"Trued" action With factory barrel

The factor hindering most Remington rifles is one lug making contact and receiver face not square, as well as the amount of torque applied to some of their barrels. I think they time them with a gorilla on the action wrench!!The barrels usually do their job after truing the action up and resetting/chambering barrel.

Before buying a factory rifle, I like to wipe the back of the lugs dry, mark them with a Sharpie, then cycle the bolt. I've seen expensive rifles only rub part of a land. My Sako wiped both lugs clean.

Just an observation after many years of re building factory rifles.

All factory rifles/actions have problems. I have never found a /any factory rifle that did not have problems in precision machining and parts matching
The problems vary from rifle/action to rifle/action and even though they shoot well it doesn't mean everything is true.

I once had a rifle that shot well and my friend wanted me to blue print it
to see if it would improve. As usual, I started to dissemble the rifle and checking the parts as I went, I was shocked how some of the parts were way out of true.

At that point, I was amazed that it shot good at all and tried to figure out why it did. What I found was almost funny and definitely lucky. The recoil lug was .005 thousandths thicker on one side than the other. The receiver face was .0046 out of square also. but strangely enough they were off on opposite sides and canceled each other out to within .0004
thousandths.

After squaring/ trueing everything the rifle did improve and a pleasant side affect was that it was not as picky about what ammo it was fed. (this was the total effect of everything else being true and square).
A custom action needs to be checked also because they are not always perfect ether. there quality control is/should be better but the fact that they are machined using the same method (CNC) as the factory rifles and depend on the operator/programmer to do the setup properly.

So in my opinion, trueing up any action is worthwhile and beneficial whether a new custom barrel is installed or a good factory barrel is reused.

J E CUSTOM

J E Custom said:

So in my opinion, trueing up any action is worthwhile and beneficial whether a new custom barrel is installed or a GOOD factory barrel is reused.

J E CUSTOM

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Emphasis on GOOD.
The quality of the factory barrel would be my primary worry.

PinkVapor said:

Before buying a factory rifle, I like to wipe the back of the lugs dry, mark them with a Sharpie, then cycle the bolt. I've seen expensive rifles only rub part of a land. My Sako wiped both lugs clean.

Click to expand...

I've done the same thing only used "Prussian Blue" to determine the non-contacting areas on the recoil lugs.

Then, if needed (always), i used some very fine valve-grinding compound on the high-spot contact points and cycled the bolt until the lugs had equal contact.

I don't know if that was a good idea or not as i'm not a machinist/gunsmith, but it seemed to help on the rifles i did it to.

This is just more discussion on re using factory barrels.

Scenario = Say you inherited your fathers rifle and you want to use it but you don't want to change the appearance AT ALL but you would like it to shoot as well as it can.

This is the way I would approach this project if I were charged with this responsibility.

First I would clean the bore to bright metal (No fouling of any kind) and make sure that everything was as good as possible.

Next I would shoot it to see if it performed reasonable.

Then I would scope the bore and see what the fouling deposits look like and determine if it could use a light lapping. I would check the chamber for concentricity with fired cases (If the cases will go in the chamber in any position of the head stamp), chances are that the chamber is concentric and does not need to be recut.

At this point the rifle is still in tack and machine work may not be necessary and lapping, cleaning and bedding can be done without altering the rifles appearance but the performance will be improved.

If the things discussed early in this thread need to be done this is the time to make that decision.

A good Smith can true an action, set the barrel back, cut a fresh chamber, time the barrel so the iron sights are indexed and the barrel ID is timed correctly and head space the cartridge without altering the appearance of the rifle including the bedding of the factory stock to improve the performance.

The advantage to this process is that you have a rifle that shoots better than it did when your dad owned it but it still has all of the scratches and appearance that your dad put on it.

It is true that it probably wont ever be a match rifle, but it will be something special to you. Priceless !!

Just another reason to re use the factory barrel. (Even if it is not the best quality).

J E CUSTOM

The problem with lapping factory barrels is they typical bores that bores are a little bid and you lap them and they end up even bigger. I understand the in certain situations if the customer really wants it but he would be made to understand I would not guarantee anything when you start lapping on factory barrels the only way to keep them constent is lead lapping.

Some good points J E.
If I knew the gunsmith would employ your methods to approach the client's request, it would reduce the risk and my concerns. Family hunting rifles can be treasured for their memories, and those family firearms can be the most valued for those reasons.

L.Sherm said:

The problem with lapping factory barrels is they typical bores that bores are a little bid and you lap them and they end up even bigger. I understand the in certain situations if the customer really wants it but he would be made to understand I would not guarantee anything when you start lapping on factory barrels the only way to keep them constent is lead lapping.

Click to expand...

I totally agree and this is where the good smith comes in. A good smith takes into consideration all of these factors and only laps enough to solve most problems.

There is a lot more to lapping than just using an abrasive. He has to cast a lap in the actual bore and apply the proper grit for the job. I use anywhere from 1500 grit non imbedding compound to 400 grit aggressive compound depending on the bore. Several times I found the bore to have tight spots and had to cast laps in the tight spots so lapping would uniform the bore in addition to creating a good finish.

The worst bore I ever dealt with was a Winchester Coyote barrel that had 5 tight spots so I ended up casting 3 different laps in order to get the bore uniform with out opening the bore dia. beyond specifications. this barrel improved greatly (From 5+ MOA to les than 1 MOA and the velocity improved by almost 70 ft/sec. (could be that removing the tight spots made the difference or the combination or all the lapping processes combined).

Again; like anything else, lapping can destroy the bore if not done correctly and with care and thought but can greatly improve it if done right.

J E CUSTOM

What do you guys think about fire lapping?

Rich Coyle said:

What do you guys think about fire lapping?

Click to expand...

Personally i wouldn't do it.

L.Sherm said:

Personally i wouldn't do it.

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Have you tried it?

No, I just think there are better ways.