel that I want to chamber to 6.5/284 and screw onto a Pierce action. If I mess up this burned out '06 I'm only out a little time in the shop. So far I've learned a lot blue printing the Remington action and changing the bolt face and extractor for the mag cartridge. If it doesn't shoot I'll screw it off the receiver and start over with a new barrel but I'll have at least a little experience to go on. I appreciate all the advice from all you folks and I've probably learned as much reading this forum as I have in the shop.

 

[paracongo308]

For the experience I would re-chamber Oscar.

 

[wesg]

I repurposed a used .222 barrel that had ~12k rds thru it for a service rifle barrel. Cut 5" off the breech end and still had to chamber it before the cracking was gone. And that also cleaned up the land that was missing from cleaning rod wear. Currently have another 3500 rds thru it and it seems to be doing just fine.

 

[oscer]

I repurposed a used .222 barrel that had ~12k rds thru it for a service rifle barrel. Cut 5" off the breech end and still had to chamber it before the cracking was gone. And that also cleaned up the land that was missing from cleaning rod wear. Currently have another 3500 rds thru it and it seems to be doing just fine.

There's no way I can loose 5" or even 3" of barrel maybe 1 1/2" tops. I haven't got a bore scope so maybe I should take the barrel to gunsmith and have him look at it. Actually I tried to do that yesterday but picked the wrong smith he didn't have one either.

 

[oscer]

After reading about some of your throat erosions of 3 to 5" I took the barrel to a gunsmith and had him look at it. His opinion was that if I cut 1 5/8 " off of it it should yield a good throat. I did that and proceeded to machine the barrel to spec. I just finished the chamber (I think?). The bolt goes all the way closed on the go but doesn't even start to close on the no go, that"s with the receiver as tight as I can get it by hand,I'd rather have a tight chamber than one that is close to the long end of tolerance, but I wonder if it will interfere with the go gauge after it is tightened with the receiver wrench. Any advice here will be appreciated.
oscer

Edit: I forgot to ask about polishing the shoulder, it is pretty rough compared to the wall and neck areas. I took a 1/2 " dowel and turned it to the shoulder dia. then counter turned it to .298 and cut a 25* taper to match the shoulder of the chamber. I was thinking of charging it with tripoli or some other abrasive , chucking it in an Albrect chuck in the tail stock and using it to try to get a better finish.

 

[Pre-64]

The goal is to have the bolt close snugly on the go gauge once the barrel is torqued in place. You want to feel the gauge as you close the bolt without having to force the handle down. I normally torque at 90 ft-lbs and that means that I wont feel the gauge when I close the bolt on a hand tight action.

do this test, with the action hand tight on the barrel and no headspace qauge in, close the bolt and see how much movement it has forward and back, there could be 0.010 or even a bit more depending on the action. Now put the go gauge in the chamber and if you are chambered at the right depth, this back and forth movement should have been reduced to 0.001" to 0.002"

The shoulder area always looks rougher than the sides when you look down the chamber, but it doesn't mean that it needs polishing. I would never go and retouch or polish the shoulder unless I had fired the rifle and found that there was a problem with the chamber. If you had the right pilot and the rest of the chamber is fine then the shoulder should be good and your job`s done.

p.
reddnobb.com