Savage 30-06 take off barrel

I think a couple of points need to be cleared up.

A rough bore has nothign to do with how it shoots, it may not clean easy, it may build some copper (usually not a lot), but it shoots fine.

As button rifling is a brute force method, there is no way its not going to leave a roguish barrel (it also induces stresses)

The stresses can be (and are) relieved more or less successfully. Probably the less part is why some never can be made to shoot.

Lapping cleans up the mess, after market barrel makers do some or a lot (Shilen is good, Lother Walther is good, Criterion is reported to be good) X Caliber is better than Savage factory but not as good as the others.

Savage factory still straightens crooked barrels (it works fine to not so much). Again a possible source of a bad barrel. You can tell those by how badly they bore sight.

After market guys don't mess with a crooked barrel, its scrap (one reasons costs are higher)

Savage does not sell factory barrels on the open market.

Cut rifles are better as they do not induce stress, the top barrel makers (Lilja, Bartlein) use that method. I believe it still needs clean up.

Hammer Forged makes very smooth barrels. It also induces huge stress. They used to be mediocre shooters.

If its loose mandrel (no finishing ) then its not the greatest shooter (think Military M16 barrels). Only the big mfgs use that (costly setup). Remington uses hammer forged, I believe Ruger does.

CZ I believe hammer forges then laps to a final size.

I don't know if Remington etc uses tighter mandrel tolerances but they have gotten pretty decent shooters now.

If the stress is not relieved in the relief process, you will get a wild shooting barrel.
 
If you want a good clean and sub 1/2 MOA shooting barrel for the Savage, then a Shilen, LW or CBI would be a good way to go. You can get any profile you want.

I have a 270 pencil barrel that I have yet to get to shoot.

I think the issue with the pencils and button rifling is the major stress and the iffy relief doing that.

Originally when the button system came out, military and civilian barrel were a larger OD profile and less impact.

It also depends on if its a pull or push button.

Pencil Barrels: I can't help but think a push button makes for a poorer barrel.

Its advantage at the time was the speed you could make barres, particularly for the military.
 
Steve,
For a time I earned my wages running a broach machine.I know something about broaches.
A broach is a CUTTING tool .You start it in an existing geometry in the workpiece,usually a hole.The broach has a series of teeth,each taking a small cut.Over the length of the broach,which is often one,or two,or three feet long,the original hole in the part is transformed to the desired geometry.
It might be a keyway in a pulley,a square,a hex,splines,etc.
They area great tool!
But they have a limitation . Each tooth makes a chip.That chip cannot escape via coolant flushing .Its trapped.
Each tooth on the broach has to have enough gullet to contain the chip for the entire length of the cut.
The broach is pulled through the work piece,so just like with a tap,you have to have a core of steel to turn the tap,you have to have a core of steel to pull a broach.
On a .308 caliber "broach",how large of a gullet can you grind in the broach for chip clearance?Not enough to pull through over 20 inches of barrel.

What happens when you pack up the flutes of a tap or reamer or drill or mill cutter? It breaks.

A broach is a wonderful tool,but chip clearance limits the length of cut possible with one.

Rifle barrels are not broach cut. I don't doubt a handgun barrel,such as a1911 barrel,can be broach cut.

The common method for most production rifled barrels and some excellent custom barrels is Button rifling. A very hard button with the desired rifling form and helix is forced through a finish reamed round bore. The button forms the steel,it does not cut. It makes no chips.

Cut rifling is an excellent method for making custom barrels.It cuts chips for the full length of the barrel.The difference from a broach is that chips can be controlled with the single cutter on the end of the mandrel.

Most of us are capable of learning a variety of skills,Steve,and I expect you could learn how to lead lap a barrel .
I do not think an internet thread is the place to learn.
I do not suggest you use a hard to afford barrel you want to shoot as a practice piece.
Actually,not just every fine rookie off the street can lap barrels for Lilja or Shilen or Krieger without some training and practice.

"A little knowledge....." and "Fools rush in..."

Note,for example,barrel makers sell barrels at a supplied length,but the recommend cutting 1 1'2" or so off and recrowning. Why is that?

Because the lapping will funnel the entry. Chambering takes care of it at the breech.

While I am not a great advocate of fire lapping,David Tubbs is not a moron.
If you need to do a little improvement on a production bore,fire lapping IS a viable DYI option.

Not all grit is created equal.Particularly in regard to grit size control.
There are grits the embed,grits that break down,etc.

Coarser grits cut more clearance,larger holes,than fine grits. And,they leave their own tracks.

I'm not a fan of grit progression,as in 220 to 600,or whatever. I'd use the finish grit.
If you decide to buy the barrel,shoot it. See how it does.

If you have to tinker, I have fire lapped a rough 30-06 barrel using cast lead 30-30 bullets and diamond mold polishing compound .Only one,very fine grit.

