Douglas Barrels

[evines]

I have just finished chambering my first barrel. All has gone well, and now I am going to crown the muzzle. Douglas says you must cut off 1.5 inches from the muzzle.Some other barrel mfg. say nothing about this on their web sites. Douglas does not give the reason for the cut. I think it was Kreiger's site that said their barrels require 1.0 inch cut off the muzzle because their tooling causes some flare on the ends.
I would like to hear any comments on this.

Thanks,
Ed

[GeorgeGaskill]

from all the barrel makers I have dealt with. The last inch or so on both ends is not exactly the same as the rest of the bore. The chamber gets rid of the area on that end; either cutting off the muzzle or making an integral muzzle brake would take care of the other end.

[John]

Douglas free bores the chamber end to get the butten started, chamber cleans this end up. I don't know why the other end is not the same size. I do know that a cut barrel will be a little tight at the muzzle. Go to the douglas web sight and maybe you will find out more, http://www.benchrest.com/douglas/index.html.

[Al_Messer]

The man who made three first class rifles for me said that he did it after turning the barrel contours to eliminate the part where the "button" that kept the barrel centered on the tailstock "may have damaged the lands".

[Bill Meyer]

I have been using Douglas barrels for about 40 years. I have used a few where I didn' cut the end off when the customer wanted a longer barrel that I did't have in stock and he didn't want to wait. Couldn't see any difference in accuracy but I still would cut the muzzle end off if I had a choice. Bill Meyer

[artk]

Somewhere during a bunch of reading about the making of barrels I remember some such warning about hand lapped barrels. The idea was that the hand lapping produced a slightly out of sized barrel at the ends of the lapped blank. So the idea was that you hand lap the blank before cutting to size. Would normal rifling operations have a similar effect near the ends?

-Art K

[Al_Messer]

Wouldn't think so, and remember, Harry Pope hand lapped his barrels to have a choke bore in them, tapering from the breech to the muzzle.

[kurt]

I rember hereing, or , reading somewere that the button skip's a little nere the start, but I always though that the start was the chamber end. I have herd that about laped barrels too.

[evines]

Thank you all for your comments. Off to the band saw I go.

Ed

[butchlambert1]

The lap does not exit the barrel during lapping, so it is best to cut 1" or more off the muzzle end. Thebarrelman

[Jon]

I visit Hart Barrels quite often and have about 25 of them. They are all marked appox. 1 1/2" with a hacksaw from the muzzle. The reason I was told to cut the barrel off below that mark was that when they lap the barrels the lap stops at the end and then they pull it back through. This has a tendency to make that portion a bit oversize. At the chamber end it does not matter as all that material is removed when you cut the chamber. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/blush.gif"%20alt="[/img]