Took barrel off, reinstalled then bad things happened.

Dmagna

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I took off my barrel to my Christensen arms ridge line to check the barrel threads because I am rebarreling it. I reinstalled barrel with proper headspace gauges and everything checked out. Went to shot it and blew a primer. I only had 5 shots loaded up, my loads are about 2950 FPS. I hooked up the chrono and shot again and blew another primer. Checked the FPS and it was 3160, and again at 3140. This is a 6.5x284 norma and that is a very high and dangerous. I checked the cases with my head space tool and they were the same size as Normal. What would cause an almost 200 FPS gain with crazy pressure?
 
I would be checking that the indexing of the barrel is what it was before.
Does it have witness marks?
That is the first thing I do when planning to take a barrel off if I intend putting it back on.
Sounds to me indexing is off or the headspace is a few thou tighter, regardless what the go/no-go gauge says.

Cheers.
 
You did go back with the original recoil lug I assume? I haven't laid hands on a Ridgeline but they look like they don't have alot of steel left on the shank before the carbon fiber starts. Where did you clamp on to the barrel at when removing & reinstalling? Is there any chance that the steel in the core of the wrapped portion of the barrel got crimped or twisted during removal or reinstalling?
 
I took off my barrel to my Christensen arms ridge line to check the barrel threads because I am rebarreling it. I reinstalled barrel with proper headspace gauges and everything checked out. Went to shot it and blew a primer. I only had 5 shots loaded up, my loads are about 2950 FPS. I hooked up the chrono and shot again and blew another primer. Checked the FPS and it was 3160, and again at 3140. This is a 6.5x284 norma and that is a very high and dangerous. I checked the cases with my head space tool and they were the same size as Normal. What would cause an almost 200 FPS gain with crazy pressure?
Have you been able to figure out what the cause of this was?
 
I could never get the barrel to shoot good. Always had problems, my guess is that the barrel was over torqued from Christensen and I reset and corrected the head space. I have a feeling my 300 prc is the same way.
 
I could never get the barrel to shoot good. Always had problems, my guess is that the barrel was over torqued from Christensen and I reset and corrected the head space. I have a feeling my 300 prc is the same way.
I wish you well with your rebarrel. Hopefully that will get you in good shape.
 
I could never get the barrel to shoot good. Always had problems, my guess is that the barrel was over torqued from Christensen and I reset and corrected the head space. I have a feeling my 300 prc is the same way.

I hope your re-barrel will work out well. I recently had a Tikka T3 Varmint rebarreled with a well known barrel. I've been having a heck of a time getting it to shoot well. I had it made into the same cartridge and same barrel length. I went through adjusting powder charge, adjusting seating depth, opening up barrel channel, trying a different scope. Next I'm going to take a CLOSE look at the stock to see if there's a crack. It's the original stock and it use to shoot extremely well.
 
I hope your re-barrel will work out well. I recently had a Tikka T3 Varmint rebarreled with a well known barrel. I've been having a heck of a time getting it to shoot well. I had it made into the same cartridge and same barrel length. I went through adjusting powder charge, adjusting seating depth, opening up barrel channel, trying a different scope. Next I'm going to take a CLOSE look at the stock to see if there's a crack. It's the original stock and it use to shoot extremely well.
I just rebarreled my tikka myself. It's now a 22 creed. I used a carbon six barrel, been shooting 85.5 Bergers at 3300 FPS. I like the action so far
 
Only thing that changed was head space but seems you have checked that

Thanks

Buck
Could the headspace really change from taking a barrel off and screwing back on assuming its torqued tightly?
This just doesn't make sense to me because shouldered prefits are made all the time and they screw right on with perfect headspace on precise actions.
 
I don't have any experience with Christensen CF barrels but it looks like there's not much shank there to get a good grip on to install or remove their barrel. The barrel looks as if the core could get twisted easily without some sort of special barrel vice other than a standard barrel vice.
 
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