I'd like a bit of a sanity check... a neighbor of mine is a life-long machinist, and does a portion of his work manufacturing AR15 parts and profiling barrels. Hasn't worked with bolt-action stuff, but all around, is a great machinist, and has a lot of top-rate machinery.

Grizzly has a nice Bartlein barrel blank in stock that is what I want, and he's offered to help me. I would need to rent a reamer and a gauge. We'd chuck the barrel up in one of his CNC lathes, center it, take a light pass or two along the length to ensure that the outside is concentric to the bore, and if needed, do a small bit of profiling. Then we would face off the chamber end, and cut the outside threads. Then, run the reamer in and out, clearing chips often, until the chamber is to correct depth(*). Then, throat it to fit a dummy cartridge. Then, on the opposite side of the barrel, cut off an inch or so, face it, and crown it. Maybe have him thread the muzzle end while it's there.

From what I've seen, that seems to be all there really is to finishing a Savage barrel, is that correct? Am I crazy to consider doing this? It seems like it would be fairly straight-forward for him, but hey, I've been known to be over-confident before.


(*) From what I read, the chamber needs to be cut until the go gauge protrudes by (depth of bolt face + 0.004"). Is that correct?

The reason for this is that I can't find a prefit anywhere that fits exactly what I want, and I have a hard time finding a gunsmith to even call me back, let alone get this done in time to shoot this summer.