Gunsmithing Our lathe adventures.

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: fireguyty</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Results speak for themselves Joe. Soon as I have something I need barreled I'll pay up, even if it turned out bad for my blank, just to be there and watch my barrel being turned. Also like you say....6 month lead time sucks.

Looking forward to seeing your barrel next.

Ty</div></div>

Don't worry about paying up, we'll work something out!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: STR</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Great job guys!!! No more satisfying feeling than making something with your own hands, and it turning out so well. How do you put a price on that. Congrats!!!!!</div></div>

Thank you Sir and thank you for your help!



We got started after 8 this morning. Dane and I were able to get my rifle pretty much wrapped up. We still have to face the muzzle end, crown it, then thread it for a muzzle brake. Were going to practice clocking a bit more on one of the take off barrels then take care of both rifles.

While I was turning away on the lathe Dane made some adjustments to his JP chassis to accept the MTU contour barrel. Yesterday it wasn't fitting correctly so we put it in the AICS to make sure it shot well.

 

[D Miller]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: STR</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Great job guys!!! No more satisfying feeling than making something with your own hands, and it turning out so well. How do you put a price on that. Congrats!!!!! </div></div>


Thank you!!!

You and your videos were a key part of our journey.


Next up is threading the muzzle for a break and clocking the break

 

[ugsly]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Good work guys

nothing like being able to step out in the garage and do it yourself.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Last two 5 round groups through Dane's rifle.

 

[coues7]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

There's only one way to start and that's to jump in head first. You guys should be applauded.

Scott

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Got my rifle up and rolling today. Still have to do the muzzle break but at least I can do some shooting.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

We threaded and clocked Dane's JP muzzle brake. The process went pretty smooth. We really appreciate all the help we’ve gotten from our fellow Sniper’s Hide members. Both Dane and I rifles are shooters. We are very pleased with the end result after all of the hard work and frustration. The new Rock barrels seem to like the same load we ran with the old barrels. Both our loads are really close to the factory 140 gr A-Max match load.

Yesterday I was able to zero my US Optic’s SN-3 and shoot a few 5 round groups. I was very pleased with what I saw and left the range with a grin from ear to ear. I’m going to be doing some shooting this weekend gathering dope and I’ll try and remember to take some pictures and post them up. I’m also going to try and get some chrono data to see where I’m at velocity wise. Again thank you guys for all the feedback and help. Dane and I are going to continue practicing and putting together more rifles.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

First 5 rounds out of my rifle Saturday morning.

Rifle shoots a lot tighter, I just wasn't shooting that tight.

Dane with his rifle, still shoots after we installed the muzzle brake!

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Finished up this 6.5 Creedmoor today. The HS stock is just for shits and grins, it will be going into a McRee chassis.

Threaded for the brake and clock'ed to 12

We started on Dane's 7mm SAUM. Will keep you guys updated on how it does.

 

[callen3615]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

A 3 jawed chuck would vastly cut down on setup time...

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

We have one unison 3 jaw but we don't use it much when were putting together bolt guns.

 

[D Miller]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Just finished Bill's (hognuts) lefty build last night and the range reports are slowly coming in.

5 round group on a cold windy LV morning.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Dude, the Hello Kitty tape is awesome!

 

[Run N Gun]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

had to laugh when I saw the crane. that would have been a lot better than when we used to get my leblonde lathe in my garage. We borrowed an old john deer with a lift and had to put 400lbs plus me sit on the front in order to get the tractors front wheels on the ground. Glad to see your hard work is paying off and your having fun at the wheel.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

The first two rifles Dane and I put together are still shooting well! Both rifles are just shy of 2k rounds. 5 round group of the left is mine, the 5 round group on the right is Dane's.

 

[mioduz]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

We are in the same boat.
6 months ago i knew nothing about machining and working on a lathe, but decided to pick up a small grizzly benchtop to do some things here and there. Then i realised i just needed a bigger machine. Picked up the G4003G as well and am getting ready to chamber my first barrel. Working on getting all the tooling. You are not joking about the price of tooling, its insane and you never have enough. Its hard to take my time, i just want to rush in and cut the chamber, but right now i am practicing dialing in the bore through the head stock with range rods. I have not have the best success on repeatability. I can get the rod to run pretty true (under .0002 on two spots on the rod) but since the barrel is long enough i end up checking the other end stiking out the spider and i have about .003 runout. I am hearing that this is acceptable over 27" length of barrel due to curved bores.
Just wish i could get everything running dead true.

 

[Straight Shooter]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Using range rods you should typically never see the other end ever running anywhere near true. When dialing the end you are working on by the bore you have to ignore the other end. If you want to ignore the bore and dial in both ends you can go that way but you can't do both.

