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If the location of the bulge is far enough down the barrel to remove the damaged section and still keep the gun’s barrel longer than the 16" required by federal law, the rifle can be salvaged. Or perhaps you simply want a shorter barrel on your rifle. The style in years past was for longer barrels than are popular right now. There is little ballistic advantage from a longer barrel on a .22 LR and plenty of handling and aesthetic advantages to a shorter barrel.
The crown of a rifle barrel is the point at the muzzle where the rifling ends. It’s the last place that the rifle has any physical influence on the bullet, and it is critical that it be perfect. The crown must be square with the bore, perfectly round and free from any defects. Even the slightest imperfection can diminish accuracy by adversely affecting the bullet as it exits the barrel. If you are going to cut off a rifle barrel, it’s critical that the new crown be perfect.
A professional gunsmith would typically take the barrel off the action and chuck it in a lathe to shorten it, but if you don’t have a lathe, there is another way. This is an easy project with the right tools. Remove the bolt, or at least lock it open. Use a tape measure and a felt-tip marker to mark the location where you will be cutting the barrel. Then run a tight plug of cleaning patch material into the bore, leaving it a few inches from where you will be cutting. This will prevent chips and oil from traveling down the barrel and into the action.
Once you know where you want to cut the barrel, clamp it in a vise with soft jaws and start “hacking” with a hacksaw. Try to keep the cut as straight and square as possible, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect —and trust me, it won’t be.
After finishing the cut, use a file to square up the muzzle face. Check it with a square, but remember that the outside of the barrel is tapered, so there will be a slight gap to the leg against the barrel on the muzzle end. Forgetting that can make you crazy. The muzzle doesn’t need to be perfectly flat or square at this point, as this is not the final finish, but it should be as close as possible.
The key to the next operation is a tool called the Wheeler Engineering Muzzle Crowning Tool, available from Midway USA for $35. The tool will remove metal to cut and contour the crown, but it’s not designed to cut a lot of metal, so it’s necessary to have the muzzle as close to square with the bore as
possible before starting. This ensures that a minimum of metal will need to be removed by the cutter. The crowning tool features two opposing, shaped cutters that will cut and reshape the face of the muzzle in a double-radius contour that results in a very nice muzzle crown. The Midway USA website calls a “sporter-style” crown. The cutter has a pilot that is designed for a .22 rimfire bore. This keeps the cutter centered and aligned at 90 degrees to the bore as it cuts.
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| Steps in shortening a .22 barrel include: (1) Marking the location of the cut; (2) using a hacksaw to cut the barrel; (3) using a file to square the end of the barrel; (4) crowning the barrel with an appropriate tool, such as this one from Wheeler Engineering; and (5) lapping the crown with a round-head brass screw coated with lapping compound. |
Chuck the tool in a 1/2" drill, and flood both the muzzle and the tool with cutting oil. Adjust the drill to its lowest r.p.m. setting, and carefully insert the pilot of the tool into the bore. Make sure the drill is set for forward or clockwise rotation as running any cutter in reverse can damage it. Start with the cutter above the barrel, and slowly lower the turning cutter to meet the barrel. Work slowly and carefully. Use a light touch on the cutter, and monitor how much pressure you need by how it’s cutting.
Stop frequently, remove the cutter, and wipe the barrel clean to check your progress. Add more cutting oil before starting again. You are done when the entire surface of the muzzle has been contacted by the cutter. The metal should have an even color and appearance. The instructions state that any chatter marks can be removed by using abrasive paper and thumb pressure. However, this was not an issue on my gun. I finished by running the cutter with minimal pressure, which resulted in a nice final finish with a minimum of tool marks.
It’s likely that some small burrs have formed at the end of the bore. You can check this with a Q-tip as the burrs will catch the cotton. Finish the crown by using a small round-head brass screw as a lapping tool. Chuck the screw in a drill and coat it with abrasive lapping compound. Place the round head on the end of the barrel and start the drill. Run the drill slowly while slightly wobbling the screw. There will be a bright ring on the muzzle from the lapping compound wearing away the metal. It should be completely around the bore and extend to the bottom of each of the rifling grooves and to the top of the lands.
Obviously, the barrel is now raw steel. You can leave it like that, which is a good approach with stainless steel. Or, if it’s carbon steel, you can degrease and refinish it with cold blue. Push the plug out of the barrel from rear to front. Then wipe the bore with a few solvent-soaked patches to clean the residual lapping compound.
Part two of this segment to learn how to cut a dovetail groove for the front sight on the shortened barrel. The author will be using a kit from MidwayUSA designed expressly for this purpose.
—The Eds