Bergara & their new... No Gunsmithing Barrels...
A lot to learn I had never even seen a barrel being chambered and fitted before, never mind done the work myself. I’m a materials engineer, competent tweaker, stock twiddler and mechanic but, not having had access to a lathe since school, never a machinist. I was warned what clothing to wear on THE DAY as cutting-oil may well be erupting generously upon chambering!
The first task to be handled was a few measurements of stock and barrel to decide if we were to shorten the blank at all to make sure the minimum amount of stock inletting was needed, although this stock was already profiled to accept a similar barrel. I was going to stick at 26 inches as you can normally shorten later but as this blank was fluted, there were only a couple of inches spare at the muzzle to trim off. We needed to plan in advance if anything was to be taken off at the chamber end but I decided to stay at 26 inches. Weight would not be an issue but velocity at long range is never to be ignored.
Next step was to remove the existing barrel – they don’t shift easily but eventually it came off and was consigned to the scrap-bin!
We only have a couple of millimetres to stop the lathe before the threading tool crashes into the barrel shoulder!
are still able to handle the lighter vermin loads without premature failure of the lighter expanding bullets - I find it can indicate the internal finishing quality of the barrel. The gun was no longer to be a stalker but a true varmint/target rifle and would hopefully be accurate, I certainly hoped for better than the `factory` format.
35
As most gunsmiths agree, the initial `clocking` of the barrel blank when inserted through the lathe headstock is of paramount importance. At both ends of the headstock, dial test indicators (DTI’s) are used to centralise the bore - not the external profile of the barrel - to ensure absolute concentricity to within one-tenth of a thou. Bores are never concentric to the outside profile and neither is the bore itself completely true or straight. Therefore, this operation can be quick or slow depending on each particular barrel but I was assured by Vince, who was patiently adjusting the spider chuck in 0.0001 inch increments, that mine was pretty good.
This is an economy project!
At this point we should perhaps break to explain the economics of re-barrelling a rifle. Vince has all this gear and does it purely for fun - but only on his own guns and his ‘projects’ for the magazine and, as he has oodles of time to spare, has no worries about doing
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