Range rods will almost never repeat. On a cleaned up muzzle I suppose they are good enough for muzzle brake and crown work. We use long reach indicators and Grizzly rods to dial in on the throat and 2" ahead or just inside the muzzle and 2" farther back. Like machining a garden hose. Just try to get started as straight as you can and get the end cut off square as you can. The rest of the hose is beyond our control.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Dane and I have been keeping busy in the garage working on different projects. We have a finished shorty rifle! The McRee Leopard chassis helped keep the weight down to 11 lbs (unloaded magazine inserted and no bi-pod). Velocity is pretty good with the 20” barrel. The 139 Lapua Scenar is going 2,640 fps with 41.6 grains of H4350 and 2,750 fps with 42.6 grains (started showing pressure). The 139 going 2750 is 29.5 MOA (8.2 mils) to 1k yards.

Here are the specs;

Remington 700 Short Action
6.5mm Creedmoor
+0.002” head space
Badger Ordnance Recoil Lug
Timney Flat Trigger
McRee Leopard Chassis
Rock Creek 5R 1-8” twist 20” barrel, 5/8x24 tpi @ muzzle
JP Cooley muzzle brake
Elite Iron Bravo D Suppressor
Weaver 2 piece base
Badger Ordnance low 30mm rings
US Optics 1.8-10x37mm SN-3 ERGO
McRee 10 round magazine

After some “issues” we have the 7mm SAUM all sorted out! The ballistics are very impressive and I feel the 7mm SAUM is a great ELR/ULR rifle cartridge. This rifle is heavy and the 27.5” Heavy Varmint barrel doesn’t do us any favors. The 7mm is extremely flat shooting and bucks the wind very well.

Remington 700 Long Action
7mm SAUM
+0.002” head space
Badger Ordnance Recoil Lug
Jewell HVR trigger
McRee Precision Chassis System
Kreiger Heavy Varmint 1-8.5” twist 27.5” barrel, 5/8x24 tpi @ muzzle
JP Cooley muzzle brake
Nightforce 20 MOA base
US Optics low 35mm rings
US Optics SN-3 ERGO 3.8-22x58mm
McRee 5 round magazines

(Shown with Nightforce NXS 5.5-22x56mm)

We will be re-barreling our 6.5mm Creedmoor match rifles to Remington Varmint contour barrels. We are also going to go a little shorter with them @ 24”. That should help save some weight and lighten up the heavy pigs. We are also looking to do our first AR barrels in the near future.

 

[D Miller]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

A bore scope is on my wish list for this year!


Joe's barrel gave out at yesterdays match so we decided to set it back. Being the heavy MTU contour we loped off the whole chamber for a 24" finish. Upon cutting off the whole chamber it looked to be close to an inch of free bore.

We got 90% of it done yesterday right after the match but Joe had to stop short to keep the peace at home. When he returned this morning with his action we torqued it on and dialed the barrel back in the lathe to clock the brake. In all the whole process took just over 4 hours with no corners cut, strictly more experience. That's a far cry from 2 days when we first started out 6 months ago. The fit and finish has improved greatly, the first two barrels still shot great but some of the work was a little rough.


Having the ability to maintain friend's n' family's rifles in-house is worth every dollar spent and every afternoon in the sweltering garage starting out.

Lets go test it out this evening after all the easter stuff is done!

 

[Straight Shooter]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Even with tons of experience, once in awhile you will get one that wants to chatter and squeel and that can turn a routine 3-4 hour job into a 16 hour job while you change tools try different angels, back cuts, rake and heights. Then when you are about out of room for error you need a vodoo witch doctor to come in and purge the demons.

 

[D Miller]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: *Straight Shooter*</div><div class="ubbcode-body">... <span style="font-weight: bold">you need a vodoo witch doctor to come in and purge the demons.</span> </div></div>



Aron's Obermyer 6.5!!!! That damn thing took us 36 hours of work to get it done and weeks waiting on smaller bushings for the .002 undersized bore. He was there the whole time watching us bang our heads aginst the wall, i swear there was a gremlin around every corner with that one. In the end it shoots great but i sprouted a few gray hair because of that barrel.

<span style="font-weight: bold">***Disclaimer***</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold">Due to 300snipers thread getting locked, I feel the need to make it 100% clear that none of this is for profit and only for friends and family.</span>

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Shot this 7 round group at 550 yards with Dane this evening. My rifle was recently set back and after a few zeroing rounds I was able to get things lined up and shoot a 0.5 MOA group at 100 yards. My barrel went from 26" to 24" the load I was shooting was the team's 41.6/139 Scenar load. From my 100 yard zero I dialed 11 MOA. I'm interested to run some rounds through a chronograph. I'm going to be switching back to the 140 A-Max and exploring a node in the 42.6 range aka High Horse Power Load! lol

 

[D Miller]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Last Saturday both JFcomfort and I re-barreled our 6.5 creedmoors and went with a lighter rem varmint contour. Unfortunately the initial results with both rifles flat out sucked! Both of us left the range pissed and wondering what we did wrong, even though our machining work was leaps and bounds ahead of our first barrels. Yesterday afternoon I went out after work to retest after re-crowning and re-threading the muzzle. I decided to try one group with out the brake just to eliminate all variables and was surprised when they were all touching again...

