New project, coning a barrel

[Eric Krewson]

I may trash it; it is a Bobby Hoyt re-bore from .50 to.54 that he did poorly with several loose spots. I just bought a 38".50 Rice barrel for a Haines rifle. I had some major sticker shock when I looked up what parts cost now; $52 just for a butt plate, they cost about $20 when I bought the parts for the Haines rifle with questionable barrel. I may strip the stock of parts from my current Haines rifle and make a restock with a cherry stock blank I have. I never used the blank because of the big knot; I found out yesterday that my Haines pattern completely misses the knot.

[sleek]

Well, I will certainly be following along. You say you may trash it, you mean just the barrel right?

[Eric Krewson]

Just the barrel and stock if I do. The lock and all of the furniture is worth about $500. I have a new Kibler lock as well. It will be hard to trash such a beautiful rifle, I could turn it into a safe queen if I decide to keep it intact. I have about a thousand in it and could probably get the barrel rebored to a .58 but that would be sinking another $150 into a flawed project. My work is impecible, the stock had too many flaws to start with.

Here is one flaw that I didn't notice until I was adding finish to the stock; the precarver didn't cut the ramrod channel straight, it has an arc in it.

[pierce_schmeichel]

Tell ya what Eric ill take that barrel off your hands if you end up not wanting it!

[Eric Krewson]

I bought a NOS B weight .50 Hines Rice Barrel for a bargain; I have a cherry stock blank that has a big knot in it but I found that the Haines pattern layout will miss the knot.

I have never made a rifle completely; I always had someone inlet the barrel and drill the ramrod hole, I did the rest. I decided that a new rifle was in order with me doing everything. So off we go; this will be a LONG project.

The blank was over 3" thick, I sliced off 1/4" to make a pattern out of to cut stock my blank to size. This didn't work, the shop worn Haines plan was all over the place and I couldn't get everything straight.



I decided to use my current Haines rifle to lay out the pattern. To be more exact I am going to pull the barrel to mark the top of the barrel channel more precisely. You can see that I missed the knot in the layout.

[pierce_schmeichel]

That is going to look so cool! Super stoked that youre doing the whole thing. Its a lot of work but super super rewarding. I found a neat trick for octagonal barrels. You can take a skill saw and put the blade depth 1/8" shy of the depth that you are wanting to inlet the barrel and make 2 cuts at that depth to form the bottom flat of the octagonal barrel. And then you put the blade about an 1/8" from the correct depth for the side flats on the octagonal barrel and them you just chisel it out. That saves a tooooooooon of time. And makes it really easy to get the shape. Of course you cant make the cuts all the way down to the breech end because of how circular saws work but it makes it much less work and gets you that initial shape more quickly

[Eric Krewson]

Thanks for the tip!

I broke down my over coned Haines rifle, I removed the barrel and lock so I could use it for a pattern more easily. With the barrel out I started looking for anything that might make the rifle shoot poorly. When I got the pre-carve the barrel had been inletted at a slant instead of straight down. I worked for a while to get the barrel inletted properly but as soon as it was just about right, I quit.

I noticed some strong contact points on the lower oblique flats so I got out a scraper and some sandpaper and went to work on these points.  I put Permatex marker on the barrel and pressed things together to see if my scraping relieved the contact points. After a few scrape and check sessions I had the barrel inletting perfectly.

The rifle is a .54 with a very tight bore. I have to pound a .530 ball down the bore when I use my favorite pocket drill cloth patch. The pocked drill is indestructible. I ordered some .526 balls the other day so while I was fooling with rifle, I decided to go shoot to see what I could come up with a different load. I was getting 4" groups at 50 yards with the .530 balls after over-coning the barrel.
 
I was shooting 85g of 2F, the recoil is punishing for an old guy. I dropped my load to 70 gr for my first test with the .526 balls. The balls loaded easily with a pocket drill patch. My first shots were to the right and 3" low with 70g of powder and the .526 balls, the group wasn't all that good.

I knocked the rear sight over a little and increased the powder load to 75g and BINGO! I got a 1 1/2" group at 50 yards out of a gun I had given up on. This just shows every one of the rifles has its own personality, when I coned the barrel, I changed the personality and had to hunt around to rediscover what the gun liked.

I hunted on-line for a .526 mold and found that Track of the Wolf was the only place to buy one, they have a deal with Lee to be the exclusive dealer for this unusual mold size. The mold they stock comes without handles, (sold separately), is a 6-gang mold and will set me back about $80.

I have another tight bore .54, if it shoots the .526 balls well, I will order a mold, if not I will order balls already cast because I don't shoot these guns all that often. I tune them up for deer season and let it go at that.