re-bore?

[j two dogs]

I have a .36 cal. muzzleloader that needs to be re-bored, thinking of a .45 cal.
Does anyone know who can do the work at a resonable price? Thanks

[coyotejoe]

Unless there is some reason you really need to keep the original barrel as a collector's item or whatever, it probably is cheaper to get a new Green Mountain barrel for $100-$125 and fit it to your rifle than to ship off the barrel and wait several months for reboring. If it is an old original rifle then rebarreling is out of the question and yes, there are several people who can rebore it. I would suggest you go to "The Traditional Muzzleloading Forum" and do a search for it there.

[j two dogs]

Had actually thought about going that route. My  muzzleloader that I am working with is well over 100 years old, and my attempts at restoreing it to its best possible condition while still maintaining some "essence" of the time period if you will, precludes putting a new barrel on it. Thanks for the reply.

[j two dogs]

I am an idiot! The whole reason for re-boring was not because the rifling was not visable, but because I could not get a dry patch down and back out again.

A few days back I had spent the whole day fire lapping and hand lapping the barrel with the breech plug out. At the end of my session I ran enough dry patches through the bore to dry it, and then inspected it with my "eye". To me it did not look like I had accomplished anything. I did not bother to put the breech plug back in, and see if I could run a dry patch in and out. Well last night I did just that, and to my amazed eyes like a new one the dry patch went in and came back out along with about 20 others. I am really excited about this turn of events, this means tommorrow I can go to the range with some .36 cal balls and if she shoots, I am good to go. Some times its good just to have a place like this for a sounding board, it helps us nim-wits work things out as we are pounding them out on a key board.

[j two dogs]

Bugger: It did not work. The first shot was right on the mark, unfortunately the rifling is so shallow that unless you clean the barrel back to absolute clean bore it won't give good accuracy. So as they say back to the drawing board. I spoke with my gunsmith this morning, he does do liners, he just can't do anything over 26 inches, my barrel is 36. So still in the hunt for someone that can re bore, or put a long liner in.
Thanks for any help.
Jack

[flintlock]

Might try Ed Rayle over in West Virginia...I'm not sure if he has a rifling machine, but he could also make you a barrel to match the one you have...

You don't reline muzzleloader barrels, you lap them and then freshen up the rifling...

I can't lay my hands on his number right now but the guys over at the Traditional Muzzling site mentioned have it...