When you guys switch to a new caliber do you buy the reamer or wait to invest the coin until the second barrel?
Gunsmithing Buy A Reamer?
- Thread starter charnicus
- Start date
Barrel #1 of new caliber. Buy reamer for ____ caliber or wait til the second barrel to buy the reamer.
Neither. Have barrels chambered by gunsmith that already owns reamer. Unless it's some special
I’m having PVA cut a barrel for 6.5SST but Josh doesn’t have the reamer. Sherman Wildcats will rent one but adds time and of course I’m paying the $50 rental fee. I’ve heard from other places that it’s nice to have customer provided reamers so that every barrel is cut with the same reamer and as the customer you know how many barrels have been cut with said reamer.
Curious to what others are doing.
For an oddball wildcat, or something I'm spec'ing very specifically, I would expect to own or provide the reamer for the barrel. If it's a semi-common caliber, see if the gunsmith wants to split the cost of the reamer? Then you know he has it for next time, and your money is going to better use than a rental
Sorta special I guess. I talked to a couple shops. None of which had it for the SST. So rent or buy was the option with this specific case.
That's something I would have the smith provide. Shoot that cartridge first before you invest in your own personal reamer. Most smiths don't even cut a guy a break if he supplies his own reamer so unless you just want to have it....
We've done a lot of Richards chamberings and rent from him as well, buy with confidence.
I really appreciate your insight here. If I hadn’t already sent PVA the barrel we’d be having a different conversation. We’ll see how that goes. When I burn it let’s chat.
Rich takes good care of his reamers and cycles them appropriately. He's supplied several 6.5 SS/SST 7mm SS/SST type things for us over the last year. I just mailed back a 7mm SS-II that arrived the other day, appeared to be brand new and it cut like it was brand new too.
We don't own the Sherman reamers at this time because there just hasn't been enough call to pencil out the cost of them and Rich is typically on top of the reamer delivery so the delay in renting a reamer is less than a week typically. In a year across 6.5 and 7mm we would have invested over 1200 bucks in reamers and gages to cut a half dozen chambers. With a $50 rental fee plus 8 bucks to ship it back vs. 200 bucks a chamber if I owned the tool it just doesn't make sense yet.
At the beginning of the year I did an inventory and we began laser engraving the reamers with serial numbers to clean up our setup times and keep better track of the number of chambers we're seeing before we send things in for sharpening. At the time, and I've spent 5 figures on custom carbide already since then, I was well into 6 figures worth of carbide chamber reamers. The last box that arrived from our grinder on Monday was over 2 grand for 8 reamers, no gages. It's not an insignificant cost involved to get reamers made for every new wildcat that shows up on the market.
When someone like Rich brings out a series of wildcats and stands behind the business aspect of it as well as he does with support there is a lot better chance that we will work to support the chamberings. But until they get popular enough to validate owning the tool it is hard to plunk down hundreds of dollars to support every new wildcat 6, 6.5 and 7mm whatever that seem to crop up all the time.
If I own the reamer and someone says I have to use theirs we don't give a discount either because of the extra setup time to get a reamer properly dialed in and setup in a rigid holder CNC lathe. It's not like slapping it in a floating holder on a tailstock and running it home on a manual lathe. Typically I budget 30 minutes additional to put a 1-off reamer in the turning center.
Similarly if I have to get a reamer for 1 chamber that we don't already own, customer owned or not, that same extra setup time is involved. We don't charge extra for it unless there is a rental fee. But as I mentioned above, when you spend an extra 30 minutes getting things right for 1 chamber it certainly isn't going to come with a discount.
We don't own the Sherman reamers at this time because there just hasn't been enough call to pencil out the cost of them and Rich is typically on top of the reamer delivery so the delay in renting a reamer is less than a week typically. In a year across 6.5 and 7mm we would have invested over 1200 bucks in reamers and gages to cut a half dozen chambers. With a $50 rental fee plus 8 bucks to ship it back vs. 200 bucks a chamber if I owned the tool it just doesn't make sense yet.
At the beginning of the year I did an inventory and we began laser engraving the reamers with serial numbers to clean up our setup times and keep better track of the number of chambers we're seeing before we send things in for sharpening. At the time, and I've spent 5 figures on custom carbide already since then, I was well into 6 figures worth of carbide chamber reamers. The last box that arrived from our grinder on Monday was over 2 grand for 8 reamers, no gages. It's not an insignificant cost involved to get reamers made for every new wildcat that shows up on the market.
When someone like Rich brings out a series of wildcats and stands behind the business aspect of it as well as he does with support there is a lot better chance that we will work to support the chamberings. But until they get popular enough to validate owning the tool it is hard to plunk down hundreds of dollars to support every new wildcat 6, 6.5 and 7mm whatever that seem to crop up all the time.
If I own the reamer and someone says I have to use theirs we don't give a discount either because of the extra setup time to get a reamer properly dialed in and setup in a rigid holder CNC lathe. It's not like slapping it in a floating holder on a tailstock and running it home on a manual lathe. Typically I budget 30 minutes additional to put a 1-off reamer in the turning center.
Similarly if I have to get a reamer for 1 chamber that we don't already own, customer owned or not, that same extra setup time is involved. We don't charge extra for it unless there is a rental fee. But as I mentioned above, when you spend an extra 30 minutes getting things right for 1 chamber it certainly isn't going to come with a discount.
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Don’t blame you here. If I owned a barrel shop I wouldn’t be buying every new wildcat reamer that was available. Just like you said there isn’t enough of a following. Glad to hear another bump on the quality and condition of Rich’s reamers.
