Over the years while cleaning the bore of old Model 700 Remington rifles I would notice that when I got down to about the last 3 inches above the muzzle I would feel more resistance to the cleaning patch. I decided that the Remingtons that I was dealing with had a smaller bore about the last 3 inches of the bore. I slugged a coule and sure enough there was a restriction where I was feeling the patch tightness. During this time, which was the heyday of my gun building, I had rigged up a shop made version of a bore scope. Those Remington barrels that I had been dealing with gave a big surprise when I could use my scope device and see all of the imperfections in the bore. Most of these bores looked absolutely awful but all of them shot remarkably well. I decided that this was a Remington ploy to make rough barrels shoot well.. So, a gun building buddy of mine and myself started experimenting with this choke idea. Myself, I will not put a junk barrel on a rifle. However, he will build a beautiful gun and stick some of the most gosh awful barrels on them. We made us up a tool so that we could swage the muzzle areas of barrels down. We rigged up a tool similar to a knurling tool only stronger and we put smooth hard wheels on it. We would put this in the cross slide of the lathe and put the barrel in the lathe either between centers or the chamber in in a 4 jaw chuck and the muzzle on a center in the tail stock. This puts a lot of pressure on the tail stock but hasn't effected our lathes. We would then run the rollers up against the muzzle and turn the lathe on at a slow speed (about 50 rpm). We would run the rollers up against the muzzle area and move them back and forth and keep pressure on the tool my keeping pressure against the hand wheel. We learned very soon that you had better stop and slug the barrel because you get results a lot quicker that you expect. If you go too far the only option is to bob it if you have enough barrel to do that.
The first barrel that we did this to had already been fired a bunch and the accuracy was pitiful After our choking job we couldn't wait to get it back on the gun and fire it. The results were spectacular to what it shot like before.Now , what is your opinion and has anybody done this?
Mashburn
David a. Cogburn