Rechamber Savage barrel shortcut?

[Mozella]

My 6mm BR Norma has 2100 rounds down the barrel, a Shilen Match Select barrel on a Savage large shank action. It still shoots well; however, my recent tests have shown the old gal just ain’t what she used to be.

When I plot MOA vs Date I see a trend of increasing performance over time as I developed several good load recipes. After that, there is a decreasing performance trend as the MOA and Mean Radius measurements have gradually degraded. This is exactly what I would expect as the throat and barrel are wearing out. The obvious answer is to wait until the performance I no longer acceptable, and then swap for a new barrel.

But on the way to a recent match, my shooting buddy brought up the idea of a stop-gap measure which might bring back some the precision I used to enjoy with this gun. He’s an accomplished and formally trained machinist who has done some gunsmithing for me in the past but he doesn’t claim to be a real gunsmith.

My friend was wondering this: Is it feasible to freshen up a Savage barrel by using a finishing reamer without doing anything else. In other words, even though the cost to me would be zero, both of us have other stuff to do, so the idea of cutting off the barrel, rethreading the shank, and chambering from that point is out of the question. Our time is worth more than zero. But how about using a procedure, to borrow a phrase familiar to every teen age boy involved in heavy petting to: “……..only put it in a little bit”.

In other words, does it do any good and/or is it even feasible to recut a Savage chamber by .010” or .020” (or more?) using a finishing reamer and do nothing else? It seems to me, since the Savage barrel nut system allows readjusting the head space over a rather wide range, we could freshen up the chamber without performing the other normal set-back and rechambering steps.

Of course, I’d like to hear from someone who has done this. Second best would be the opinion(s) of a real gun smith familiar with rechambering. Naturally, since this is the Internet, I’ll take wild guesses too, but if you’re a 9-year-old boy or a 37-year-old creep living in your Mom’s basement, please identify yourself as such.

 

[Ggmac]

Time for a new barrel . Consider a barrel like tires on a race car . You got great mileage from that barrel . What your considering is : hard on Reamers , not worth the set up time in the lathe ( you still need it set up and faced the amount your reamer has cut ) your chamber and load will be different unless you previously chambered this barrel with the same reamer ., you may or may not have improved your group after the work/time , if it did improve it would be for a few hundred rounds .
If any improvement is wanted , cut off at least 3"or Borescope it and cut where the fire cracking stops . With as many rounds as you have 3" is a estimate of other 6br stainless barrels I've Borescoped .

 

[fguffey]

But on the way to a recent match, my shooting buddy brought up the idea of a stop-gap measure

Mozella, And then there is that part about 'has this been done before' and the answer is yes and then there is that part; Have I ever done this before? and the answer is yes. There have been a few great smiths that have done it before, it takes some digging.

I have a reamer that increases the length of the chamber .127" from the shoulder of the chamber to the bolt face, I have three rifles that I cut with the reamer, when finished the chamber goes from an 8mm57 to an 8mm06 chamber. There is no down side to improving the chamber. Forming and fire forming is not necessary if the reloader can neck a 30/06 case neck up to 8mm.

Mistakes I have had friends that reamed 308 W chambers to 30/06, problem: They did not know the 30/06 reamer would not clean up the 308 W chamber because of the diameter of the case at the case body/shoulder juncture, meaning when finished the fired cases will be extracted with a ring around the case where the old juncture was and still is.

When working with head space and case head separation Hatcher increased the length of the 30/06 chamber by .060" +/- a few. He just knew if he increased the length of the chamber without lengthening the case from the shoulder to the case head he would get case head separation. That did not happen, when doing his test he used situation #1,#2 and #3. One of the smiths mentioned above worked on one of my rifles. before I loaded and fired the rifle I found the chamber was .016" longer than a minimum length/full length sized case from the shoulder to the case head; meaning the chamber was .011" longer than a field reject length gage. For me? Not a problem, I adjusted the 30/06 die off of the shell holder .014" and then sized 280 Remington cases to get the magic .002" clearance. With .041" to play with, how could I miss?

And then there was a friend that build 4 magnificent wildcats chambered to something like a Gibbs with a longer neck. The first thing he made was the reamer, after that something went seriously wrong. He took the rifle to different smith and they found nothing. He called and explained the problem, he wanted to know where I would start. I explained to him if the reamer was in one piece I would want to know the length of the chamber from the beginning of the rifling to the bolt face.

I drilled out the flash hole/primer pocket out of a few of his cases and then seated different bullets for test. I chambered the test rounds without a bolt and then pushed the bullets out of the case and into the rifling. The last bullet I used was a 170 bullet, I pushed the bullet out of the case and into the throat, the bullet traveled another .150"+ before it contacted the rifling. There was no way to 'freshen' up that chamber without shortening the barrel .300" or replace the barrel.

F. Guffey