Barrel Relining

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jmiles1960

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Does anyone have experience with barrel relining? I have a Bolo Mauser pistol (.30 caliber) with a stove pipe condition barrel. I have very little $$$ in the gun; the two quotes for relining I've gotten are north of $450+. I can buy the barrel liner, and with the short length of the barrel I was wondering if this is something I can attempt on my own. Any thoughts, experience, advice appreciated. Thanks!
 
That's a lot of precision machine work to do it correctly.

With a thin barrel like the Mauser you basically drill out the barrel and make it into a barrel shroud.
This makes the liner thicker then the barrel is after drilling.

Turn the liner to a snug fit in the original barrel and turn a flange on the rear to fit a corresponding cut in the rear of the barrel.
This prevents the liner from moving forward when fired.

These days a good locker like one of the stronger Loctite's is applied to a very well degreased barrel and the liner and press the liner into the barrel.
You have to work fast when doing this, the lockers set up fast in tight fits.
Give it a full 24 hours to fully cure before doing any other work.

One trick for a good bond is to put shallow thread-like grooves in both to give the locker a good bond, or roughen them up to give a "tooth" to the parts for good bonding.
This looks like the rough grooved barrels on some military rifles.
It's easy to do when turning the liner.
 
What do you mean by "a stove pipe condition barrel"? Usually "stove pipe" referred to a particular jamming of the action, not the condition of the barrel.
 
Sorry about the "Stove Pipe" term... the Mauser's barrel has no rifling left at this point.

I have no experience with a lathe or access to machining equipment. Sounds like I either spend the money for an experienced repair or make it a wall hanger. It keyholes consistently when firing rounds.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback / comments.
 
I had a .30 C96 sleeved but that was years ago. Cost less than $200 then. Bore was completely shot. Firing it was like shooting a roman candle. If I recall correctly (could be wrong) the name of the people who did it was something like Redmon. They advertised constantly under gunsmithing services in Shotgun News. They did a lot of it so they were apparently pretty good at it and (presumably) had equipment all set up for the job.
 
jmiles1960 said:
Does anyone have experience with barrel relining? I have a Bolo Mauser pistol (.30 caliber) with a stove pipe condition barrel. I have very little $$$ in the gun; the two quotes for relining I've gotten are north of $450+. I can buy the barrel liner, and with the short length of the barrel I was wondering if this is something I can attempt on my own. Any thoughts, experience, advice appreciated. Thanks!
Click to expand...
The barrel on a M96 has a rather small outside diameter at the muzzle. What is the outside diameter of the liner. I have done one reline on a 25-35 Marlin. The result was a functional firearm that shot okay but not great. If I were to do it again I would do somethings different. I did have to spend $144 to have a drill made (resharpened) with a pilot point that would follow the bore.
 
You’re probably thinking of Randy Redman IIRC, he was in Spokane, WA. You might try Taylor Machine in Idaho. He can do the job quite well. Sorry, I don’t have contact info for either.
 
kev74 said:
What do you mean by "a stove pipe condition barrel"? Usually "stove pipe" referred to a particular jamming of the action, not the condition of the barrel.
Click to expand...
Those of us that are aficionados of military bolt action rifles us the term for barrel condition as well.
 
Decades ago Oyster Bay Industries brought in scads of Broomhandles from China. The bores were so bad on many of them they cut the original barrel off where the diameter decreased ahead of the chamber, threaded the breech stub, and screwed in a new barrel. When re-contoured, they looked very good and were nice shooters.
 
Well, the Springfield Armory was able to install a three stepped (diameter) liner in very thin musket barrels using belt driven machinery. I have done several rifle barrels with primitive tooling. A pistol barrel should be easy. I would try for a heat shrink fit, heat the reamed barrel, chill the liner and ram them together. When the temperatures normalize, they will never come apart.

Kevin
 
Have you shot the gun yet? I have a 1906 Winchester rifle that appears to have little to no rifling left in the barrel. But it still shoots OK. By 'OK', I can still hit bigger targets at ~100 yards with it. I don't know how much life it has left in it, but I don't intend to shoot it very much.
 
That is my thread in the Practical Machinist site. I was able to successfully line the barrel of the C96 "Bolo" but it was not so simple as a .22 liner job. The hard part was establishing proper headspace without a specially made chambering reamer. The mouth of the chamber is slightly more than 4" from the rear of the upper which has an internal width of about .450" so there is no easy way to drive an off the shelf (in my case a rental) reamer. The way I dealt with this was to make a stepped liner and boring out the rotten bore with matching step - the larger diameter at the breech end. Then I chamber reamed the liner which I made from a piece of .308 stainless rifle barrel and dry fit it into the upper with a headspace gauge installed in the chamber. Inserting the bolt, I was able to determine how much I needed to move the step on the liner to get the proper headspace. A bit fussy but it worked out just fine. I had originally sent the upper and the bolt to Redmans based on the price he had on his website. A few weeks later I received a reply by snail mail saying that his published price on the website was outdated and the job now cost significantly more. He also said that my barrel was slightly bent and DIDN'T know if that would cause any problems. I politely asked him to return it to me which he said would cost me $75! Once I had it back I straightened the barrel and proceeded with the job. I just recently finished the restoration by rust blueing it. I'm sorry I didn't take before pictures but the project was started over 30 years ago, long before I had a digital camera. I had to fill lots of significant pits and left those in the recessed panels and also rebuilt the grip straps which were severely rusted. The grip scales are bovine ivory. I'm pleased with my efforts overall but think I may make some new grip scales out of camel or giraffe bone - the bovine ivory was not thick enough the get a better hand filling grip but look nice. New springs are on the way as well.
I would add that doing this job without a lathe would be considerably more difficult.
 

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robertrwalsh said:
I had a .30 C96 sleeved but that was years ago. Cost less than $200 then. Bore was completely shot. Firing it was like shooting a roman candle. If I recall correctly (could be wrong) the name of the people who did it was something like Redmon. They advertised constantly under gunsmithing services in Shotgun News. They did a lot of it so they were apparently pretty good at it and (presumably) had equipment all set up for the job.
Click to expand...

https://redmansrifling.com/relining
 
I used green LocTite - I think it was 290. I think the red stuff would work as well.
I neglected to mention in my previous post that I bought extra length drills and used a tool post grinder in my lathe to create pilots on both of the drills - the smaller drill to drill out the bore and the larger for the chamber step. The liner was then turned to mate up with the bored holes.
 
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