24" .25 BSA barrel arrived today :D:D
Well, my BSA barrel arrived today. Blued and crowned from the factory. The barrel came from “Jane” on the forum, He is a great guy to deal with and will always di his best to help you. The barrel is awesome, bluing is perfect and the rifling is smooth as silk. These barrels are known for accuracy and Drum/Leupy will only use BSA barrels because he has had problems with quality from Lothar walther. These barrels would be a great addition to your rifle to shrink those groups. I will do a full test report of this barrel. Highly reccomended
Firstly, I bored out my original bushings for the larger OD of the barrel. Then went around profiling it. I had the barrel coming out of the lathe about 12″ and held the un-choked end in my dead centre. Using a slow RPM and taking cuts of 10 thousanths or 0.25mm. It took a while but I didnt want to rush anything seeing as though it is te first quality barrel I have had in the lathe. Using a sharp HSS tool I was making chips about 12″ long which proved to me that it was a sharp bit and a controlled cut.
Here is the barrel after profiling and bushings
Now for the business end 😀 BSA .25 on the left and LW .22 on the right
And now how it looks on the gun with my regulated tank
Sadly, I have no valve to use. Im awaiting some SelphB valves but not sure when they’re coming. Time for me to stock up on some pellets me thinks.
What ya think, Okay for a first time?
Dave
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Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
I hear great things about BSA barrels. I recently bought a 24 inch 25 cal Lother Walther barrel and I am very please with it. Very accurate. One tip, I think you will find you need more than two bushings to hold that big barrel with a high flow valve in place for long. I’ve put a third bushing in mine and will put a fourth in soon as I am finding the grub screws are quickly loosening (a sign the bushings are under a lot of strain) and as soon as that happens your accuracy goes.
I look forward to your results friend.
bsa do not sell .25 barrels to the general public anymore unfortunatly,, walther still sell .25 barrels.
Same here and i want one in .22
i am very interessing by this barrel
could you say me where we can buy it?
Thanks Walt for the heads up, I wasnt really sure how much if a taper I should give the barrel, Ive seen barrels on here with next to no taper, basically just a step and all of the other barrels Ive seen, the taper looks like the same on the original AF rifle so I ran with that really, roughly working off the 12″ barrel I had.
On the breech end, I didnt do a chamfer, It was just spinning slowly so I used a file like you described and then a wet piece of wet & dry. There is no taper, more like a radius cut on the end. The radius is increadibly small, like a 5 thou radius, It slides over the breech fine.
I was aware that the barrels were increadibly thick but I dont care about the weight (Im 6′ 1″) for my shroud for the 18″ barrel, the tubing of my shroud was actually made from steel, it made it a bit heavy but I could handle it oh and the regulated tank weighs more than the AF tank.
Im primarily using this gun for prone/bench rest shooting and any of the hunting we do, I shoot from the top of a pickup.
Im not shure about what kind of shrouds you are talking about, But my shroud doesnt touch the barrel at all, Keeping it fully free floating and super accurate. I do this by having a piece of tube that fits inside the shroud, glue it about 1/2″ or 1″ infront of the muzzle and stack the baffles ontop of that.
Dave
Dave, nice work but you probably should use a more gentle taper on the shoulder where it ramps up to meet the full thickness. Also, use a very gentle rounding on the edge of the breech small waist where you insert the pellets so that the O ring will slide on and off easily, but your cut looks a bit big; I just use a flat file and gently round the corner a little while the spindle is running, no chamfer cut is taken. If you remove too much, the concern is weakening of the area since the wall thickness is very very minimal.
I also cut .010″ at a pass but only for finishing. At the start when the blank is so thick you can go with .050″ at a pass. I go down to 20 thou at a pass once I reach .400″ and then 10 thou at .340″. Watch the chip color, light straw is acceptable. Blue is not. This will determine your feed speed. If you are using a dead center watch the heat buildup, the barrel will grow a tad during heatup. Live center might be better to prevent scoring to the rifling at the breech.
The barrel blank is very thick. 2 concerns. One is weight; if it doesn’t bother you, run with it. Second, if this uses a shroud, most shrouds have a first baffle that barely fits over the normal .630″ OD contour barrels, so if you intend to use one, you’ll probably have to cut the barrel back to .630 until it goes past the first baffle, or modify the shroud. Also, a barrel this thick uses up some of the free space inside the extrusion so will be a littlle louder.
walt
Jerry, I will be sure to try at least one pack of your slugs, now that im in your calibre 😀
The barrel is hugley thick but I like it, Their .177 blanks also have the same OD, it must look like a heavy .17HMR barrel :D:D
I have the regulated tank for shooting kodiaks in the 950’s and keeping the bottle for ultra high power 😀 Im sure I have your attention.
The rifling in the BSA barrel looks much smoother than the LW barrel, like its polished. Im sure they get this look because there are actually no tooling marks.
Dave
That gun clearly needs some heavy slugs to go with the big valve coming in the near (I hope) future!
Nice work on the lathe. The blueing looks good too. Amazing how thick that barrel is, at least twice the steel needed for the job I’d guess.
I wonder if hammer forging barrels just works better with thicker tubing? The BSA barrels are not really choked, they have a gentle taper that allows the bore form to be withdrawn after the barrel has been hammered onto it.
H&N Barracudas(Kodiaks) fit fine. Eunjins are too tight, jerry slugs need to be sized to .251
My last two BSA .25 cals had very tight bores as BSA tend to make them a touch smaller than say Lothar Walther so standard size .25 pellets may need sizing before use.
Thats brilliant Pab, just send them when you can really, Its not like they will be going anywhere when they get here 🙁 However It will be nice to compare them to the .22 pellets I have
Thanks again
Dave
Ohh, that looks sweet 😎
Pellets are packed up, I better get them in the post to you… 😆
Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
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I look forward to your results friend.
Why not make a single barrel bushing. Weight shouldn’t be a factor considering how heavy the OD is on the BSA barrel. Doug(Dyotat100) has a one piece barrel bushing to support his .457 barrel.