Been waiting and putting off swapping out the barrel on a Ballard I have here. The full octagon #3 weight barrel has a chamber problem, and I recently picked up a nice finished #3.5 or #4 weight half octagon barrel in .40-65, already fitted to a Ballard action. as some may know the chance of it fitting another Ballard without work is pretty slim, but I decided today was the day it would get a test fitting.
After spinning the old barrel off, I spun the new one on by hand and it appeared a bit short of indexing. But I spun it back off and wiped the threads clean, and prepped it to go on. With just minimum pressure on my action wrench it turned right into place! Easy enough that I spun it off again and added blue Loctite to the threads and put it back on a 3rd time.
Then I removed the target scope bases off the old barrel and to my surprise thee new barrel's D&T holes were identically spaced, so I could simply swap bases! Can't get much luckier than the barrel fitting, unless it's having everything fit! The only real work will be opening up the forearm wood channel to fit the larger barrel. Then it needs a hole D&T in the barrel to match the forearm screw.
So here's the Ballard action that got the barrel swap.
The new to me Douglas #3.5 or #4 weight barrel.
Installed, and waiting for a forearm.
And the .32-40 breech seating tool that came with the barrel deal. It will be used on one of my four other .32-40 Ballard rifles.