It became a very accurate barrel.
 
A lot of good stuff up there, but a couple of corrections:

Jeephammer said:
Keep in mind that all production line barrels are made the same way, a broaching tool …
Click to expand...

Actually, Remington, Winchester, Ruger, Sako and Steyr all hammer forge barrels from steel tubes hammered against a mandrel that has the rifling pattern in it. Hammer forging produces the least material waste of all the rifling processes and improves grain orientation and tensile strength of the steel. Military barrels are also frequently made this way (look for the CHF marking, as in Cold Hammer Forged). Here's a video on hammer forging from Daniel Defense. Savage uses button rifling on most of their barrels, though they also still had two single-cut rifling machines running some production when I toured their plant a dozen years ago. Button rifling, like hammer forging, introduces stresses in the bore, but the carbide buttons, which also make the rifling in a single pass the way a broach does, last longer and never need sharpening, so it's a low maintenance cost method.


HiBC,

The rifling broaches have a lot of space between teeth, which is where the chip goes. I don't know what the length limit is. Pyramid Air put up that article, so perhaps they use it or have it used on some of their barrels.


Jeephammer said:
Aluminum oxide is REALLY sharp, and for a polish abrasive it's HARD, has a tendency to imbed in the steel (and anything else you use it on).

I actually perfer silicone carbide, cuts VERY cleanly & evenly, so I would think you are good to go!
Click to expand...

Actually, silicone carbide is harder and sharper than aluminum and embeds in soft metals, making it suitable only for steel and harder materials (like polishing rocks or rough cutting telescope mirror blanks, etc.). It it usually recommend for materials at Rc 55 and up you use nothing softer than silicone carbide, where aluminum oxide, being softer, is not recommended for anything above RC 54. Aluminum oxide cuts more slowly and doesn't micro-scratch the surface the way silicone carbide does. There is some information here. I've bought the calcined aluminum oxide mentions specifically for it being non-embedding. I have some Clover compound in aluminum oxide, and can attest to how much slower cutting it is. Brownells sells tight final fitting aluminum oxide lapping compounds and mentions specifically that they are non-embedding.


If you have a tight fitting lap in a bore, lands and grooves are cut equally by lapping with a cast lap or similar. I know someone who tried to change land-to-groove height ratios in barrels by lapping. He was in the Army and working as an armorer at the time and was able to spend weeks working at it, but the bores and grooves kept getting equally wider except for some edge rounding. This was working with cast laps.


I would be cautious that you know what your are getting with the Wheeler abrasive kit. The coarse abrasive (220 grit) can do some excessive scratching. The reason is that it is standard grade silicone carbide, which has a very wide particle size distribution. When Wheeler ripped off the NECO firelapping patent, they used 220, 320, and 600 grit, where NECO used 220, 400, 800, and 1200 grit. But that matching 220 grit coarse grade is not the same quality. NECO uses laboratory grade abrasive with a much narrower particle size range and that cuts roughly twice as fast (the result of having fewer fine particles packing around the larger ones) and also doesn't have the largest gouging particles in it. The 320 grit and 600 from Wheeler should be OK to use. There seems to be a defacto concensus that if you are going to use standard commercial grade silicone carbide compound to lap a barrel, 320 grit is where you want to go. The kit sold by Beartooth Bullets is an example and uses only 320 grit.
 
A Broach is a high angle, heavy cut tool bit mounted on a guide mandrel.
High cut angle determines how the metal comes off.
Broach angles are considered chisels, breaking chips and separate metal along grain lines many times.
There is a reason broached surfaces often have to be finished to remove the damaged, grain split metal.
Broached metal leaves behind VERY sharp break off points, and they always are pulled up, snagging & gouging anything that contacts it.

It also leaves horrendous sides on any grooves it cuts.

It IS a brute force process and it's still commonly used in bigger bore barrel making.

As for cutting steps, depends on the depth of the total cut needed.
Since a broach can often cut 0.250" per stroke, some broach tools cut in steps.
As for being 'Long', again, depends on the cut being made...

-----

Now, like I said several times before, I don't have an opinion, I have a bore scope.
When I see a surface that would be better suited to a file, it's time to do something.
When I find a restriction/choke, it's time to do something.
I don't lap every barrel that I get my hands on, I lap the barrels that need it.

----

This might help you understand button rifling since it shows buttons.
http://dmetool.com/products/rifle-buttons-mandrels/

Better barrel makers use this process but it takes specialized equipment.
Lesser barrel makers use a broaching process since it takes little equipment to do.
China is an example, lots of broached barrels out of China, and if you buy a $299 farm store rifle, beware.

