The problem with this issue is that the hole will not likely clean up when either sleeving the chamber or entire barrel. More like halfway thru the hole would clean up. This may be better than what you have now, but not ideal. If you bore it out so large as to clean up the entire hole, you run the risk of thinning the barrel up front of the chamber, an issue much like lenthening chambers. A sleeved chamber or barrel gets part of it's strength from the outside of the original barrel and part from the new sleeve. Sleeving will be an improvement, but may need to go down in gauge, as Miller has alluded, to gain some additional wall to make up for the partial hole that will be leftover. As Dick can no doubt attest, this is the kind of thing structural engineers spend countless hours analyzing with tools like finite element analysis. This is a tough one. Welding isn't the do-all, end-all solution here. A weld is akin to a casting. Would you shoot a cast steel barrel?
Last edited by Chuck H; 05/10/11 11:04 AM.
