Need advice

[charlie b]

A lot of barrels are installed and shipped with some internal stresses remaining as well. Part of many barrel mfg processes is to take a barrel fresh from rifling and check the bore for being straight. If it is not, they bend the barrel until it is. I suspect a barrel that is bent "a lot" will change POI pretty dramatically as it heats up.

[Hook]

and I noticed one barrel's bore was off center by .030 of an inch !! That much barrel side wall difference is easily spotted by eye

You mean like this?



One side is 0.025" thinner than the other. I'm ashamed to admit how I found this. Just say that after 30 odd years of reloading, a series of accumulative blunders caused me to blow up the barrel on a Marlin M36 I'd had rebored to 38-55 by JES.

It was light cast loads with Unique and apparently one had no powder. I chose to work thru some tough family issues by spending some down time on my range. Because I had my head tucked firmly up my rectum due to those issues, I failed to take proper notice of a click instead of a bang. I can only surmise that back somewhere in my addled brain I thought I'd rechambered a fired round, so I loaded another and fired it. The primer must have sent the bullet most of the way through the barrel and stuck. This is what happened from firing the next round.



The only good result (other than me not being hurt and only the barrel being hurt on the rifle) was the bulge was close enuf to the end of the bbl that I could whack it off at just over 16" and keep it legal without rebarreling. Before the blow up, that M36 was the most accurate cast bullet shooter I'd ever owned except for a phenomenal Stevens 44 1/2 also in 38-55. After bobbing the barrel, accuracy was barely OK for hunting. At any rate, the off center bore was NEVER an issue before the bobbing. That Marlin would stack'em all day long!

Since that day I never seat a bullet into a case without checking the powder level both visually and with a stick insert if the powder charge is small enuf not to be able to visually see the level in the case. I also bend over backward to stay alert and aware of anything out of the ordinary whenever I'm shooting. It's very embarrassing to admit to doing such a stupid thing but if I can keep anyone else from such a mistake, I'll live with it.

That cut off piece of barrel is mounted on the wall directly in front of my reloading press to serve as permanent reminder. Everyone who comes into my shop to learn to load or to use my equipment to load their own ammo (and there are several who do so) is shown that piece of barrel and is told the story. They have to follow my procedures to load even their own ammo.

[Gewehr-Guy]

Yes, that's exactly what my 03a3 barrel looks like. It's interesting that your barrel shot so well before shortening, and then suffered in accuracy after. Barrel harmonics must be a complicated subject, with no set rules !

[Hook]

Yes, that's exactly what my 03a3 barrel looks like. It's interesting that your barrel shot so well before shortening, and then suffered in accuracy after. Barrel harmonics must be a complicated subject, with no set rules !

My thoughts exactly!

[elmacgyver0]

Your rifle looks fine to me, but that chair.
I guess beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

[Hook]

Yup, kinda like my bubba'ed up old 1917. That chair has a history, too!

[D.Bullets]

Yep!! Looks familiar. You are on the path to having an impressive shooting rifle.
If that’s just a sample of some bedding.
I hope you share the results of the full bedded action.