I gots me a 22LR Bentz chamber reamer

[JDHasty]

I’ve glued the Redman liner into my Stevens model 44 barrel w/loctite 262 and have faced it off to 90 degrees at both breech and muzzle and crowned it using my Brownells 11 degree piloted tool.

So, now my buddy is telling me that it’s almost impossible to hand cut a 22LR chamber and do a good job. What say you?

I could also take it to another buddy’s house and get it centered on the bore by putting a pin in the bore and indicating it then turn the lathe chuck by hand to ream the chamber. He’s telling me that is no good either and to take it to a pro.

What I have is a removable pilot reamer and some headspace gauges. I had figured on turning the reamer with a tap handle, going slow and using lots of cutting oil, but now I’m reluctant to do anything until I get some good advice.

I’ve got John Taylor making a 17 HMR barrel for it and thought that it would be fun to see what I could do with the bad 22 LR barrel on my own. I’d like it to shoot real well and it will be three or four months before I get the action home, so I have plenty of time to decide how I will proceed.

It wouldn’t be a big deal to have someone else do the chambering, but I’d sure like to do it myself if I have a reasonable expectation of being able to do a good job on it.

[45_Colt]

The one area that gave me the biggest issue was the gap between the flutes. Or lack thereof. It takes very little cutting before the reamer gets filled with chips. So learned to cut a little and clean/flush chips.

Can use a section of the left over liner and trial cut a chamber on it. Just to get a feel of how it goes.

Also, hold the barrel/liner with a downward slope. That will help in preventing the chips from running into the throat area of the reamer.

45_Colt

[DougGuy]

Pin the bore and mic the pin, it's likely -.0002" if it's a minus pin, but your pilot bushings are usually ground to size. As long as you have a SNUG fitting pilot, your reamer will be concentric. And yes they do fill the flutes with swarf rather quickly.

[Hannibal]

I chamber everything in my lathe with a double spider and a floating reamer holder. Never attempted to do it by hand so I have no advice on that particular process.

I will say if you decide to do it yourself be careful and do NOT turn the reamer backwards even a little bit. That's not good for multiple reasons.

[country gent]

You need to clear chips very often. The set up is critical once its right then the rest is just slowly cutting and clearing chips. Use plenty of oil, a good cutting oil. I prefer a black sulfur oil. keeping the chips small helps them to flow and not plug the flutes. Keep track of your depth as you go.

When setting up the lathe your head stock set up is good but you also want to set the tail stock to dead true with a test bar on centers. A mandrel can be indicated in or a test piece turned with light cuts and measured at each end until each end is he same.depending on size of the machine 6-10"apart. My test bar is 10" aluminum 2" dia. 1" long at each end and relieved in the middle. When setting up a light pass is taken on the first end then ran down and taken on the head end with out touching the compound. this shows the tail stocks alignment with the head in any taper present. Adjust until both ends are the same size.

[John Taylor]

I chamber quite a few 22s and it does not take a lot of effort. The Bentz reamer is very good, a tighter reamer would be the Lilja but it won't work in many single shot rifles. True up the barrel in the lathe, squirt some cutting oil in, oil the reamer, run the lathe around 100 rpms, Hold the reamer with a small wrench ( I use a 4" crescent ) and run it in by hand. You're only taking out about .003" over the groove diameter. Many times I don't pull the reamer out for chip removal but if you're worried about it, run it in half way and clear the chips.You can cut the chamber in about 10 seconds. Don't try this with larger chambers. If you need to cut for the rim it will take a little pressure. Rim cut is usually .043". Larger chamber require a reamer holder and the tail stock. Many times I will use a drill bit to take out most of the metal on a large chamber. I have about 100 chamber reamers and along the way I learned how to break a few of them. Now most are over $200, when I started reamers were about $50. I didn't have much money when I started and made several of the chamber reamers before I could buy them.

[kootne]

Chambering without a lathe is doable. I would suggest clamping the barrel vertically so you are pushing straight down. You will minimize the tendency to put side thrust on your reamer that way. Turn the reamer with the biggest tap wrench you have. Using both hands,take it easy, both with down pressure and turning pressure but make sure you are cutting. Plenty of oil in the hole and on the reamer. A 44 Stevens breeches up tight to the barrel so that makes the headspacing simpler. If you are concerned, find an old piece of .22 barrel, and do a practice run.

[DougGuy]

I agree with John Taylor. I turn my 22 reamer with the small Starrett tap handle.

This is not a barrel but I ream a LOT of kit gun cylinders, finicky with quite a few brands of ammo, hard extraction, the throats are usually great, my 22 reamer has a .2235" solid pilot and it fits fairly snugly in all the S&W cylinders I have reamed with it. I put the cylinders in a vise with red oak soft jaws wrapped in buckskin leather so the chambers are pointed straight down, use plenty of tap magic, and you'd be surprised how much metal that reamer takes out, as these chambers are notoriously tight, I have to clear it at least once usually twice then carefully watch the rim rebates for the slightest witness mark.

