Got my Bob Hoyt rebore back!

[T-Bird]

I got my 54 cal GM barrel that I had rebored to 58 cal today. He said on the phone that he "would get to it when he could" that he was covered up. Turnaround time was 3 weeks and 2 days. I posted about this asking about twist rates etc, on this forum. Advice was to tell him what I wanted to do with it and let him decide, which is what I did. I told him that I wanted a rifle that I could shoot accurately with 70-100gr 2F with PRB mostly at targets, but occasionally for hunting deer. He sent me the barrel back with the following specs: .580 bore. grove depth .011. It is 1:66" twist rate. Shot it today at the range, shot great with .570 ball and .015 patch lubed with TOTW mink oil lube, 80 gr Grafs 2F at 50 yds. My experience with his work is great! Seemed to clean easier too.

[LAGS]

You think that is good now?
Wait till you break it in.
They usually improve even more.

[stubshaft]

Bobby has done a couple of barrels for me and if anything, they were more accurate than the original caliber!

[lead chucker]

I have been shooting my renegade barrel he made for me from 50 cal to 58, It shoots pretty good. I chronographed my round ball loads with 100 gr 3f with a .562 round ball and averaged 1500 to 1550 fps. Thats with home made powder. Really happy with it so far. Its a 1/60 twist with .010 deep rifling

[LAGS]

If that is Homemade powder?
Is that 100 gr by actual weight or volume ?
If just by volume , try upping it just a little and see if your speed goes up.

[lead chucker]

I weight it. Its a approximately 120 gr by volume. Im going to change my screening to what what you told me and see how it goes. If it goes threw a 20 and stays on a 30 its 2f and ges through a 30 and stays on a 40 its 3f. Hope to test some sunday.

[lead chucker]

Should give me better consistency. I hope.

[lead chucker]

When i got my barrel back and shot it, it was tearing patches a bit. The patches i found looked good but had a tare in them and they were all the same so i figure there is some sharp rifling from when he cut the new rifling. Last night i ran some 220 grit paste on a patch up and down a bunch then cleaned the gun and repeated the process with 600 grit and then 1200 grit. I can tell a difference when i run a dry patch down the barrel, its allot smoother now. Going to test to see if it helped tomorrow. I did the same with the 54 i had him make me. I think the patches were getting cut when loading the gun but not sure.

[Nobade]

Same experience here, I had him rebore a Renegade from 54 to 58. I'd shot it a few times and it did OK but not incredible. One day I went to the range and burned a whole pound of powder through it, looking for the best load. By the end of the day it was loading really slick, minimal fouling, and had become extremely accurate. I guess he doesn't lap his barrels when they're done but leaves that up to the customer. That's fine, it is just a good excuse to shoot more and get acquainted with your new barrel.

[T-Bird]

I forgot to say the twist he gave me, 1:66". I added that to my original post. My barrel is 36" long, maybe that's why he did the slower twist than the 1:60" he used for the shorter Renegade barrels. I may lap it with 4/0 steel wool, I really can't tell it's rough, but it couldn't hurt. I only tried one load, patch and ball combo and it worked so I didn't change anything- unusual for me, I usually don't stop with success, I try to find "better" lol. I will have to file the front sight some, it shoots a few inches low right now though.

[LAGS]

I always Lap the new or refurbished barrels for M L guns but not the new barrels for my center fire guns .
That is because,
The patches can get cut by the sharp rifling .
But my Center fire guns shoot Bullets with no patches.
Those barrels will quickly Lap themselves as you break them in.
But a ML using a patch ,
It could take longer to break in the barrel since the patch is such a cushion and lubed.

[Nobade]

Patches lubed with JB Bore paste will shine them up right quick.

[LAGS]

Yep
Bore Bright works very well to do Fire Lapping / Polishing

[T-Bird]

Noblade, do you just run the JB paste coated patches with a jag or do you fire lap with them?

[Nobade]

Noblade, do you just run the JB paste coated patches with a jag or do you fire lap with them?

When I did that, I used them for firelapping. Clean between each shot or you can't load the next one.

[T-Bird]

Yeah, I bet. How many did you run?

[Nobade]

Yeah, I bet. How many did you run?

I don't remember, maybe 20 or so. That was in my Dixie Squirrel, not the Hoyt rebore. In that one I just fired it a couple hundred times to smooth it out.