Properly done button rifling requires an extremely large, high force hydraulic press to pull that button through an undersized steel tube,
AND,
That hydraulic press needs enough force to keep that button moving at a consistent SPEED all the way through the barrel blank.
It's something a novice can screw up really easily since any starts/stops/speed ups/slow downs will cause hesitation marking (warbles/skewed) in the rifling.

I know how easily you can screw it up, I built, then rebuilt, then rebuilt the machine again to do it myself.

Buttons (Compression) barrels need to be stress relieved.
This can be hot or cold thermal stress relief.
Many lower priced firearms skip the thermal relief process, which is why cryo treatment often works with even used barrels.

A bright, shinny, new button makes for very clean rifling.
By the 400th barrel, not so much...
Again, lower end barrels have gouges, grooves, uneven rifling simply because the button is beat up, gouged, etc.
These barrels will benefit from lapping.


Keep in mind that either broach or button will NOT start in the bore, it takes some distance from start for the tool to equalize forces being applied to it.
Lesser quality makers don't want to scrap part of the barrel blank (waste), so they run a chamber reamer into the worst of it and call it good.
A top end barrel maker will cut the blank so all the bad rifling is removed by chamberings.
Again, a bore scope will show you if this has happened or not.

----

Hammer forging a barrel often uses a slug with rifling cut into it, the barrel material is literally hammered down onto that forming slug.
This is a FAST way to rifle, but it's not too refined and can leave the barrel bent so it needs to be bent back stright.
It also doesn't leave the sharpest rifling.

Modern versions use the same base process, but pull a broach or button through the bore to sharpen, straighten & uniform the rifling.

A big plus for hammer forging is it hardens the rifling & doesn't cut through grain lines in the barrel steel, so the rifling lasts much longer.

Its seen a resurgence with the introduction of super hot mag calibers which are hard on barrels.

When the M24 SWS rifle was being developed, Gale McMillen's R5 hammer forged barrel version outlived Remington's button rifled 6 groove 2 to 1 and that kind of kicked off the hammer forged barrels again, they had pretty much died off before that.
When the military required hammer forging, Remington had to buy new hammer forging machines, they didn't have one left.
 
Just drilling barrels makes holes that are often not perfectly straight. All barrel manufacturers seem to have barrel straighteners on duty.
 
There is one thing you folks seem to be missing...

You all reference upper end US manufacturers, not the low end market makers, makers import from the rest of the world...
The US is 13% of the world's population, and virtually every country has firearms/firearms component manufacturers.

I don't have issues with S&W, ArmaLite, etc, it's the 'Also Ran' farm store & discount gun store barrels I see a TON of.
When you can buy an AR style barrel for $12 when you buy a gross at a time, when they are $18 each when you buy a dozen at a time... You KNOW they weren't made in the US or by a known maker.

When I visited Remington some years back, receiver & barrel stock came in and got wacked off by a band saw. Not even a CNC saw, just a band saw.
Receiver tubing was stood up in an open tube grinding fixture, and the cut surface ground smooth, but all through the process the receiver blank NEVER got faced off square, the saw/grinder surface was all it got...
Which is why I pull barrels, lathe mandrel mount receivers, and cut a true/square surface for the barrel to mount up against.

Since the tubing is forced onto a tap to cut threads for the barrel, I lathe straighten threads.
You know, the way it was supposed to be done in the first place...?

Now, a CNC machine cuts bolt slots/openings in the receiver, why not add the squaring & threading to that CANC machining?
A human can force thread the receiver on a dull tap faster than a CNC can switch tooling and do the process? Your guess is as good as mine...

Nothing like finding a barrel the bore is off center to the outside profile.
That means the outside profile was cut before it was rifled!
Investment of time/labor in that barrel blank BEFORE the rifling was cut would encourage to NOT toss the barrel for bad rifling...

The best US maker I toured was Ruger.
While I might argue how they do things, it was all proper & in the correct steps.
Barrels reamed to bore size, rifled, chambers semi-finished, outside profile cut, threads cut while turning so they were concentric with the bore, finish chambering done after barrel was installed in the action with the bolt for that particular firearm.

Don't underestimate greed!
 
Drilling long deep holes is a crap shoot...
The best pilot holes for the bore come from LASERS.
Lasers aren't common, but some military applications require this type of accuracy.
I have had barrel bar stock piloted by a laser a couple times, it's expensive.

The 'Best' COMMON way is to drill the stock in as stright a line as possible, drill, ream, rifle,
THEN mount barrel between centers, cut outside profile centered on the bore.
When you start with barrel blank too thin it bends (Curls would be more accurate) when you drag a rifling tool through the bore, and when it's that thin, there isn't enough material many times to cut the outside profile matching the bore.
This produces an offset bore which drives me crazy since I have to cut new threads that match the bore, not the profile.