If you fail to clear the swarf, it wants to wedge the shavings between the flutes and the newly cut chamber walls and it acts like it wants to get stuck.

[JDHasty]

I chamber quite a few 22s and it does not take a lot of effort. The Bentz reamer is very good, a tighter reamer would be the Lilja but it won't work in many single shot rifles. True up the barrel in the lathe, squirt some cutting oil in, oil the reamer, run the lathe around 100 rpms, Hold the reamer with a small wrench ( I use a 4" crescent ) and run it in by hand. You're only taking out about .003" over the groove diameter. Many times I don't pull the reamer out for chip removal but if you're worried about it, run it in half way and clear the chips.You can cut the chamber in about 10 seconds. Don't try this with larger chambers. If you need to cut for the rim it will take a little pressure. Rim cut is usually .043". Larger chamber require a reamer holder and the tail stock. Many times I will use a drill bit to take out most of the metal on a large chamber. I have about 100 chamber reamers and along the way I learned how to break a few of them. Now most are over $200, when I started reamers were about $50. I didn't have much money when I started and made several of the chamber reamers before I could buy them.

I suffered mightily deciding on a reamer. We shoot live varmints and use mostly Mini Mag HP if we need accuracy to spare and a couple others. If we are shooting short ranges we just grab a Bucket O’ Bullets and that works plenty good. Our target rifles just don’t shoot HV HP well at all. Our sporting rifles can’t stay with them if they are fed target ammo they like though. But with hunting ammo the sporting rifles win that shooting match and by a wide margin.

The Bentz has done us good in the past, so I thought it would best suit my purposes. I went back and forth on paying more for a TJ’s liner, but since this is a learning experience and we have a few old rifles that have been lined using Redman liners, I just went ahead and threw one onto a Brownells order.

My buddy who advised me against cutting the chamber ourselves has advised me against so many other tasks that: Let’s just say I wanted a second opinion.

I go through Tap Magic like it’s water. I have so many bottles of Tap Magic sitting around that one is never out of reach. Maybe there is a better cutting oil, but it’s been my friend for a long time.

I have a woodworkers vise that has European beech and leather lined jaws on the front of my work bench that can be used to hold the barrel vertical, but I’m leaning toward turning the barrel in my buddy’s lathe and holding the reamer with a small crescent wrench or tap handle.

I’m going to walk over with some bean soup and my barrel and the reamer and use his pin gauges to make sure the pilot is going to be a good fit and if not I’ll order the correct size pilot.

Thank you to all who have responded. It looks like so long as we go slow and pay attention to detail can handle this. If it works out it will be nice to be able to not beg off on buying some cool old 22 because it has a “rotted out” bore in the future. I’ve walked away from quite a few in the past because I wasn’t wanting to get going on saving another stray kitten at a cost of thousand dollars. If I can add this to what I am able to accomplish, it kind of kicks the door open to always having something in the shop to stay busy on.

[JDHasty]

FWIW, this is not my first attempt at chambering a 22LR. When we were kids we had a Winchester break barrel 22 caliber air rifle that was pretty much kaput. We cut the rim recess and chambered it with twist drills. Drilled, tapped and loctited a hardened machine screw in the port and then cut it off and filed it down before drilling through into the piston and soldered a piece of drill rod into the piston and reamed the firing pin hole through the breech.

I can’t remember what ever happened to it. It was actually fairly accurate.

[country gent]

As I posted in another post Take it one step at a time. Do each ste to the best you can then font worry about it. font worry about the next either concentrate on whats at hand. Think it thru before starting and then its just one step at a time.

[DougGuy]

I’m going to walk over with some bean soup and my barrel and the reamer and use his pin gauges to make sure the pilot is going to be a good fit and if not I’ll order the correct size pilot.

Thank you to all who have responded. It looks like so long as we go slow and pay attention to detail can handle this. If it works out it will be nice to be able to not beg off on buying some cool old 22 because it has a “rotted out” bore in the future. I’ve walked away from quite a few in the past because I wasn’t wanting to get going on saving another stray kitten at a cost of thousand dollars. If I can add this to what I am able to accomplish, it kind of kicks the door open to always having something in the shop to stay busy on.

If your buddy has pin gages in .0005" increments you are golden. I got a set of Meyer zz minus pins .061" to .0250" which only comes in .001" increments but you can order the .0005" sizes for in between in single pins and you really need those too for fitting a pilot bushing.

