Before anyone gets any ideas about asking me to rebore and rifle they’re old barrel. Not going to happen. For one the amount of time it took me to rebore and rifle the barrel was as much time as making a new one from scratch if not a little more. So your not saving any time per say so no cost savings. Also if this barrel would have a bad bow to it (our terminology for being bent) I wouldn’t have even done it. If it would have had a bad bow to it the tooling is just going to follow the existing hole. You are not going to straighten the bore out. Also you risk damaging the breech threads (if that happens your trying to fix it and or it’s junk then) and we don’t know the quality of the steel per say. If the steel has any hard or soft spots in it we risk losing/scrapping the tooling. The rifling tooling alone we have a value of about $3500 on each one.

When I pulled the first tool/reamer thru it to take the bore to .228”. If there would’ve been any hint of any problems I wouldn’t have gone any further. Not to mention losing the reamer.

So again why did I do it? For one not wanting to wait for my new barrel to come thru like I said. Also it was more out of curiosity to see how it would turn out and what I can learn from it. Other than the shop doing the rifling on shop time I did everything else on my own time after hours.

I was super impressed how the steel machined. From reaming to rifling, lapping and chambering. The stuff machined like butter. No chatter, no bucking no nothing. I also did a Rc test on the steel from the 3” cut off from the muzzle end. It was 34 on the Rockwell scale. I’ve seen factory barrels (not necessarily Savage) as soft as 21Rc. The 34 is at the upper end of what you normally see.

When I rechambered the barrel to 6.5CM I did recut the breech face to clean it up. The factory finish was pretty rough but the face of the barrel doesn’t do anything per say but it does look nicer. I also refaced the breech end so I could set the headspace and time the barrel up properly so the factory lettering would show. Yes I do and will redo the caliber from 223 Rem and will change it to 6.5CM if it shoots....which I don’t know why it shouldn’t. Curious to see how to fouls, cleans, breaks in etc...

Later for now.