When you start with a large bar stock, drill, ream, rifle... Then cut outside profile to match the bore...
This provides a stright bore, a profile that matches the bore center, but creates a lot of waste & requires a lot of time, and a darn good lathe.
Trying to make a bent tube straight is a work around at best. Thin barrel blanks are cheaper and create less waste, require less machining, but buttons or broaching bends these smaller barrel blanks & they have to be straightened...

A 'Custom' barrel comes in a lot of flavors, I start with 1.5" or 2" bars (depending on caliber) sometimes pilot drilled, sometimes not.
You want a full on 'Bull Barrel', this is what you start with.
My best 1,000 yard shooter was a full 2" diameter weighed 35 pounds with a 5" wide laminated bench rifle stock.
Firing .300 Wearherby mags you could watch the bullets impact the target up to 300 yds.

I ALWAYS start with large diameter bar stock simply because it doesn't bend or curl when rifled.

Now, no one wants to pack around an ugly, 35 pound, .30 cal rifle, so bench queen only, but it would shoot!
I won't do it again, but it was an interesting experience.

We are going to have drilled bores, something dragged through the hole to create rifling for the foreseeable future, so knowing how to make the best of what we get on the common market is probably a good idea unless you have an unlimited budget. I don't so I'll be making the best of what I can buy or build...
 
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I always wonder about some poster that don't make barrels but know everything about them. I posted from online barrel makers and you find fault with them.

If you making barrel please your post site. Lilja been in business long time and Brux owners used to work for Obermeyer same as Krieger,Mike Rock, Rock Creek barrels) and some others.

Your the one critcizing so back it up with your site on making barrels.
 
Just drilling barrels makes holes that are often not perfectly straight. All barrel manufacturers seem to have barrel straighteners on duty.
Click to expand...

My understanding is the bulk makers (Savage) do straighten barrel.

I don't believe the good custom barrel makers do (maybe the real low cost ones on EABCO, forget the name)

Each process has its good and bad points.
 
I once bought a Shilen barrel that was part of Brownells standard contour barrels. I shortened it for an early try at a Scout rifle and immediately noticed the bore wasn't concentric with the outside. So, I called Shilen, and they apologized and fixed it by recontouring. But the original contour had no runout, so it hadn't been straightened.
 
I think I'll keep the barrel I have.


100yds.

attachment.php


The left side is the first three shots fired from a fresh barrel.

The right side is the second three shots fired 10 minutes later.

They were 180 SST's with half grain shy of max load of Superformance. I have been sitting on these rounds since just after hunting season. I still have another 30 rounds left. I did not mess with turning the cases to put the bevel in the same spot. Just fired them. I am just going to stop farting around with this gun. I have the ammo I need to purchase meat from the wild for a few years.

I really appreciate all of the advice and valuable knowledge I have gained this winter. I have some loads to play with for my Win 94 and aside from that will be hanging it up for a while. Spring is here and I have much to do with work and my family. You all are great! :)
 

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It wouldn't surprise me if the upper right hole in the first target was from the cold, unfouled barrel. I always find it useful to do a ten shot break-in, clening and cooling completely between each shot so that I know where my cold, clean barrel zero is and can compare it to where subsequnt shots fall, just in case I find myself in a situation where the difference matters.
 
That was shot #2. #1 was on the horizontal line and #3 was just above it. I suspect that the flyer was a bad trigger pull.

I have found that almost every first shot has been right on the bullseye. It doesn't seem to matter what bullet.
 
In the military (a long time ago) we would shoot, fouled barrels, let the rifle cool, return optics to base zero and fire to check, then clean.

Before we went into the field we fired fouling shots and checked zero again.
The first 1 to 5 shots never quite hit the x mark.
Some were wild, some were close but not quite...

I understand that some police clean & shoot, clean and shoot so they are always on zero with a clean, oiled bore.
I have to assume this is because they store rifles, then have no time to foul before they might have to take a life & death shot.

On the range it's 3-5 warm up (fouling) shots before the real shooting begins...
With arthritis shooting the boomers sometimes has me flinching before we get to the real shooting, so I perfer the lesser recoil rifles.
Getting old isn't for sissies!
 
Key is, know your barrel and how to set it up for whatever the use.

Of my target rifles, one shoots spot on no matter what, it does shift a bit as it gets more fouled but not dramatically and you can see it moving and adjust.

The other 2 a fouling shot but often I don't as even the first one is pretty close and if its off and the other 4 are on, I call it good (or shoot a 6th)

I shoot higher recoil guns (308, 30-06 and my beloved 7.5 Swiss)

Fortunately the shoulder is good even if the hands hurt a lot more these days.

When I go shooting, its for a full day most times, so upwards of 8 hours at the range.

By the end of that, if the loads are hotter I have to force myself not to clinch up. Not a flinch but not conducive to good shooting.

I have good butt pads now and can compensate by shooting the lower velocity round late in the day.
 
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