Hope you guys don't mind, but I think I'll start this out with some observations and an opinion or two. I don't claim to be anyone special and I'm working with an example of one. Feel free to take this stuff with a grain of salt if you like.
Inspecting the barrels:
The 22lr barrel was first up. If a chamber has a serious runout issue, it will normally be visible with a borescope. I saw no sign of runout in this chamber. The throat is quite rough, though. Toolmarks aplenty.
Moving down the bore I found 4 or 5 short sections where the lapping did not clean up or even really touch the toolmarks. Safe to say these roughly 1/4 inch long sections are somewhat larger in diameter than the rest of the bore.
The crown showed no apparent runout. The chamfer on the end of the bore was again a bit rough, but I couldn't see any sign of burrs that might contact a bullet upon exit. I had this barrel in the lathe later on to recut the threads to 5/8 24 and confirmed with a few light cuts that the crown was indeed concentric to the bore.
I only had a brief range session with this barrel and it was prior to fully bedding the action. Eley subsonic hp's were shooting slightly over 1 inch wide and an 1 3/4 to 2 inch vertical groups at 100yds. I suspect the barrel will shoot well, but it's going to need some time to settle in. I'll get back to fiddling with it this summer......
Next up was the 22wmr barrel. This was an off the shelf CZ tube I purchased from Midway.
Here again the chamber looks good with no blatant runout issues. The throat showed a few very small toolmarks, but nothing that will cause any troubles.
The bore in this barrel took me by surprise. It is hands down the nicest bore I've seen in a factory barrel. Looked like a Shilen select match in there. While the lands in the 22lr barrel had a rounded, somewhat over lapped appearance, the 22wmr barrel had a nice crisp look to it. Very impressed with it.
The crown on this barrel showed .0005 to .00075 runout when I put it in the lathe to cut it for my can. Probably not enough to cause any problems. Again the chamfer on the end of the bore had a chewed up appearance, but I couldn't find any burrs that would have contacted the bullets. Recut it anyways....
I had previously installed this barrel and used a sampling of a couple different lots of CCI ammo with some .006 thick tape to get an idea of how well the headspace fit the ammo I have on hand. I found that the bolt would close easily on most and with the slightest resistance on some. It might come back to bite me on the ass later on, but I decided to dial in the chamber end in the lathe and swipe .004 off the shoulder of the barrel. To be clear, I don't doubt that those clearances are within specs. I have a lathe, so why the fuck not? I'll attach a pic of the cut I made. Let me know if you have trouble viewing the attachments and I'll get them hosted on pb and repost. More to come....