Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

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Milano
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Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by Milano »

Hello, My wife bought me a Chappy 76 22" octogon barrel 45-60 for our wedding and it's a using rifle. I work on cattle ranches and am ahorse back a lot, meaning the rifle is used daily. What I would like to do is cut the barrel down to maybe an 18". (Also any idea of velocity loss?) I would really rather rebarrel or send it off. No one will touch it though. "Buy a Marlin", "it'll cost more than worth", etc etc. So I am going to do it! The problem is that I have never done this before. I could use advise and help with my plan.

I think I will buy this dovetail jig:
www.dixiegunworks.com/product_info.php? ... s_id=13083

Cut the barrel off, dovetail the front sight, shorten the mag tube, then dovetail for the magazine tube retainer "thingie". This is obviously abridged but basically that's my plan. Anyone have advise about this? Insight? Where to get extra parts for when I mess it up?
Pete44ru
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by Pete44ru »

Milano wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 10:09 am
Hello, My wife bought me a Chappy 76 22" octogon barrel 45-60 for our wedding and it's a using rifle.

What I would like to do is cut the barrel down to maybe an 18".

Cut the barrel off, dovetail the front sight, shorten the mag tube, then dovetail for the magazine tube retainer "thingie".

This is obviously abridged but basically that's my plan.

Anyone have advise about this? Insight?

Where to get extra parts for when I mess it up ?

That would be (and has been) my plan also - except I don't use a jig to cut my barrel dovetails, just a hacksaw & triangle files (after a LOT of measuring for location & depth).

Welcome to the forum :) - and please take some pics as you progress through the job, as IMHO it will be of interest here.


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marlinman93
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by marlinman93 »

What kind of a remote area do you live in that no gunsmith that can do this correctly? The dovetail is the easy part. But chopping the barrel off and getting the crown perfect, so it still shoots accurately will be the real tough task without a lathe. Takes nothing to chop it off with a hacksaw, but getting it true, and properly crowned will be the difference between a great job or ruined barrel.
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Pitchy
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by Pitchy »

I`ve thought about this also, the barrel would have to be removed to crown in a lathe which could be a nightmare in itself and shorting the mag tube.
Looking forward to seeing your project. :)
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JerryB
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by JerryB »

Milano, welcome to a great forum. You will get a lot of good advice here from a lot of know how. And of course we are famous for telling you to keep that as is and buying one with a short barrel. When I was working cows years ago I carried my Winchester 92 32-20 rifle and sometimes a Winchester 94 30-30 carbine.
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JimT
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by JimT »

Contrary to popular opinion, the barrel crown is not hard to do. I have done a number of them by hand and had no problems. You don't need a lathe or even power tools, depending in the type of crown you want to make.

On a .30 caliber rifle I once used a .45 caliber lead round ball with a wood screw fastened into it. I cut the screw head off and chucked it into the head from an old electric drill to give me a hand purchase. I used valve grinding compound on the ball and slowly made a nice crown on the barrel.

I used the same method but with an electric drill running slow, on a .357 magnum barrel I cut off.
Bronco
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by Bronco »

Perfect opportunity to get a new rifle. Get one that you want to work with. Leave your Chappy just the way it is to remember all the love that came with it. :D You might even get a nod from your wife about leaving it alone and getting a new work piece.

I'm just saying :mrgreen:
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Carlsen Highway
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by Carlsen Highway »

I have done it on a muzzleloader, cut the 30 " barrel end off down to 24 " with a hacksaw as straight as possible, then touched up the muzzle with a file by eye, then soldered front sight on. Careful judging by eye thoughout. Took it to the range and it shot exactly to point of aim at 50 yards which is what I was aiming for. I had planned to crown it with a roundhead bolt in a drill and valve grinding past, which I have done before (doesn't take much at all) But have not yet done so on this rifle because it doesn't seem necessary except for protecting the rifling at the muzzle.
The rifle shoots the same size group that it used to do - but it was never a tack driver anyway - two - three inch groups at 50 yards, so possibly any errors in my work might not be show up because of the casual accuracy of the rifle anyway.

But judging from this I don't think it is rocket science, and can be done with basic hand tools and care. After all that's how they would have done it in the old days anyway I suppose.

Personally, I would leave the barrel of a .45-60 at 22 inches and enjoy the rifle for what it is.
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JimT
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by JimT »

If you set your barrel up like a target rifle, you just polish the end of the barrel, making sure it's square, then use a 45 degree reamer to crown it.

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If you want the crown recessed you can use the lead ball trick I mentioned above before you finish with the 45 degree reamer.

(ADDED)The bolt trick that Carlson Highway mentioned is faster than using the lead ball I am sure.
M. M. Wright
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by M. M. Wright »

I've chopped them off with the hot saw, filed them square and lapped the muzzle with ball bearing ball soldered to a drill shank. Course valve grinding compound is all you need but Brownells sells lapping compound for gunsmiths. They have dovetail cutters too but then you need a mill.

Read an article recently, (sorry I can't cite it) by a BR shooter who tested several trashy crowns and was amazed the barrels still shot just as good as before a hacksaw chop job. He even left one with the burrs on it and after a few shots to de-burr it got the same accuracy as before the chop. Maybe the old legend about needing perfect crowns is just that, legend.
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Milano
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by Milano »

Hey! Thank you all very much!! I posted on a different forum today as well and the overwhelming answer was either "buy a Marlin" or "buy a longer horse" Not really the point of the question so I truly appreciate the help.

There is a lot to digest here and I will definitely be reading and rereading then (attempting to ask pertinent questions). I just wanted to give a quick thanks guys.

Are barrels for a Chaparral the same as a Winchester? I have thought about just getting a round one from WinchesterBarrels.com too.
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marlinman93
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by marlinman93 »

Your Chaparral barrel will likely have metric threads. But even if they are the same threads as Winchester, you still can't expect any other barrel to screw on and index or headspace correctly.
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yooper2
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by yooper2 »

Lots of good advice above but if you'd still rather have someone else do it contact John Taylor of Taylor Machine. He does great work for reasonable prices and is game for most anything. He does a lot of work for Ed Harris' nifty ideas like the bunny guns.

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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by Malamute »

Dont know how Chaparral does it, but the original Winchester magazine rings werent a normal dovetail, they were a rotary dovetail which isnt possible to hand cut I dont think.

If I were going to re-do a rotary dovetail and didnt have a mill or the correct cutter, the base of the ring could be filed into a squared dovetail instead of rounded, then a matching dovetail could be made on the barrel similar to how the one for a sight would be, only wider for the size of the magazine ring base.
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Re: Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

Post by Nate Kiowa Jones »

Malamute wrote: Mon Jan 01, 2018 8:49 pm Dont know how Chaparral does it, but the original Winchester magazine rings werent a normal dovetail, they were a rotary dovetail which isnt possible to hand cut I dont think.

If I were going to re-do a rotary dovetail and didnt have a mill or the correct cutter, the base of the ring could be filed into a squared dovetail instead of rounded, then a matching dovetail could be made on the barrel similar to how the one for a sight would be, only wider for the size of the magazine ring base.
I bet it is the rotary style. I too don't know of any way to do one by hand. For a project like this I would go with a Marlin style mag tube hanger. It goes into a standard 3/8 dovetail.
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