[405grain]

I go sage rat (ground squirrel) hunting every year. I've made several barrels for highly modified Ruger 10-22 style rifles out of 7075 Aluminum rod and Redman liners. I bore the aluminum rod on the lathe, then install the liner with green Loctite cylindrical adhesive. I cut the chambers with a Bentz reamer. This makes very accurate varmint barrels (on rare occasions I've hit squirrels out to 200 yards). Here's some suggestions. First, if your friend tells you not to do stuff like this: it's because he doesn't know how, not because you don't know how. Centering a barrel between centers in a lathe using gauge pins is about the best way to get any barrel lined up perfectly. Cutting a chamber in a 22 liner by hand (in a lathe) is very easy, and you need be a little cautious because the reamer will cut both easier and faster than a reamer in a normal rifle barrel. You want to use a tap handle, and not a Crescent wrench when doing the reaming. The Crescent wrench will put a side load on the reamer, and you want your chamber to be as straight and concentric as possible. Most decent tap handles will have a chamfered center on the back of the handle that can be used with a live center (or dead center) in the tailstock to keep the handle and reamer aligned. A 22lr reamer will cut so easily that you don't need the tailstock to act as a feeding device, you just want it to keep everything on center. Some reamers also have a center on their base. Practice on a scrap piece of the liner and you will be amazed how easy this is to do. Tap magic used to be great stuff, and was my preferred cutting oil. Around 10 years ago they changed the formula and the new stuff isn't so good. If you have the old stuff use it. A bottle of the sulfur based pipe threading oil that you can find in the plumbing department of any hardware store is also a good choice when reaming a chamber. Two things; clear the chips often, both from the reamer and the chamber. Second, as said above - never rotate a chambering reamer backwards. If you do that, metal chips will pressure flake tiny pieces off the cutting edges on the reamer. The fastest way to make a reamer dull is to rotate it backwards.

[JDHasty]

Nice to know about Tap Magic. I used to buy it in quart bottles, then about fifteen years ago I bought 4 full and one half full gallon cans at an estate sale and have been refilling my bottles from them since.

“First, if your friend tells you not to do stuff like this: it's because he doesn't know how, not because you don't know how.”

Curiously, he knows how, but I don’t think he has practiced enough to become a master of much of anything. The reason I say that is because if he explains a process, if I get a second (or third) opinion he has always been spot on regarding exactly how it SHOULD be done. He’s a really nice guy, but between discouraging me from trying something new and encouraging me to use some flaky “shortcut,” I will cop to getting frustrated with him at times. Regarding cutting the chamber in this barrel liner, he just said don’t bother trying to do it yourself.

I have a couple other buddies and a relative who are the exact opposite, all three are well known for their gunsmithing. Real gunsmithing, and not parts changing. They have built actions from a piece of bar stock and if a part isn’t available they make it, and make it right. All three have told me: You can do that. I think all three have also told me some version of “just as good” rarely, if ever, is. The one I consider to be my mentor isn’t afraid to criticize my work and do it in a fashion in which he knows will really sink in. I’ll never forget him looking at a Model 43 action I had cleaned up pitting on and handing it back to me saying: if it’s good enough for you, then I guess that is all that matters. In other words, don’t be so lazy, if you are going to do a job do it right. Finish the job.

I came here for advice because none of them do much with rimfire rifles. One is the best shotgun man around, one builds big ultra long range hunting rifles and the third centerfire bench rest rifles.

[M-Tecs]

The original Tap Magic contained tric-111. It was great stuff. That version was changed about 25 or 30 years ago.

[John Taylor]

Please do not use tap magic or rapid tap with a chamber reamer, that's how I leaned to break reamers. Tap magic is great for taps but a cutting oil is required for reamers. I buy light and heavy cutting oil in 5 gallon containers and can get a couple years out of one.

[JDHasty]

Thank you much for the heads up on that.

[uscra112]

FWIW I did a couple of .22s using a "sporting" reamer by hand, using a tap wrench, before I had my "big" lathe. Worked out OK. I think the problem you will face is that due to ??? alignment the reamer will cut large at the back, but a Bentz is large at the back anyway, so.....

[Mk42gunner]

I have not done a .22 rim fire chamber, but I have done several center fire rifle chambers by hand (mostly short chambered prethreaded barrels). Lots of heavy cutting oil and an eight inch long tap wrench. The hardest part is securing the round barrel so it won't turn while reaming.

Before I built my first rifle, I was concerned about needing a lathe to chamber the barrel. Reading everything I could find, I came across a description by Max Clymer in one of the Brownell's Gunsmith Kinks books. It convinced me that it was doable without a lathe.

If I can ream a .35 Whelen chamber by hand, and make an accurate rifle, you can do a .22 LR Bentz chamber.

Use lots of cutting oil and clear the chips often.

Robert

[Hannibal]

All I will say is winning competitive shooters in the accuracy disciplines would use hand reamed barrels if they were just as good.