Group #1 low right target- 5 round group with brake
group #2 mid left(center target)- 5 rounds no brake, POI shift was 3-4" left 5-10mph winds
group #3 low left target- 5 rounds no brake, one of my top groups to date. 5-10mph winds
group #4 upper left target- 5 rounds no brake now with 10-15mph winds
group #5 upper right target- 8 short group with brake back on. Yuck!!!! 10-15mph winds

The JP brake i use has worked great on 2 previous barrels and over 6500 rounds of creedmoor. Unfortunately not the case this time so i need to figure out whats up. Im guessing we entered some goofy realm where the contour is too light to support the brake and its forces at 26" finished length. Any thoughts, shorten the barrel, try a lighter weight brake????

The brake is more than hand tight but not wrenched on with retard gorilla strength. It was suggested to back the brake off one rotation and try shooting a group with the stress relived. I will try that next range outing.

The learning process can be frustrating at times.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

We have had some great suggestions on things to try so we can solve the problem.

-Try shooting with the brake one turn off the barrel shoulder.
-Do load development with the muzzle brake on the rifle.

A suggestion for my rifle with a RAD brake was to tighten the clamp to 25 in./lbs instead on had snug.

 

[Beef_Supreme]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Well........ ya know.
Your Gremlins remind me of the first barreling job I did in school. I had done ALL of the most fly-ass custom modifications one can do to a Mauser 98 action, jeweled bolt, checkered bolt release, surface ground recontoured rear receiver ring and all......you get the picture. ALL I wanted was a .257 Roberts, a nice shooting good looking classic type deer rifle in a great caliber that wasn't a .270.
I dialed my barrel in, threaded it up- threads looked great (breech end of course) first mistake. Got about 3/8'' into the chamber and chater started. Backed off, polished it out, started back in- chatter.
LONG story short,after hearing everyone's ideas on why it was chattering, trying EVERY set-up from Obermyer on... I had almost no barrel left and the instructor agreed MAYBE the reamer was bad and sent it back to manufacturer. 2 flutes were no ground correctly, reamer replaced, and by the end of the day upon receipt of the good reamer, the barrel was done.
For a model 96 Swede- by the time I whittled the barrel down a little at a time I had just enough meat to mate it to a small ring action safely.
Shit happens and gunsmithing is a lifelong education. Trained or not, college educated or not, experienced or not- shit happens.
Chalk it up

Sorry to bore you.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

We always appreciate your posts Beef.

 

[Beef_Supreme]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Ha! Give that 3 jaw a try!!

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Got the rifle shooting!Took about 15 round to foul up some, each group was getting smaller. Not long after getting started I plugged this 5 round group and was pretty happy with it. I then put my brake back on, I cleaned all of the carbon out of it on Friday and I cut the muzzle threads so it clocks just before 12 O'Clock. With a little bit of torque it goes the rest of the way. I also only tightened the clamp bolt on the brake to 25 inch pounds.

5 round group no brake, high winds after shooting 10-15 rounds on a freshly cleaned barrel.

Right after shooting the 0.425 MOA group I put on the brake then shot this one.

 

[D Miller]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Glad to see its shooting again. Looks like we didnt get enough off the muzzle end to be clear of the crush zone...oops! Add that one to the what not to do file.

Its a shame the 140 Amax are not wanting to shoot well out of the new tubes.

 

[JFComfort]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

I'm bummed about the A-Max, I've been working on finding a load the new barrel likes but its proven to be easier said than done. This is the result of the work up I did. Nothing showed any promise until I got to the last 5 rounds which were loaded with 42.8 grs H4350. I will explore that charge weight range and play with COAL to see if I can get them to shoot like the 139 Scenars.

 

[ctressler]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Hey Joe, I was about to give up on the A-Max and then I tried different seating depths. They didn't like to jump at all and as soon as I pushed them 5 thousands into the lands my groups tightened up.

Good luck!

 

[D Miller]

Re: Our lathe adventures.

Time to revive this thread after finally finishing this project.

Its early uncoated stage at 20"

Not my best group with it but it is the only one I have a picture of. I think it measured somewhere around .7moa according to on target. I was happy with that since I used a wadded up hoodie as a cheek riser before the real one had arrived.

a quick cell phone pic, hope to get JFC and his good camera over soon....
Shortened the barrel to 16.5" and changed to a more streamlined RD break. Then it was off to Tylers house for some cearkoting which turned out great. On a side note his wife didn't even give a 2nd thought to all the gun parts baking in the oven when she got home.




I am yet to chrono any rounds out of it but at 1000y it drops 5moa more than my full sized creed sending them at 2840s. Im guessing that to be around 2600fps with a 139 scenar. Repeatedly hitting an 8" circle at 1k yards brought a smile to my face. I will admit the wind gods smiled on me with 0 wind for a brief moment with the calm before a large thunderstorm. Its every bit as accurate but i would like to do a side by side comparison to see the actual wind drift difference from a 26 to a 16" barrel