Guy and gals,
We have seen a lot of interest in "switch barrel" rifles over the last year. A lot of the setups we have seen are cool and seem to work ok.
At Kelbly's we have been producing true switch barrel rifles since 1981. Our actions are setup to run barrels interchangeably, with the proper torque for true accuracy. We have messed with a lot of different setups and found that the only consistently accurate setup to run is to have a barrel shouldered to the action and torqued to 100 foot pounds or more with a barrel vise and rear entry action wrench. What's really cool too is that all of our actions from the Atlas Tactical to the top tier F-Class Pandas all can swap bolts between each other and if they have the same boltface and correct spacer, you can interchange barrels.
Now we are not knocking the setups that people are building, merely pointing out our background and specialty. We specialize in high accuracy AGGREGATE rifles, as in rifles that shoot world and national level competitions day in and day out. In benchrest many guns with hand tight barrels shoot great for a couple groups but not for six matches a day over four days. Shooters need to remember we are containing a controlled explosion. Most cartridges that are being run with handloads that are 60k-65k psi at the chamber. This amount of pressure on hand tight barrels will cause a barrel to separate from the face of the receiver marginally and then the elastic properties of metal cause the barrel to slam back into the receiver face. This can cause different issues like brass stretch, bolt thrust, and can cause the barrel to loosen under recoil.
The best thing about a barrel vise and action wrench is that when you torque to a set torque spec like 150 foot pounds, like what comes from our factory, we see no POI shift when switching the barrels back and forth.
We have specialized in having actions that are so close in tolerance, that we can chamber for your Kelbly action, without even having it here and you are able to just screw it on, tighten it up and go shooting!
All the best,
Ian A. Kelbly
We have seen a lot of interest in "switch barrel" rifles over the last year. A lot of the setups we have seen are cool and seem to work ok.
At Kelbly's we have been producing true switch barrel rifles since 1981. Our actions are setup to run barrels interchangeably, with the proper torque for true accuracy. We have messed with a lot of different setups and found that the only consistently accurate setup to run is to have a barrel shouldered to the action and torqued to 100 foot pounds or more with a barrel vise and rear entry action wrench. What's really cool too is that all of our actions from the Atlas Tactical to the top tier F-Class Pandas all can swap bolts between each other and if they have the same boltface and correct spacer, you can interchange barrels.
Now we are not knocking the setups that people are building, merely pointing out our background and specialty. We specialize in high accuracy AGGREGATE rifles, as in rifles that shoot world and national level competitions day in and day out. In benchrest many guns with hand tight barrels shoot great for a couple groups but not for six matches a day over four days. Shooters need to remember we are containing a controlled explosion. Most cartridges that are being run with handloads that are 60k-65k psi at the chamber. This amount of pressure on hand tight barrels will cause a barrel to separate from the face of the receiver marginally and then the elastic properties of metal cause the barrel to slam back into the receiver face. This can cause different issues like brass stretch, bolt thrust, and can cause the barrel to loosen under recoil.
The best thing about a barrel vise and action wrench is that when you torque to a set torque spec like 150 foot pounds, like what comes from our factory, we see no POI shift when switching the barrels back and forth.
We have specialized in having actions that are so close in tolerance, that we can chamber for your Kelbly action, without even having it here and you are able to just screw it on, tighten it up and go shooting!
All the best,
Ian A. Kelbly
