I am neither trying to be argumentative, rude, or critical- every happy find is a treasure, but what makes an unfinished blank excitingly special? Is barrel quality in the bore and rifling, not the chambering, action fit or contour ?
I can not answer that question for the original poster, but let me try and answer it from my perspective. I have known Boots for over 30 years now. Shared the firing line with him and spent many an hour in the pits discussing barrels, gunsmithing and politics with him, and was lucky enough to visit his shop one time. To me Boots represents one of the last of the great old time barrel makers in the same class as Pope, Schoyen, Hubaleck and others. With simple equipment and a lot of skill he made barrels that were sought after by the finest shooters, particularly in the highpower rifle community. He was never particularly prolific and always had a long wait list. About the only way I found to get one was to take whatever he had on hand. Boots was also a very competitive highpower shooter as well, finishing in the top 5% in the highpower nationals for many years.
I've had several Boots barrels through my shop in the last 25 years, and have one on my Palma rifle currently. While my bore scope says the barrel makers of today are making a better product than what any of the old timers made in years past, I would still snatch up any Obermeyer barrel I could find just as fast as I could grab my wallet. And my Palma barrel has shot 14 consecutive x's at 600 yards with iron sights even with me shooting it.
The above barrel would make a great addition to any fine custom rifle. Also as a side note, when making that barrel, Boots would have contoured that barrel to that rough contour prior to reaming and rifling so as to reduce any tendency for the bore to change when doing the final shaping of the barrel. Just one thing that you can do with a cut rifled barrel that you can't do with a button barrel.
Just my perspective, hope it helps,
John
