It was a great idea!

[Oatmealsavage82]

So I decided to build a comp gun for three gun matches this summer. So I figure the heart and soul of a rifle is the barrel. Well I've had real good luck with benchmark barrels- hey I know instead of buying a barrel, I'll just order a blank and contour my own. Great fucking plan!........
Let's just say the next gun will get a factory profiled barrel because that is a level of fucking around that does not interest me much
So I started wit a 1.25" 1-9 benchmark blank


I then proceeded to cut


And cut


And cut some more


So after I made a shit pile of chips, discovered that all my tooling had too big of radius and chattered like a mother fucker I got to spend about an hour and a half polishing.......




Hopefully by the time I get some duracoat on there it will look alright.
Oh and it's 18", rifle gas, SPR contour.

 

[Pat85]

If that was a straight contour a follow rest would have worked. If it was contoured I strap a heavy piece of brass gib out of a big radial drill right behind the cut. I use a sharp corner carbide or high speed steel cutters and feed and speed slow enough not to turn the chips blue. As the diameter gets smaller the cuts need to be smaller, some times I sharpen the tool after each cut. The tool has to cut clean or you can push the barrel out of concentricity. It's a pain in the ass with a manual lathe and fucked up a couple blanks myself.

 

[Pat85]

I use this chunk of brass I had laying around on this #6 contour.

I'am done trying to cut sporter contours, wouldn't mine trying to do an AR barrel.

 

[Big Stick]

BHW is currently 20% off.

Hint................(grin)

 

[Oatmealsavage82]

Yeah shit the follower rest would have worked perfect. I run carbide tooling and the inserts I was using had way to big of a radius, I fixed that problem yesterday though

 

[Pat85]

I use brazed tip carbide when I use carbide. One of theses day when iam in the mood I going to rig up a follower rest with an air cylinder, regulator, quick release valve and try to get it to follow a contour at a constant pressure on the barrel.