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I would suggest that you not order a cambering reamer until you have the barrel in hand. I have found it best to have the barrel, brass and bullets before ordering the reamer.

mriisj, have not forgotten you. Will be off for the last two weeks of the year and will get the Tripod out and take some pics.
Will send them to mike to post here. Terry will also get the Pope .25 Niedner Krag out and take a some pictures and send them also to Mike to post. I will also look at the Rifling and describe it to you. Regards, FITZ.

michael p,

you have spoken a mouthful of the truth. getting the reamer first is buying a moutain of hurt..

..ttfn..grampa..

Michael, This may sound like a stupid question, but why? Given that reamers can, and usually do have an interchangable pilot, and modern barrels have pretty tight tolerances I don't see the problem....

Brent - who has a custom reamer languishing in Cody awaiting a barre.

I've worked with several of these type projects and nothing is close to what you think it might be ahead of time. There is going to be a lot of difference in brass, the custom mould will cast what it's going to cast and there is no way to know until you have it in hand. When we built my last schuetzen rifle we turned bullets on the lathe, made dies, sized the brass and made cartridges, got the barrel then ordered the clambering reamer. I believe that there will be less problems this way. If we were making barrels like Pope we would chamber them first then cut the rifling.

Brent, I think part of the problem lies in the fact that the pretty tight tolerances of modern barrels are still open to interpretation and change by each barrel maker. For example the modern 40-cal barrels have groove diameters that range from a high of 0.410" (McMillan) to a low of 0.406" (Shilen) with GM & Douglas in the middle @ 0.408". Then there are the original 40-cals with grooves ranging down to 0.403" and the newest ones intended for the 405 WCF cartridge @ 0.411-0.412" or so. How about the 32-cal bbls with grooves ranging from 0.318" to 0.328"?

Just a few examples although perhaps the most egregious of them.
Regards, Joe

Of course, as to brass and chamber dimensions, you could always take into account minimum dimensions and neck-turn your brass - which is the route I decided to take when building my #2 Musket.
Then again, this is a .45, which usually it at .450/.458, although there might just be 0.001 difference...

greetings,

if it were to be a standard rifle then it would be no problem building it to sami specs with a standard reamer.. but then it would be an average shooting gun.

but, building a super accurate custom gun is a horse of another color.

and who would build an average custom gun??? not i and i hope, not mike iij

Well, just for the heck of it, here is what I did and why.

I had a reamer donated on loan for this by ssdave (thanks!) recut to my specs for a paper patch bullet that will be bore diameter (.450") and seated fully into the lands (not more than 0.1" of bullet in the case). All that I needed to know how to dimension the reamer was the brass.

The barrel will, almost certainly, be .450" on the lands. I know of no one making them measurably otherwise.

For better or worse, that's where we are...

Hi Guys

I will try to explain the approach I did regarding the chamber.

My idea was to make a very accurate barrel as a copy of pope in the cal .33, after talking to Ron Smith about the idea he said it was possible and I could choose the 6-8 grooves and the depth I wanted.

Next step was the chamber and brass, for this I talked to Dave Casey from RMC regarding the size and also on the forums, several ideas was possible, fire form from 32-40, form 38-55 brass to 32-40 and then fire form it and have the brass made to the chamber, I choose the last so Dave from RMC made the brass to the right dimension (he got a copy of the reamer drawing)

I then ordered the reamer from Manson reamers the dimensions are as follows, Case Mouth .357", Free bore .340", Rem Pilot .3295" and chamber angle from center 2,5 degrees (total 5 degrees).

After all the info on this thread I decided to order 2 barrels, both in the bore .330, one with 6 grooves on .338" and one with pope rifling with 8 grooves on .334", the reason for 2 barrels was to determine the actual difference on the two rifling’s, both will be mounted with false muzzle.

The barrels will end up on a CPA 44½ action in #5 size and 31" length.

Then is the question as I see it as a rookie how big is the influence of the chamber on this barrels and is there any thumbs that one should follows, it’s not a big deal to order another reamer.

I do understand that Dave Moss is a #1 mould maker, but I have so good experience with Paul Jones, but if this fails I know where to go.

Michael