[T-Bird]

well, due to the cap shortage, I want to "speed" along the breaking in process

[Nobade]

well, due to the cap shortage, I want to "speed" along the breaking in process

That's certainly understandable. Scrubbing the bore with Scotchbrite on a jag for a while should work too, and be easier on your cap supply. Maybe do that first to see how it goes.

[T-Bird]

I need to add, I sent him $20 extra for shipping. When he sent it back to me, it costed him $25.50 I noticed. He didn't ask, but I sent him more money. Just informing, so y'all can judge how much to send him.

[lead chucker]

The Man trusts you will pay for his work. Every barrel I have sent him he has done what I asked and it just reappears in the mail with an invoice. I make a copy of the invoice with the shipping included and fire him off a check the next day. Not many people will do the work and hope they get paid by some one they don't even know on the other side of the country. He never asked me for money up front which would have been fine with me. Next barrel I have him do for me I want him to remember me and know he will get paid. Not many guys in the world left that trust people.

[lead chucker]

I sent him the barrel he did the work and mailed it back to me with out being paid any thing. That's a very trusting person.

[T-Bird]

Well LC, I offered to send him the money when I contacted him initially. I wouldn't have asked him to do it any other way. You're right, there aren't many trusting souls left these days. Unfortunately, that's largely because they have been burned by the large number of UNtrustworthy souls.

[LAGS]

Those ways of him doing business is one of the reasons that you guys see me promoting his work.
It also inspires me to try and do things for others in the same kind of way

[lead chucker]

I offered to give him money up front too but he didn't want it.

[T-Bird]

Maybe I sounded "shady"!:smile:

[lead chucker]

T-Bird. Not at all, I hope you didn't take it that way. Every one has there way of doing business. I was surprised he didn't want some kind of deposit when I sent my barrels. What are we all going to do when he retires. I hope he has kids or grand kids he is teaching.

[T-Bird]

I didn't take it that way, I was joking. Yeah, I don't know what we will do, he's a rare soul with considerable talent and a strong work ethic. A dying breed regrettably.

[Woodnbow]

I didn't take it that way, I was joking. Yeah, I don't know what we will do, he's a rare soul with considerable talent and a strong work ethic. A dying breed regrettably.
If you haven’t already, you might look into Lee Shavers method for smoothing barrels. I’ve used it on a few Hoyt barrels and lately every barrel I get.

“Lee Shaver’s Break-in Procedure

Having used the jacketed bullet/clean-between-shot process in the past and
specifically Badger’s procedure when breaking-in one of my Browning BPCRs, I
was not looking forward to repeating the very lengthy process with my other
Browning’s. Fortunately Lee Shaver came to the rescue with his much simpler and
less time consuming process. With permission from Lee I’ve included the details
of his procedure. It’s from a larger article Lee published in the May 2013 edition
of The Single Shot Exchange Magazine.

“Excerpt from “Breaking In a Barrel” by Lee Shaver:
Several years ago, I developed a process for breaking-in barrels for lead bullet use
that eliminated the afternoon of shooting and cleaning with jacketed bullet. It
began because I would occasionally have to get bad leading out of a barrel for a
customer, and when you charge what a gunsmith must charge to stay in business
you don’t want to spend an afternoon scrubbing the lead out of a customer’s gun.
And I’m sure the customer would rather not pay for said services.

What I learned was that when scrubbing lead out of a barrel, I could run a tight oily
patch through a few times and then take the patch off the jag. I would then unroll a
little 0000 steel wool and cut a piece the size of the patch. Place that over the
patch and then run it all through together. (The proper fit is when you have to
bump the rod a few times with the palm of your hand to get it started in the bore.)
When you shove that steel wool over a patch through the bore of a badly leaded
barrel, it may sound like paper tearing as the lead is ripped out of the barrel in a
pass or two. I can clean the lead out of the worst barrel in about ten or fifteen
minutes that way, and an average leaded barrel will be clean in a few strokes.

After using this technique for a while, I began to notice that the rifles that I was de-
leading that way seemed to lead less afterwards, which got me to thinking. We use
fine steel wool on the outside of old guns all the time to do some cleaning or spot
rust removal, and it does not damage the surface of the steel. It just scrubs it.
Which lead me to consider the fact that we are trying to break in a barrel by
smoothing the surface without cutting, and it seems to me that process would go
much quicker if we used something on the inside of the bore that was closer to the
hardness of the barrel instead of lead or copper. So I started trying the steel wool
and oiled patch technique on new barrels before shooting them. I use it about as
tight as I can get in the bore and wear out a steel wool pad or two in about 15
minutes, then I go and shoot the rifle.

