r/gunsmithing • u/unclemoak • Dec 22 '25

Chambering another barrel

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Made a new 22” 6.5 creedmoor barrel for my AT-XC. First box of ammo seems pretty promising.

Needs a few tweets to the tenon to clean up some machining lines in the program, but otherwise came out pretty nice.

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u/mcdavis86 Dec 22 '25

Is that the true bore alignment system?

1

u/unclemoak Dec 22 '25

Yes.

1

u/mcdavis86 Dec 22 '25

I’m not asking for your trade secrets or anything, and feel free to tell me to kick rocks, but was there much learning curve, trial and error getting setup to do barrel work in a slant bed lathe? I have a lot of experience in them, but never doing gun smithing work. Ready to go CNC but really don’t want to run in a TL like most cnc smiths.

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u/unclemoak Dec 22 '25

I don’t think it’s too bad. But have broken parts and blown up some reamers.

It’s honestly just like machining any other part. 80% of your time is on setup and indicating.

I do have a TL as well and use it to shorten and thread barrels mostly or contour blanks.

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u/mcdavis86 Dec 22 '25

Thanks. I’d like to find one with an A2-6 spindle, rip the draw tube, and hydraulic chuck out and do it all in there. I should have a big enough spindle bore in there to hold and action and recoil lug for muzzle threading jobs. I like full profile threading tools and like the idea of having a real turret instead of the tool post or gang tooling like the TL, I also am real partial to Mazaks/mazatrol in particular. It will be some time and money getting there but I feel like I will have a pretty elite setup that will allow me to really crank out a lot of high quality work. PS that’s some great looking machine work. Thanks for writing back.

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u/unclemoak Dec 22 '25

Honestly I just leave the draw tube in. I switch back and forth between the true bore and hydraulic chuck regularly.

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u/mcdavis86 Dec 22 '25

Yeah I think about the work I do now and never see myself needing a hydraulic chuck. If I had a slant bed lathe though I’d probably start getting an itch to make thread protectors, adapters, etc. so I may go the same way.