Reboring Barrels 

When that old friend has failed you but you can't bear to give it up, 
having it rebored to a new caliber is often an affordable option.

Why rebore your Rifle?  Most often this is done to save an old gun.  It is especially useful when you have an expensive barrel with special sights, original markings, barrel bands, quarter ribs, or full ribs built in.  There are many reasons why you might want to keep the original profile of the barrel, reboring allows you to do that with a minimum of expense.  If you would rather just rebarrel, click here.

The first step in reboring is to pull the barrel from the action. Next it goes in a machine similar to a lathe where a special boring cutter is used to remove the rifling. This rough boring step leaves the bore 0.006 to 0.008 inch under the final bore diameter. A bore reamer of the desired caliber is then pulled through the bore to give the final bore diameter and a smooth finish. When the reaming is done, a rifling head of the appropriate size is installed, and the rifling is cut into the bore. We use a single point hook cutter for rifling. It takes an average of 75 passes per groove to cut the rifling to depth

 There is no guarantee that any barrel will rebore successfully, but in most instances there is no charge for an unsuccessful rebore. Sometimes the barrel can rebored to the next caliber above the one requested if the first rebore doesn't come out. The exception is post WWII European made barrels. Due to various reasons that I won't go into, these barrels stand a higher then normal chance of not reboring well.  Most American and postwar Japanese made barrels as used by Browning, Howa, Weatherby, etc are very nice to work with in both stainless and chromoly steel.

The old Winchester nickel steel barrels usually bore and ream well but are tough to get a real nice finish in the bottom of the grooves. The steel is tough and stringy and while the barrels will look a little on the rough side, they usually shoot well. Barrels made before WWI and especially before the turn of the 20th century tend to be non-uniform in their make up. Steel making was more of an art then a science at that time. Normally they will rebore OK. WWII production barrels can run the gamut from very good to work with to horrible. Standards were relaxed in order to hurry production and get weapons into the hands of the troops, and reboring can be an iffy thing on some of these barrels. This is also true of the 1917 Enfield barrels both from WWI and WWII.

Cost to rebore your barrel, $395. A pretty good savings over a new barrel which starts at $675. If your barrel has special sights setup, integral ramps, ribs, or quarter ribs, integral swivels, or if it's octagon, or any other special or unique barrel then reboring really becomes cost effective. One limitation is diameter of the barrel, a rule of thumb is if the muzzle is at least .250" bigger in diameter than the desired caliber a rebore will likely work. Calibers to choose from, see 'Cartridges I have Loved.'

We ship all of my rebore work to an outside vendor. With our current workload, turnaround time is running 7 to 9 months on rebores. Shipping Information. Good Shootin!