Bending a Barrel

Emmett Dunham

I have read a few post on bending barrels to strighten them out. An example would be a rifle shooting way to far to the left or off traget to the left, bending it to the right to get it back on target. What process is used to bend the barrel.


Emmett

Tflogger

I have seen pictures of workers in the Belgian FN factory straightening barrels using a vee block and vise fixture.

Mooseyard

I'm pretty sure that Savage still does this with all of their barrels. I saw a video once of them doing it. Pretty sure that Brownells sells the jig for doing it. I'd very careful!

dcs shooters

I've seen the program on TV also. It takes a heavy round block on bottom and one on top. The most important piece is a very good eye to see when it is stright.

HandLoad

I was taught this trick by (now retired) Gunsmith Chick Donnelly, of Siskyou Gun Works - he makes a button to go in the muzzle, machined to just fit. It has a carefully machined and carefully chamfered in a symmetrical fashion, hole about 1/8 inch in diameter. When the barrel is held pointing at a bright light with the button in the muzzle, and looking in from the breech, you can observe bands of light and dark, that show where stress or damage has bent the barrel. Resting the bent barrel on two stout v-blocks separated by about a foot or so that are well supported, Chick would run down a stout Acme-threaded rod of about 1.5 inches diameter tipped with a v-block, on the opposite side of the barrel and between the other two v-blocks, forcing the barrel to bend. His experience/skill was to just push past the elastic limit of the barrel steel to actually bend the barrel. After releasing the pressure on the barrel, he would check to see if the banding was more symmetrical. Sometimes he would have to make a few tries at getting the barrel exactly straight. His skill at placing the barrel at just the right place to get the bend out, and his skill at just applying enough to move the barrel, was quite amazing to watch.

JK

Years ago barrel makers like Titus, Sukalle, Ackley used the same method or a facsimile thereof but with the use of a shadow line using only the bore as a reference. They were pretty adept at doing this and were some fine barrel makers of their era. Remember it's elasticity thing as stated. If too much stress is introduced in straightening it will immediately show up on the range as soon as the barrel heats up. Other methods have to be employed to relieve these stresses.

Dumpster Baby

Barrel straightening Flash video:

http://projects.nfstc.org/firearms/module04/fir_m04_t06_04.htm