How well does it work you might ask? On a few occasions, I have built a new rifle
and taken it to a match without ever having fired the rifle. All have performed
flawlessly in their first match and several times I won the match or set a record
with them. On one occasion, I set a new 300 yard range record with the first 13
shots out of a barrel. This method has become a service we offer to our customers
here in the shop and I have shared the technique many times with others.

So the next time you get ready to shoot that new rifle, just remember it is important
to break in a barrel properly, but if the operation you are doing to the barrel cuts –
it is not breaking it in. It may be making the barrel smoother, but to break the
barrel in you need to polish the bore by burnishing not cutting either by shooting it
or scrubbing it.”
Lee Shaver

[lead chucker]

That was a good read. I'm probably doing it rong using polishing compound. Hope I didn't mess up my new 58 cal barrel Hoyte just did for me. I get back to town Friday and hope to shoot it some more. Life always seems to get in the way when you want to go shooting.

[T-Bird]

I have run some 4/0 steel wool down this barrel, I read that was what "somebody" recommended that he did when lapping barrels. I didn't do it like that tho. That "somebody" was Lee Shaver, but I forgot his name:roll:. The way you describe it it a much better way and I'm gonna do it again. Thank's!

[LAGS]

On my used barrels that I want to Lap or Polish up a bit when I refinish a rifle , I make a Lapping Lug out of Epoxy and use some kind or polish like chrome cleaner.
I haven’t found any Hoyt reworked barrels that I had to go to that extent.
I mostly can just polish them out a bit with polish on a cleaning patch until I find a consistent travel of the cleaning patch as it is pushed down the bore.
When polishing a barrel,
I always do it in full length strokes and not little short strokes unless there is some obstruction you find in a certain spot.
But I haven’t found those spots in Hoyt barrel so far.

[Brimstone]

Yes Lee Shaver was who recommended I use steel wool for leading. His reasoning made perfect sense to me having a bluing tank and applying all forms of bluing to my guns, hot caustic, slow rust, cold and charcoal bluing. The steel wool doesn't take the finish off.
Frankly I'm still a bit skeptical it can burnish the rough spots in a barrel, if it does, it's certainly the slowest and gentlest of methods for sure.
I prefer to lap with fine compound on my patched jag.

Anyway, the steel wool is perfect for removal of lead. In fact it was my passing comment about figuring out my leading issues with my Postel bullet that brought up how to remove the lead. He was right. It works just fine.

I still don't remember what he said to look into for solving the leading issues, just the steel wool to remove it. My brain just tossed the first part out entirely.

[Texas by God]

Just curious, how much does a rebore cost?
Can a 1-48” twist 50 caliber barrel become a 1-66” .54 caliber barrel?


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[LAGS]

I haven’t had a barrel done for over a year and a half.
So I can’t give you the current prices .
But all you have to do is call Bobby.
But what I am getting ready to send him is also .50 Renegade barrels that I want rebored to .54 with a slow twist.
Bobby Hoyt
717-642-6696
I figured you would ask for the number

[Texas by God]

Thank you Lags!


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[T-Bird]

mine was $125 with 25.50 for return shipping.

[Woodnbow]

On my used barrels that I want to Lap or Polish up a bit when I refinish a rifle , I make a Lapping Lug out of Epoxy and use some kind or polish like chrome cleaner.
I haven’t found any Hoyt reworked barrels that I had to go to that extent.
I mostly can just polish them out a bit with polish on a cleaning patch until I find a consistent travel of the cleaning patch as it is pushed down the bore.
When polishing a barrel,
I always do it in full length strokes and not little short strokes unless there is some obstruction you find in a certain spot.
But I haven’t found those spots in Hoyt barrel so far.
I’ve seen a post from you in the past describing this technique. Looks like it would work just dandy.

For others, I would guess I use at least 50 full length strokes to wear out a steel wool pad, then I make a new one and do it again. I had one barrel Bob did which had some chatter marks on the lands. This treatment cleaned them up a good bit and a few hundred paper patched bullets did the rest. It’s a good shooter and easy to clean.

[Texas by God]

mine was $125 with 25.50 for return shipping.

Thank you!


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[LAGS]

Still cheaper than finding a brand new barrel and also paying shipping

[T-Bird]

yep!