They do not.

[Bent Ramrod]

I’ve done a lot of chambers, mostly in relined barrels, mounted vertically in a vise with the reamer in a big tap wrench. Biggest difference I can recall offhand between bore and shell diameter (without preliminary drilling to remove stock) was a .25-35. A big sharp-shouldered Magnum would be a lathe operation, no doubt; too arduous otherwise.

Brush Rigid cutting oil (or Cool Tool) on the flutes, insert reamer, pull down slightly while rotating the wrench, count eight half turns, “feather” the last turn while withdrawing the reamer, brush off chips; re-oil; a cleaning rod with patch down the bore (trash bag underneath); insert reamer and repeat.
.
Every now and then, I loosen the vise jaws, turn the barrel 45 or 90 degrees and retighten for the next few rounds of wrench turning. An octagon barrel profile helps here, but a round one can be done close enough. I use wood, copper or aluminum jaws in the vise.

Eventually, the reamer is in far enough so I can start checking headspace. I’ll screw on the action at this point so I can close bolt or block on the gauge or cartridge rim. I have homemade extensions for reamer and wrench that I use at this point. Then it’s fewer partial turns, less downward pressure, more barrel rotation in the vise, and more cleaning and checking between reams.

Eventually, it’s done, and however long it took, it’s nothing to the time I’ll be shooting it. I’ve never seen bulges or asymmetry in fired cartridges that would indicate that I’ve induced swelling or runout in the chamber by reaming this way.

And I have to say, I’ve gotten pretty cynical about some of these claims about precision manufacture. One guy in Precision Shooting (IIRC) claimed his gunsmith-to-the-stars did his barrel work “to a millionth of an inch.” But his description of the process never mentioned the other person of identical size, weight and body temperature that I heard had to stand the same distance behind the lathe as the operator was in front in order to truly effect this precision. I think he may have been appealing to the Voodoo Element there.

[JDHasty]

"And I have to say, I’ve gotten pretty cynical about some of these claims about precision manufacture." The far fetched claims get tedious, don't they?

I used to visit a regional site in which the mysterious "Gunsmith X" was frequently referenced in regard to some mystical, magical AR15 being displayed. Gunsmith X's talent impressed me in sourcing quality parts and charging a pretty steep markup on top of about 4 hours x $500/hour for assembling them.

[John Taylor]

I don't know how some of the so called gunsmiths can get away with charging so much. Several years back I installed a Lilja barrel on a high end target rifle in 22LR. I chambered the usual way I have been doing for years. Charged under $200 for the thread, chamber and contour. It had been sent to me through another shop and when the owner came to pick it up he thought it must be a lousy job because it didn't cost $1500 like the last barrel he had installed. The owner went to the trouble of sending his rifle to Lilja to have it checked out. They sent it back saying there was nothing wrong with it.

[405grain]

An FYI: My hunting buddy is a talented amateur gunsmith. He has made some beautiful and accurate rifles. There have been a couple of builds where, for one reason or another, he has sent some of his work out to John Taylor. I have seen Mr Taylor's handywork first hand. There's a difference between a mechanic and an artist. John Taylor is an artist.

[John Taylor]

An FYI: My hunting buddy is a talented amateur gunsmith. He has made some beautiful and accurate rifles. There have been a couple of builds where, for one reason or another, he has sent some of his work out to John Taylor. I have seen Mr Taylor's handywork first hand. There's a difference between a mechanic and an artist. John Taylor is an artist.

Thanks for the kind words.
An after thought on chambering a 22 LR, I run the rpms at 900, not 100. I know this seems fast but the chamber is cut so fast that the reamer does not get hot. I push the reamer in with the palm of my hand, the 4" crescent is so it does not spin in my hand. No side pressure or the chamber may be cut oversize. I'm still using the same reamer I bought over 20 yers ago. On larger reamers I run about 200 and the shape of the reamer will determine how far I go in before clearing the chips. A 38 special may only get pulled out a few times to clear chips while a 338 Edge may need to be pulled every .050".

[Hannibal]

I don't know how some of the so called gunsmiths can get away with charging so much. Several years back I installed a Lilja barrel on a high end target rifle in 22LR. I chambered the usual way I have been doing for years. Charged under $200 for the thread, chamber and contour. It had been sent to me through another shop and when the owner came to pick it up he thought it must be a lousy job because it didn't cost $1500 like the last barrel he had installed. The owner went to the trouble of sending his rifle to Lilja to have it checked out. They sent it back saying there was nothing wrong with it.

Some, perhaps most people have a strange sense of value.

I was preparing to move several years ago. Had some old, small farm equipment I couldn't use anymore so I posted it for sale at prices I felt were fair. Never got a single inquiry. So I doubled the prices and everything was gone in 3 days.

Makes no sense to me.