I recommend that you purchase the mold you want,( and 225 gr would be fine for very large game to moose and large brown bears). Load one of these bullets into a case with the gas check barely contained in the cartridge neck, and send this to the riflesmith, requesting that he throat the rifle with a straight ball seat throat slightly over groove diameter, and the standard taper into rifling.
With a straight ball seat throat only a little over groove diameter, the Hornady jacketed bullets will be well guided on takeoff, and accuracy with them can be improved by seating them about 1/16 inch off the rifling then crimping the rounds hard enough that a fired case will have a remaining crimp that makes contact with a jacketed bullet. To walk you through the reason this improves accuracy. Since the bullet will jump 1/16 inch to the rifling, the remaining crimp will hold the bullet base central in the chamber while the nose is being driven into the rifling. This is a trick that works for all worn throat rifles, and espeically with heavy enough bullets that the crimp can be placed at least 1/4 inch up from the bullet base. If you can find bullets which allow the crimp at approximately halfway on the straight bearing surface of the bullet, the crimped bullet will retain weight better on impact, than uncrimped, and be less likely to have lead and jacket seperate with low velocity impact. I'm speaking here of standard jacketed bullets, not solid copper or partitions.
I've rebarreled a few rifles and in fact built a couple pistols, but never hired a smith to rebarrel a gun, so can't recommend one from personal experiance. However, Ben Forkin in Montana is a long standing customer of mine who I would be very comfortable in recommending. He sets quite a few rifles up primarily for cast bullet use, and in fact even orders the mold from me himself. That's a service which is hard to beat, as he's a very knowledgable cast shooter and knows exactly what both he and I can do. I think the company handle is Forkin Custom Firearms, maybe it's Classic Firearms, but he should be easy to find on the net. If any of you readers have someone who's work you truely like, please post them. Personally I wouldn't go for the lowest price but one who is sure to deliver high quality. There is no point in rebarreling if you are certain you'll be geting something much better than factory.
