Hand ream a chamber

[stimpylu32]

How hard is it to hand ream a chamber , the reason i'm asking , i want to take one of my 22 mag barrels and re-chamber it to 218 Bee .

I know that a lot of guys have done their 357 and 44 chambers and i was thinking that this may be one that i could do myself and not have to take it to the smith .

any input .

[quickdtoo]

Opinion ahead!!  I haven't done it, but I have done a little research on doing it myself from .357Max to .35 Remington. Doing a slight lengthening rechamber like the 357mag to max or 44 mag to 445SM is one thing, but doing a complete rechamber requires a lathe to keep the chamber in line with the bore and concentric. The cost of renting a reamer isn't that much less than what the smith will charge to do it properly unless he has to rent the reamer too. The reamer rent alone is close to $50 with shipping. Wayne charged $87 for my rechamber to .35Rem, some charge as little as $50-$75. The ejector work may increase the cost if he does that too.

Tim

[safetysheriff]

will the .22 mag' firing pin/striker give you reliable ignition with a centerfire cartridge?   will it come into the primer on the 'Bee' in proper location

is your .22 mag' barrel capable of handling the 50% increase in working pressure of the .218 Bee as compared to that of the mag' ?

i'm not sure i'd expect this to be a good idea......

ss'  

[quickdtoo]

SS, the rimfire barrels are made of the same material as the centerfire barrels, both are from Green Mountain. This was discussed at length when Larry turned a 17hmr barrel into a 17Remington to shoot on an SB2 frame.

Tim

[stimpylu32]

The barrel will be fitted to a SB2 frame so the firing pin placement is not a problem and the barrel will hold the pressure , what i was concerned with was keeping the chamber square with the bore , so i guess this one is off to the smith too .  

[safetysheriff]

The barrel will be fitted to a SB2 frame so the firing pin placement is not a problem and the barrel will hold the pressure , what i was concerned with was keeping the chamber square with the bore , so i guess this one is off to the smith too . 

the headspacing question was a concern to me, as was the idea of fitting the barrel to the frame.  (i'm not one to assume so i didn't guess that you'd use an SB2 frame)  personally i'd look at taking a .22 Hornet barrel and having it fitted to your present SB2 frame.  then i'd chamber the barrel to a .222 Rem' if it was me.    and yes, i'd do it at home by hand with a reamer cut with a proper pilot for such usage.   

to each his own, however.   

in any event, i see that you remembered the barrel fitting, etc.   however: i'm guessing that no gunsmith does it as well as the people at NEF do.   probably because they've got the fixtures to  grade and assign a size to the barrels and frames when matching them.   similar to what we did at Ford when figuring out which pistons would properly fit the various bores in a V-8.  (there isn't much tolerance in those things!)

i hope it works out well for you.

take care,

ss'