Lathes for contouring and chambering barrel blanks and such tasks

[JJB11B]

What kind of lathe do guys use for this stuff. would you be able to get away with something like the one in the link, or would you need something a lot longer?

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Grizzly-Industrial-8-in-x-16-in-Lathe-with-Milling-Head-G0769/310410440

[JJB11B]

I've heard of guys sticking half the barrel out the end so that they could use a chamber reamer. IDK I think it would be fun and with my other hobbies a lathe would come in very handy

[jasnt]

Would be very handy to have but probably not the best option.   Would be nice for chambering and threading.  Idk about contouring.

[Fl0und3rz]

tag

[Yondering]

What kind of lathe do guys use for this stuff. would you be able to get away with something like the one in the link, or would you need something a lot longer?

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Grizzly-Industrial-8-in-x-16-in-Lathe-with-Milling-Head-G0769/310410440

That really is too small IMO. You can get a much larger lathe for a lot less than that on the used market anyway, it just takes some searching. I had a 12x39" Grizzly for a while that I bought for $1500, then sold that and have a 13"x36" Jet that I bought for $1650. Both of those machines are much more capable for barrel work than that little 8x16.

You can do some decent work with a small lathe, but it's a lot harder and you have to figure out workarounds. On that particular 8x16 it looks like the spindle bore is small, and the bed is so short that you wouldn't be able to work on barrels longer than about 12" or so.

A big thing to look for is a large spindle bore; for working on rifle barrels I suggest a minimum spindle bore of 1.5". That lets you put a barreled action through the back end of the the spindle to work on one end. For contouring, you need enough bed length to cover the whole barrel plus extra for the chuck at one end and live center at the other. Depends on the tooling but I'd say at least 28-32" for most rifle barrels, and longer is better.

You'll also find out that barrel profiling is not an easy task on a general purpose lathe like that. It can be done, but you have to deal with chatter, and come up with ways to handle tapered profiles.

[JJB11B]

This is exactly the feedback I was hoping to get!

[Jason]

This one will get you started. You can find reviews about it from other gun sites. Has the through hole for a barrel. With some upgraded tooling you'll have a nice setup.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-12-x-36-Gunsmithing-Lathe-with-Stand/G4003G&ved=2ahUKEwjdyqz4htzlAhXRvJ4KHSxwC6IQFjAEegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw0P2ylPloufL3m1eruydsMz&cshid=1573265606459

[Reidus]

This one will get you started. You can find reviews about it from other gun sites. Has the through hole for a barrel. With some upgraded tooling you'll have a nice setup.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-12-x-36-Gunsmithing-Lathe-with-Stand/G4003G&ved=2ahUKEwjdyqz4htzlAhXRvJ4KHSxwC6IQFjAEegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw0P2ylPloufL3m1eruydsMz&cshid=1573265606459

 

Them things have gone up in price a lot in the last year or 2. I would not reccomend trying to contour a barrel on manual lathe. It's a pia!! Chatter and very difficult to get the contour right. You can take the shank dia. Down no problem though. G4003g works great for chambering and threading. It's got the outboard spider for indicating in the bore which that smaller one doesn't have. I'm sure there's better ones than the g4003g but i doubt it for the price.

[Yondering]

This one will get you started. You can find reviews about it from other gun sites. Has the through hole for a barrel. With some upgraded tooling you'll have a nice setup.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-12-x-36-Gunsmithing-Lathe-with-Stand/G4003G&ved=2ahUKEwjdyqz4htzlAhXRvJ4KHSxwC6IQFjAEegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw0P2ylPloufL3m1eruydsMz&cshid=1573265606459

That's the right type of lathe to start with. Don't feel like you have to buy a new machine though; you can get something similar on the used market for half the price or less. Plan to spend the other half of that on tooling (not necessarily right away, but over time...)

Here's a good example. I'd try to talk him down on this a bit, but these are good machines and it looks like it's all there. It'll need some cleanup, but so would a new one, especially a Grizzly (you'd want to disassemble a new Grizzly to clean all the machining debris out of it, they are bad about that).
https://bellingham.craigslist.org/tls/d/bellingham-metal-lathe/6987367889.html

[Reidus]

The lathe is the cheap part

You can burn up a fortune in tooling.

[gramps]