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