Rice barrel

[Mike Brooks]

Properly reamed, a barrel shouldn't have any high or low spots should it?

 

[LRB]

Properly reamed and rifled, is the key phrase here. Too many barrels are not properly reamed and cut. Most factories run a lot of ten barrels before changing reamers. Get the first one, and you usually have the best of the lot. When a reamer gets dull, or is forced to cut faster than it should, you end up with chatter marks, and loose and tight spots. With cut rifling, as in good ML barrels, the cutters need to be kept sharp also, and not over forced to do the job. Some factories just do not take the care or time to do it as it needs to be done, as in the case of one of the more popular swamped barrel makers, who sell theirs markedly cheaper than others, and turn them out by the gross. I am assuming that Rice has cut the time required to get a uniform bore by the use of the carbide sizer. I do not see that as a bad thing, but as progress to insure quality in ML barrels. The problems I have encountered with accuracy in ML barrels, has most often been traced to loose and tight spots, and rough reamed bores, either of which is detrimental to good accuracy.

 

[BS]

Properly reamed and rifled, is the key phrase here. Too many barrels are not properly reamed and cut. Most factories run a lot of ten barrels before changing reamers. Get the first one, and you usually have the best of the lot. When a reamer gets dull, or is forced to cut faster than it should, you end up with chatter marks, and loose and tight spots. With cut rifling, as in good ML barrels, the cutters need to be kept sharp also, and not over forced to do the job. Some factories just do not take the care or time to do it as it needs to be done, as in the case of one of the more popular swamped barrel makers, who sell theirs markedly cheaper than others, and turn them out by the gross. I am assuming that Rice has cut the time required to get a uniform bore by the use of the carbide sizer. I do not see that as a bad thing, but as progress to insure quality in ML barrels. The problems I have encountered with accuracy in ML barrels, has most often been traced to loose and tight spots, and rough reamed bores, either of which is detrimental to good accuracy.

This is the way I see it also. :grin: