Sleeving a barrel

When I was working in a gunsmith shop in Shreveport we occasionally relined a .22 cal barrel. We bored out the existing barrel and soft soldered in a liner. Then chambered the liner so essentially the barrel was a two part .22 cal barrel.

As an aside, these were usually fairly old, and possibly collectable, .22 rifles, usually Winchester pump guns, as I remember.

The big secret was to fit it up well and use the right flux for the solder.

If you are putting an outer sleeve on the barrel then that is a different story. I used to build single shot "varmint rifles" in my spare time and (it was been a long time ago) made the barrels the same diameter as the action at the butt end and tapered them just enough that they didn't look like a straight cylinder. Usually 22-250 and used to guarantee MOA or better.

I'm long out of the trade but if you are looking for accuracy you might look at the system of sleeving the barrel just forward of the action and bedding that area with the rest of the metal free floating.

Bruce in Bangkok (brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

Thank you for your thoughts Bruce. I'm talking about sleeving the outside of a brand new barrel. It's an experiment for me so I'm digging around for ideas.

The barrel will be free floated without anything touching it.

Heat treating doesn't make it stiffer if I've learned anything from this list.

DAGS:

They sell some steel reinforced epoxy in 1# cans or larger. I heavily relieved portions of my garand stock in the action area and filled it with this type of epoxy. Can't remember where I learned this. Maybe Walt Kuleck's book on the garand.

Wes

I don't think it's going to do much for you. If you were going to just add the tube as a bloop tube so you could get a longer sight radius, fine. Just free float the barrel ahead of the chamber. But to pack the tube full of whatever isn't going to do much but damp some vibrations or at least change them. Hard to say what it would do for you. Benchresters used to sleeve their actions back when they were using standard hunting-type actions, that would probably give you more benefit than what you want. Pillar bedding would probably gain you more than that, too. If it was a good idea, benchresters would have done it already and would still be doing it.

I rather think it's going to let loose after a number of shots, just from differential expansion. Several old military rifles had full- length sleeved barrels, they were threaded onto the barrel at the chamber end and the muzzle end floated free to alow for expansion from heat.

Stan

Thank you for your thoughts Stan. I'll look into this.

Back in my day we used to glass the receiver and a short section of the of the barrel, where it screwed into the receiver. The rest of the barrel was very loosely fitted to the stock. It seemed to work pretty well but some recent reading implies there is a better method. You sleeve the barrel for about four inches, it looks like, at the forward end of the receiver and glass ONLY that portion into the stock. The gus is held together by bolts threaded into the sleeve and the normal receiver bolts do not seem to be used at all. Try

The idea seems to have merit as stocks do change dimensions with changes in temperature and humidity so this single point bedding might very well do a better job in isolating the action and barrel from the stock.

Bruce in Bangkok (brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

Hi Guys:

I'm going through the current topics to hopefully suggest a way to tag valid RCM traffic.

Add RCM: on the beginning of the title line - BEFORE the obligatory OT?

Hang tiugh - keep posting.

CaveLamb

Hi Guys:

I'm going through the current topics to hopefully suggest a way to tag valid RCM traffic.

Add RCM: on the beginning of the title line - BEFORE the obligatory OT, OK?

Then we can filter on that tag.

Also need to add a filter for Re: RCM: to get the reply lines.

Hang tight - keep posting.

CaveLamb