Colt Lightning / Taurus Thunderbolt Rebarrel

[rbertalotto]

I bought a Taurus Thunderbolt (Colt Lightning Reproduction) a few months ago. It is 45LC but I really wanted one in 38-40. We a real Colt in 38-40 in good shape is well north of $2500.

Look what came in the mail today......

A nice new Green Mountain barrel in 38-40.





Tore the Taurus Thunderbolt apart and hopefully I'll have the barrel on by this weekend.

Nothing like an octagon barrel to put a smile on your face!

[FatJackDurham]

Changing the barrel of a gun seems like a mystery to me. On my Rossi 92, my gunsmith was unable to remove the barrel.

How are barrels attached to guns? I know some are threaded, some are pinned(?) or shimmed?

How do gunsmiths remove all these different kinds of barrels?

[Mescalero]

Carefully,
Seriously there is much tooling and care involved in doing it correctly.

[rbertalotto]

A good heavy duty barrel vise and a well fitting action wrench and any barrel can be removed.

Most centerfire barrels are threaded and screwed into the receiver. Most rimfire barrels are a slip fit with a pin of some type holding them in.

All the Rossi 92 rifles I've removed barrels from were quite easy to remove. Can't understand how your gunsmith couldn't remove yours. ???

[rbertalotto]

Let's review...

I bought this rifle about a year ago for CAS. It is currently in 45LC.......Terrible blow-by with this cartridge. In fact, at CAS velocities and pressures, it is unusable!

My favorite cartridge is the 38-40....so a rebarrel is in order.

As you saw above, I got the rifle apart and my Green Mountain octagon barrel has arrived.

But I'd never cut Metric threads on my lathe so I needed to turn a "Practice Tenon".........It was very easy! I converted my lathe to DC drive a few years ago and being able to increase or decrease RPM with the simple turn of a knob is fantastic. Nice and slow cutting the thread, and peddle to the metal to get the carrage back to take another pass...Nice!

The test tenon came out great:




Here is what the factory barrel looked like:

The threads are actually tapered......Nasty work!

And here we are with the receiver installed:


I rented a piloted reamer with various pilots and that will be here Tuesday so the project will wait until next week to finish

Stay Tuned!

[pwl44m]

That is just Not fair, all I need to do is awap a barrel and You can cut threads. But can U float a Joint where it can't be seen.
Perry

[rbertalotto]

My friend, when we were much younger, would get down low in the back seat of their cars, to float a..........................

[rbertalotto]

Last night I got the barrel threaded, chamber cut and all the other little things that needed to be done to mount the barrel.





I will need to do a bit of polishing and then blue it.



Still need to cut the dovetail for the magazine hanger, but I decided to cut the barrel back to 22" and make it a bit lighter at the muzzle.



But with this very nice muzzle band, I was able to load some dummy rounds and test for function. Works perfectly! And I didn't have to cut a ridiculous loading ramp like the factory barrel has. The bottle necked 38-40 cartridges slide right in. Nice!

More to come..........

[Tycer]

Awesome awesome awesome!

[FatJackDurham]

Keep the pictures coming! For some reason I cant see the pictures of the tapered threads and such.

[Marvin S]

Looking good and timed straight up with a much better caliber for rifle type.

[M. M. Wright]

I really like this and congratulations on picking a Green Mountain barrel. I had one on a Win 92 in 44-40 and have one on my front stuffer. Both are fantastically accurate.

Now you've got me thinkin' about doing something similar.

[olyinaz]

Awesome awesome awesome!

+1!!

[Griff]

Very cool project! Love to see a video of the completed project in action. Hint, hint!

Skills. Ahh... to have skills, t'would be heavenly. Tools... Ahh... to have tools would divine! Why I might even get into the bizness of buildin' AR parts! If you were in Texas, I'd be beggin' a job! T'ween you and Potterfield, I'm just plain ol' jealous!

I have a very good friend that's in love with the .38-40 also. Some of his enthusiasm has rubbed off, but I can't see getting a whole new set of guns just to convert over, yet!

Hmmm... A Henry carbine in .38-40! Now there's a project that could win some support!

[rbertalotto]

TEXAS!...I'm spending next week in the Texas Hill Country, house hunting.............gotta get out of Massachusetts!

I'm in Texas once a month...........I love it down there....Where women are beautiful, men wear boots and folks are sane! (Just wish they would learn how to make proper BBQ....If God wanted BBQ to be beef, he wouldn't have invented pigs!)

I'll do a video when the Taurus is finished. Should be ready for Field Trial by tomorrow...............

Stay tuned!

[Mescalero]

Can't hold that against, why did you wait this long?

[Griff]

You'll have to get one of these:


But, yeah:

why did you wait this long?

[FatJackDurham]

hehehe. That is awesome that even people from MA hate MA.

I like the Dallas area and Austin area. I hated Houston. Never been anywhere else in Texas. My Grampa is from Galveston and Corpus Christi and I always wanted to take a long trip across TX to see what its really like.

[rbertalotto]

Got it all done but the polish and blueing!

Here is what the chamber finally ended up. Notice there is no way near the feed ramp that the 45LC barrel had:


I decided to cut another 2" off the barrel bringing it to 24"


Crowning:


And a 45 degree on the edge:


Next was cutting the dovetail. I "hog" them out with the milling machine and finish cut by hand:

[rbertalotto]

And here is the finished (almost) product:










Tomorrow we go a shoot'n then we pull it apart again, polish the barrel and rust blue it........

Stay tuned for a range report

[olyinaz]

Real nice!!

Oly

[buckeyeshooter]

Fantastic work! You are a craftsman!

[Griff]

Once again, very nice! Lookin' forward to the range report!

[Rube Burrows]

Great work. Always enjoy seeing your projects.

[rbertalotto]

FINISHED!

Before I tore it back down to blue the barrel, I took it to the range with some smokeless and some BP loads. Worked perfectly! Only had a couple failure to feeds as the action is still very tight and needs a bit of stoning and polishing. But after 50 rounds it was loosening up and there were no failure to feed or other issues for the second 50 rounds. No blowback now. Brass comes out nice and clean with just a small bit of powder residue on the neck. (The 45LC cases came out totally black!)

Although I simply mounted the sights and did not sight it in in any way, it was right on at 50 yds hitting an 8" steel gong 10 for 10. Simply luck that those sights were right on.

I got back home and gave the barrel and magazine tube a light bead blast and cold blued them for now. At some point I want to rust blue these components, although friend at the range think I should antique it......We'll see.

[smokenrust]

All I can say is, DAY-YUM!! That is NICE!
Thank you for the pics... and the writings. It was very interesting.

[Griff]

I like the idea polishin' & rust-bluin' to match the rest of that great lookin' rifle! Just my 2­¢!

[.45colt]

Fantastic. what a Great Rifle You have now. .

[FatJackDurham]

The blueing looks nice. Is it a matte finish? I wish my rossi barrel came out that nice. Was it brownells or pilkington?

I am so in awe. I want to learn how to do all that.

[rbertalotto]

A light glass bead blast (80 PSI) and Brownells Bluing "Creme"



This stuff is like grape jelly. Really sticks to the metal........Heat the metal to about 120 degrees with a heat gun, use a small brush to apply, rinse off with VERY hot water, spray on Brownells Water Displacement Oil, rub down with a coarse piece of cloth (old blue jeans)...........



The more you rub, the less "matte" the finish becomes.