Bergara & their new... No Gunsmithing Barrels...
Don’t overdo it with the grease or it will accumulate inside the action near the lugs – it’s a pain to remove. Now, slide the recoil-lug onto the tenon-thread (noting the witness mark) and carefully screw on the action. STOP – if any sign of binding occurs – remove the action and clean the action threads again.
With the barrel ‘snugged up’, you can clamp the barrel in your barrel-vice. Now, insert the ‘go’ gauge into the chamber – as you would a cartridge – and gently close the bolt. (The bolt should be free of the spring, firing-pin and bolt-face ejector pin) If it won’t close, back off the barrel a little until it will close. If the bolt closes, screw in the barrel a little more until you can feel it up against the ‘go’ gauge. If we were to lock- up the barrel-nut at this point, we would have zero headspace. We therefore need to back off slightly. Now, with recoil-lug and action witness mark aligned, fit your action-wrench to the front-ring of the action, carefully locating the recoil-lug in the recess in the action wrench.
Remove the ‘go’ gauge and apply a ‘strap wrench’ to the barrel-nut and nip up the barrel. Nip up? A bit vague that I admit but it’s one of those things that comes from practice and experience. I’d like to be able to quote torque figures but would it really help?
Now, insert the ‘go’ gauge. If the bolt closes, eject it and slip in the ‘no go’ gauge. If the bolt won’t close, we are pretty well spot on for our headspace. If it closes on the ‘no go’ gauge, then we need to screw in the barrel a little more. It’s ‘trial & error’ really - as the headspace changes as you do up the barrel-nut but, not too difficult and after a few attempts, I had the nut tightened and the gauges indicating correct headspace. Before you remove the wrenches and congratulate yourself, a final check that the witness marks are exactly aligned.
The whole job has taken me about an hour and there we have it – a new stainless-steel barrel fitted for under £400!
The Bergara came with a pre-threaded muzzle – a useful saving.
Having done it the easy way, now we’ll do it the hard way! Target Shooter writer Chris Parkin was talking to me recently about re-barrelling his 243 Remington stalking rifle with a new fluted Bergara. He was asking that many questions that I finally said “Why not come and do it yourself?” Now Chris didn’t need asking twice and a week or so later we were in the workshop with Chris’s new barrel spinning in the lathe but I’ll let Chris take up the story...
Originally, it was a stalking and foxing rifle but I think when this project is done, the role of this gun will change slightly. I bought a 6mm/243 Bergara barrel from Fox Firearms and chose to re-define the build of this rifle somewhat. It had served well for three years and had only cost me £250 so owed me very little but, the factory barrel was now shot out. It was a sporter barrelled Remington 700 CDL with a detachable magazine but it was going to morph into something a little more competition - or at least long range vermin - orientated.
Up to now, a McMillan stock had been sourced and that, plus a Jewel trigger, Accuracy International compatible bottom metal/magazine system, fully bedded, was going to support the Remington varmint profile 26 inch Bergara barrel. Chambered in 243 Win. again but this time with an 8 inch twist rate, it stood to be more suitable for the 105-107gr match bullets. It is often interesting to see if deliberately fast twist rates
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