Pricing to chamber barrel and install

[wildcatter]

For what its worth you do not have a very high regard of a machinist/ toolmaker.
For someone who spent decades in a manufacturing environment being a machinist/toolmaker using a reamer to achieve high tolerance details in metal is not a particularly difficult operation.

It is important to understand that most gunsmiths do rely on a machinist who is specializing, making, grinding reamers to to very high precision( hopefully)that a gunsmith uses to chamber a barrel.
So really the chamber will not be more accurate than the reamer the machinist made.

Also based on my experience prices do not always reflect the the quality of work you get.
I have barrels chambered by top gunsmiths that shoot well ( high price), I have barrel where cambering costs were lower but the barrel shoots awesome .1-.2 , I also have a factory criterion remage barrel $375.00 delivered that shoots 3 inches at 500 meters with factory Berger ammo.

Just my 2 cents....

That won't get ya much at 600 yard local match from a bunch of old local shooters where I shoot. But they spend the money on Smiths that have proven their worth.

We have many here, but ive seen we have some that think a machinist is a gun smith too,,,,

 

[long40shot]

I just had a Rem 700 trued up, barrel chambered and the muzzle threaded. $650

 

[VA_XTC_Shooter]

Was it the 1/2" shorter barrel??? Maybe, but the fact is, it cleaned better as well according to him. Yes again maybe it had smoothed out a little more with a few more rounds in it.

How did cleaning up the chamber or cutting it back to rechamber have anything to do with how the barrel cleans??

 

[wildcatter]

How did cleaning up the chamber or cutting it back to rechamber have anything to do with how the barrel cleans??

That barrel set in my safe for 25 years or more, a Pence, HAND CUT RIFLED HV CONTOUR 27.5" LONG. I took it off after 1200+ rounds of some extremely HOT 6mm AI loads getting all the speed I could from lighter bullets. Accuracy was still in the .5 and .6 inch moa.

Over 4" of alligator back, in the throat out then smoothing out from their. The barrel was also Frozen by Cathy Bond at Cryo Plus, all new to barrel treatment in the late 90's.

By getting rid of the worst part of a highly abused throat and into some less affected bore, I was once again in pretty fresh bore for a clean throat.

I have 4 of those Pence Barrels, and today the are shot sparingly, but if they start opening the groups up, and throat fouling becomes an issue, I'll spend the money for another chamber job, just keep em doing what they do so well since I can't get em made anymore. At least till I see that no longer works, or I run out of enough meat to thread.

 

[Will Henry]

About forty years ago, my dad gave me a copy of "Advanced Gunsmithing", by W.F. Vickery, who was a gunsmith in Boise, Idaho. The book was printed in 1940. Inside the front cover, Dad had written a note; this note addresses the original topic, sort of.
He wrote: "W.F. (Wayne) Vickery was a customer of my father, Henry D. Leeper, in his automotive shop on 12th St. in Boise, Idaho.
In about 1941, Wayne re-barrelled my first high power rifle, a Model 93 7x57 Mauser. The barrel was a new Remington barrel. The total, which included the fitting and chambering of the barrel, altering the bolt handle, and supplying and installing a new Lyman receiver sight, came to 25.00".
To put things in perspective, I always like to try and equate costs with how much work a common laborer, would have to perform to afford a given item. At that time a hundred bucks a month was damn good wages so that work, including parts, cost Dad about a week's wages, or a little more. WH

 

[Dimner]

About forty years ago, my dad gave me a copy of "Advanced Gunsmithing", by W.F. Vickery, who was a gunsmith in Boise, Idaho. The book was printed in 1940. Inside the front cover, Dad had written a note; this note addresses the original topic, sort of.
He wrote: "W.F. (Wayne) Vickery was a customer of my father, Henry D. Leeper, in his automotive shop on 12th St. in Boise, Idaho.
In about 1941, Wayne re-barrelled my first high power rifle, a Model 93 7x57 Mauser. The barrel was a new Remington barrel. The total, which included the fitting and chambering of the barrel, altering the bolt handle, and supplying and installing a new Lyman receiver sight, came to 25.00".
To put things in perspective, I always like to try and equate costs with how much work a common laborer, would have to perform to afford a given item. At that time a hundred bucks a month was damn good wages so that work, including parts, cost Dad about a week's wages, or a little more. WH

Excellent post. Per google:

$25 in 1941 = $526.23 in 2023.

Which is very close to what it would cost nowadays, maybe not including the cost of the Lyman receiver sight itself.

 

[urbanrifleman]

Excellent post. Per google:

$25 in 1941 = $526.23 in 2023.

Which is very close to what it would cost nowadays, maybe not including the cost of the Lyman receiver sight itself.

My Dodge Ramcharger Lone Star fully loaded when I brought it brand new in 2001 was $21,000. You would be lucky to be able to buy that truck now for $65,000.
Brisket was 99 cents a pound.
Eggs were 49 cents a dozen.
Gas was 1 dollar a gallon from the time I was in high school in the 1980s until 911. Now people are celebrating being under $4.

My Kreiger 7.7 ar15 barrel in 1997 was $425.

Honestly, if prices were keeping up with actual inflation, chambering would be closer to a $1000.

 

[ISS]

wow! bolt gunsmiths get a lot more. My Borchardt action is getting a new barrel, fch'ed, and a buttstock and forend done for about $1500...

I need to stop having anymore bolt guns built; since I will probably not get back to Africa again. Twelve years ago a well known gunsmith built me a 404 Jefferys on a Mauser 1909 Argentine for two-grand, and all I provided was the action.

ISS

 

[urbanrifleman]

I had my shop built here at the house, and I plainly told that prices on shops like mine had pretty much doubled (or more) since COVID. Concrete has doubled. Electrical has more than doubled. Wood products went as high as ten times normal. Prices have not returned. They never will either at this rate.

Actual inflation since COVID is probably about 50%. Since 2000 is about 300%.

 

[Pete Wass]

What a lot of us, meaning retired folks don't see is wages have increases dramatically since we retired. For many of us, our incomes haven't increased proportionately. In a time when long haul truckers are being payed more then 100K per year, well you see where I am coming from here. We are behind the TIMES. We are idling.

 

[LuvDog]

I had my shop built here at the house, and I plainly told that prices on shops like mine had pretty much doubled (or more) since COVID. Concrete has doubled. Electrical has more than doubled. Wood products went as high as ten times normal. Prices have not returned. They never will either at this rate.

Actual inflation since COVID is probably about 50%. Since 2000 is about 300%.

This is true. We started a basement remodel project in 2019. After Covid hit, friends of ours wanted to do their basement too. Similar project to ours - slightly less sq footage... 3x the cost.

Prices are never going back.

 

[LVLAaron]

At least 2x4's are back to normal prices. Those things were 10 dollars for a while.