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Changing rimfire barrels

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Peter Armstrong Mk1
Changing rimfire barrels

Everyone has there own way of doing things and this is my way of changing barrel.

The Calfee theory (its in his book) is if barrel is on to tight it compresses the barrel where the shoulder meets the end of the action. In a centerfire under the shoulder you have the chamber so you can tighten the barrel all you like and doesn’t affect anything. With a rimfire what’s under the shoulder is the bore and if you tighten the barrel up too much you end up with chook point in the wrong end of the barrel and kills accuracy.

A couple of photos of my homemade barrel wrench. All I used to make it was a vise, drill press, file and hacksaw. These days I have a late 1800’s Goodall- Pratt bench hacksaw which would save most of the filing. The jaws are a piece of 25x25x300mm aluminium I bought on eBay and the golf club grip I bought on eBay too. So I can change barrels on sporters the bolts have 75mm of thread.

Fitting barrels, when I take a barrel off I clean all the old lube off the threads before I put the barrel away. For me first step is to lube the treads of the barrel I’m fitting and I view it as a release agent, so I cover everything that is going contact the action and wipe off the excess. I use Nulon XL90 and I get that from the Supercheaps online store.

With the barrel thread lubed and ready to go on I put the butt of the rifle on a stool take off the tuner, place the wrench on the barrel where the tuner was, give the wrench a light tap with a wooden mallet and it comes undone. Take the wrench off unscrew the barrel, wipe off any excess lube on the action face and screw the new barrel all the way in. I put the wrench back on and turn it until the barrel shoulder and action are touching, then back the wrench off a 1/4 turn a flick of the wrist to lock it up and it’s done, all I’m after is tight enough that it doesn’t come loose and no tighter. I take the wrench off and put the tuner on and wipe of any excess lube and job done. Once a barrel is lubed ready to go on it only a 60 second job to change barrels.

Any questions just ask.

Peter

robbycar
robbycar's picture
Is there a market for this?

I would be happy to make something similar for sale if there is a market in the rimfire world.

It could be made so you would not need to remove tuner or bloop tube.

Rob.

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