How should I treat this damage?

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Fire1

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I'm sooo PI$$ED! :mad: I slipped and fell on some wet rocks and and my nearly 20 year old Winchester M70 suffered some sustantial damage. This rifle is like an old friend and I've always taken good care of it, and now it has a cracked stock and some nasty damage to the end of the barrel. I'm planning to attempt to fix the stock with some epoxy and threaded brass pins, per a link I found by searching here.

My question for the board today is, how should I treat the damage to the end of the barrel?
206e.gif

The two options I have been considering are:
1. Grind it smooth with my dremel tool and touch up the blueing
2. Have a smith trim 1/2in off of the barrel and re-crown it.

Any other ideas? I really want to preserve the rifle and it's great accuracy.
 
ouch, sorry man. recrowning would take away some of that mess. maybe a gunsmith can take off an 1/8 of an inch or so and recrown.
 
The barrel damage shown will probably not affect the accuracy. You only need to remove enough to clean up the damage. Looks like ~1/8" will do it.
 
Does the rifle still shoot OK? If so you can just smooth up the damage and use some Oxpho-Blue if recrowing is not wanted.
 
You might be able to clean up that area around the muzzle some by moving the metal with a light hammer (4 oz. maybe). You want to stay away from the top of the crown - where it starts to slope into the bore. Use light hits in the direction you want the metal to move. The hit's are done in a glancing manner; like a stone skipping off water. I find that a pulling type stroke works best for me. Just go at like you are trying to brush the metal back in place or smooth. It's not hard to do; you'll pick it quickly. Many light strokes vice heavy. At the least, it will cut down on any sanding you would do in the first place . At the worst, cut it back and re-crown it.
I've tried to diagram it (I'd start with more shallow angles than I've drawn for the hits).
10eq1du.jpg
Regards,
Greg
 
Its all on the outside of crown so accuracy shouldn't be affected, A file could take care of the edges without seeing a gunsmith then cold blue.
 
There is absolutely no reason to cut and re-crown. Just use a file and remove the burrs. Touch up the bluing if you desire.
 
Sorry to see that. It's heartbreaking to see something like that.

Dremilling it, hand filing it, etc your likely to get noticeable non-uniformity, as some of those gauges look a little deep. Though lopping 1/8'' off the barrel may be a little extreme.

A smith should be able clean that up on a lathe.

Alternatively, if you want to give it a go yourself:
http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/store/ProductDetail.aspx?p=628&title=79\ MUZZLE CROWNING CUTTER
or
http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/st...=PRECISION REAMERS MUZZLE CROWN REFACING TOOL

But a smith will probably charge you less.
 
Soft filing and reblue would work. No need to get a re-crown unless you just have to have it beautiful. I think of scratches, gouges and scrapes as badges of honor. Safe queens don't have the honor of being damaged in battle lol... real guns do.
 
Actually it looks like, a most it just could be re contoured on a lathe. Since it is not a highly critical dimension it could be done on a lathe without removing the barrel from the receiver. Actually now many be a perfect time to recrown it for an 11 deg muzzle, and recess the crown.
 
Thanks for all of the replies.

Greg - I had actually thought about trying to move some of the metal back in there, but before I saw your post I wasn't sure that was such a good idea. Thanks for the diagram.

For now my plan is to try to clean it up the best I can, and if that doesn't work out, or the rifle won't shoot well, then it will be off to the smith for a recrown. Since hunting season is over and I have other rifles I can shoot, I'm trying to look at this as an opportunity to learn something and have some fun with a little restoration project. That is why I'm going to attempt to fix the stock too. The crack isn't very noticeable, and if I totally screw it up I can just buy a new stock. And besides, Sket1etor is right, this is a hunting rifle and it will have character because it looks like it has spent time in the field. I'll post pics of the results, if they are not too embarrassing.
 
Pretty well addressed already--I suspect it is a pretty safe bet that the damage to the barrel, being on the outside portion, won't effect anything but esthetics. Personally, I would touch it up with emery paper on a solid block. Regarding the stock, though you didn't show it, repair is a hassle to do well. Certainly you can repair any damage--I've repaired stocks completely broken in half (as strong as new), but it is a time consuming pain in the rear. Often, one cannot ever make the repair totally disappear visually, and at a minimum, you almost always have to do a complete refinish to even hope to blend it in. Personally, I find no enjoyment in refinishing stocks, but each to his own. If you value your time at all, a replacement stock will actually be a lot cheaper. Keep in mind, if the repair is not done properly, it very well may be weak. Good luck!
 
If you have a good machinist friend, the muzzle cut-off is a simple matter with no barrel removal required.
As for the stock repair, I too have repaired stocks that were broken in half and used walnut dowels instead of metal pins.
Of course the stocks had to be refinished but they didn't turn out too bad.
Buying a new stock is another option but I'm not really sure that it would be a simple "drop in "operation.
Zeke
 
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