How To set up a gun barrel in the lathe 

This is a GREAT video and well-done sir. I tried to read all the comments, but I never saw any about using a .001 indicator. And I understand we have to sometimes use what we have available or what we can sneak home. Most dial indicators have 1" travel and .001 graduations and the specs for accuracy are plus or minus .001 for the first two revolutions and then plus or minus .002 thereafter. A dial test indicator is more accurately built and can be held to much tighter specifications. These indicators go down to .0005 or a s tight as .0001 in their graduations. Thank you again for sharing and aim small miss small!

Hi, thanks for posting this detailed video. Great video for newcomers to this work.

Thank you! This is great. I appreciate the total explanation and not cutting away with installations as I am a newbie.

Nice job apreacate the knowledge. I've just started getting into all this much helped by the discovery of a Colchester lathe in the garage underneath years of car parts a full size lathe ! Great discovery if you are trying to build a gun. Knowledge to use it I'm still finding mostly from generous ppl like yourself. 👍

use brass tips on your live center. Crown is most important part of barrel for accuracy. Steel on steel will destroy crown. Available from Brownells, MidWay etc.

Thanks for taking the time to share this !

I watched a video of a guy on youtube once that had a tube setup about 10” long which had 4 square head bolts around the end and 4 more around 6” from that around the circumference. He used it like chucks to center the barrel bore with a rod like you had stuck inside the barrel to true it up. It worked great as well.

If your into the cad world model some shims for your 2" bore with a slight offset roll the piece around to find center of the bore. 3d print some shims for the majority of barrells you work on that are to short and use your 4 jaw like usual. Thanks for sharing there are several ways of getting the job done.

I've been doing hobby gunsmithing for many years and have been using all of these methods to turn barrels. Grizzly carries spindle adapters to mount a #3 MT dead center to the headstock (even the oddball taper that Rockwell lathes use). All of the methods that are presented in this video can be used. But; how do you chamber a barrel when it's too short to fit between the spider and the chuck? What I do in these situations is to turn the barrel blank between centers using a face plate and center + dog with what's going to become the breech end of the barrel on the faceplate end, and a live center in the tailstock at what's going to become the muzzle end of the barrel. I turn about 4 or 5 inches on the muzzle end of the blank. All I'm doing here is making a short section on the outside of the barrel concentric with the bore of the barrel, and not removing much material. After this is done I change out the faceplate for a four jaw chuck and put the muzzle end of the barrel (the end that I just turned some material off of so that it's concentric with the bore) into the 4 jaw. I leave around 2" of that freshly turned surface exposed in front of the chuck jaws. Install a steady rest on the lathe with the "breech" end of the barrel passing through it. You can use the live center in the tailstock to get the breech end of the barrel mostly lined up. Then install a gauge pin into the bore on the breech end. You can use a dial indicator to zero the breech end by measuring off of the gauge pin, and set the zero on the 4 jaw end by indicating off of the surface that you just turned. You can then turn and thread the barrel shank, chamber the barrel, and turn the section of the barrel that's going to be ahead of the shoulder, all while the axis of the bore is concentric with the axis of the lathe spindle. When you reverse the barrel in the lathe and start contouring the barrel, the section that you cut on the muzzle end to measure off of gets turned off as you reduce the barrel's diameter.

Good stuff. Thanks!

Thanks Things I haven t thought of before

I made a treaded spider to thread through the center of my face plate. I can fit and chamber a barrel as short as 21" if a barrel is shorter than that I use an action trueing jig to center barrel in.

For the third method to be even semi-reliable, you would need to machine a band for the steady to run whilst the bore was held between centres. This steady band could be on a collar/sleeve secured to the barrel at the appropriate spot also, so you don't have to machine the barrel material itself. Indicating as at the end is poor practice. Using exaggeration to explain the theory why, the barrel could be tilted up in the air by five degrees relative to the axis of the lathe, but because it is running between two fixed points, the collet and the steady, you will always get a pretty much null reading. Few ways around this. Using a gage pin with zero play in the lands and sticking a couple or three inches out the muzzle, indicate in two positions till you run zero at BOTH, in this example tweaking the steady rest (running on the aforementioned steady band) to get the pin running co-AXIAL. That means it would run zero at a location right next to the muzzle PLUS run zero a couple inches out at the end of the gage pin. Another way achieving the same idea is using a long-stylus test indicator, again allowing you to dial zero at the muzzle PLUS dial zero a couple inches back inside the bore. In the case of the test indicator you will see a jump down into each groove but coming back up to zero on the lands as you rotate. Heck, it probably gives you an excuse to buy more tools, woohoo😀🤡 Gerard🤙

I wonder if that little bit of runout could be due to Cerakote thickness? Might it be more accurate to setup before Cerakote on bare metal with the rest?

Nice video, I’m in Indiana also. Build some 2x4 shelves above the lathe, screw into the studs on your OSB wall. Get your tooling off the floor. YT has many chambering video’s, some great knowledge. I love drive Dog’s and real Dogs. Oh yea! Clean that rust off your 4-jaw. 😂

So do you think you could build a gun on one of the small PM 12x28VF large bore lathe's. I know its not much rigidity when comparing to a larger one but taking it slow and small cuts if you did everything by a lot less is it possible, Even chambering a barrel. I'm also talking about the hobbyist that wants to do it him self just for fun.

Yeah! Very decent video, thank you so much for sharing, I appreciate it. Haha, that workshop waters my teeth like a green grizzly's... wow!

I was looking for a video on rifle barrel lathe cleaning. Is cleaning part of your set up process in order to assure accuracy? It's not like you can use a surface grinder afterward.

So I'm a little confused. It looks like you chucked up the range rod in you chuck and you have the other end in the barrel which essentially cause it to in theory free float in the barrel bore.. Are you trying to show the amount of out of round by how much the inside touches the range rod as it spins the lathe head or lathe chuck around? Or am I missing that the chuck was turned in not touching the range rod and it just need to go through the chuck center for room so you back it off and the range rod is spinning as you turn the lathe.

Hey guy, you have a lathe... you can make any tool you need, including any centers you need. Armature...

I'm considering getting into this as a hobbyist. What is the minimum size of lathe you would recommend for basic barrel chambering and threading work? Would something like a PM 1030 be sufficient? Thanks

You should remove your wedding ring if your wife Minds show a picture of somebody that's had their finger degloved or taken off

Steady rest should have oil clearance between the rollers and only turn from the oil itself. Not spin without it,,a thousands feeler gauage space.

For a gun barrel I would use a more true dead center with lube

Thanks for the video! What is the benefit of using the collet rather than a 4-jaw chuck? Is it only the time saved centering that end, or are there additional benefits I'm not considering?

I wouldn’t say it’s been done that way for “thousands” of years lol, what part of Indiana you from I couldn’t make it out, southern Indiana here.

What tool post are you useing?

Um, that rusty chuck would take only a couple minutes to clean up, so why leave it looking rusty and crusty?

If you can do rifling I'd be interested to see that

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What do you use to shim around the barrel when you have the jaws on?

Nothing wrong with your methods, you need to organize your shop better, leaving stuff on the floors is dangerous.

First lathe was made in 1700s,, that's 300 years not thousands, just messing with you,, and why I don't make vedios,,

Nice lathe,how do you like it and Grizzly in general. Good video.

How would you setup a pistol barrel like a 1911 barrel to thread?

how many millimeters you lathes spindle bore ?

If using a 1” bull barrel. Could you chamber and cut action threads using a collet?

Looking to make AK barrels for suppressors. This seems to be the best way to do it

You can tell it's a grizzly, the rust is already setting in. They have good equipment, but damn.... It rusts way too much. I have a whole shop of Everything from that company and not one piece didn't rust.

can you use barrel made from titanium ?

whats you lathe name?

thousands of years? you know guns have only been around a few hundred right?

Why eould anyone cerakote before doing final machining. Walmart school of gunsmithing.

So you have a lathe, make your own centers

Jesus Christ that’s the worst looking Chuck I’ve ever seen.. I wonder if the rest of your tools are all rusted up.

Clean up your lathe

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