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Deer Hunter · #1 03-23-2017, 06:47 AM

Found this on another forum and thought it was worth sharing.

http://benchrest.com/showthread.php?82155-Rebar-barrel

Quote:

Ive had several emails and phone calls about the article in Precision Shooting about my rebar barrel made by myself and Ron Smith here in Alberta Canada.
A couple of fellows asked if I could write a little about it on this Forum so here goes.
As many Canadians an US shooter know Ron Smith of RKS Barrels, makes single point cut rifle barrels here in Alberta. Many Schultzen an RF shooters use his barrels with great success and now more and more target shooters are finding his barrels work very well in all aspects of the shooting sport including jacketed bullets. He makes both gain and straight twist barrels and more and more people are starting to use the gain twist barrels in the long range game due to the fact they are having longer barrel life and other reasons.
Anyway I had the idea of making a barrel out of rebar as a joke many years ago and just taking it to a shoot for fun. After convincing Ron to take a chance and drill it on his deep hole drill we were both surprised how well it drilled and reamed. He was so interested now that he rifled it the next day and phoned me to say he thought it looked great, an said I should give it a real try out. Well the rest of the story is as printed in the journal this gun truly turned out to be a fun thing. And yes it shoots great a true target quality gun.
No its not lined and no its not just a standard barrel blank made to look like rebar it is just a piece of what they called weldable rebar from a construction job site.
Ron makes about 200 to 250 barrels a year and no rebar isn't going to be òn his list with chrome moly and stainless. But you can always ask.

catnthehat · #2 03-23-2017, 06:54 AM

That is Singleshotom ( AO member ) holding the target he shot with his rifle that Ron built
Cat

Scottmisfits · #3 03-23-2017, 08:15 AM

That is funny, and very impressive.

ralph m · #4 03-23-2017, 08:17 AM

The bubblegum and wire on the barrel add to the homespun effect, but as you can see, this is a serious rifle. The target was shot in competition at 200 yard, scoped sighted, and that is a 10 shot group inside the bulls-eye which is 1.5" in diameter. The score is 250/250 which is a perfect target. That group is close to 1/2 MOA with a .32 caliber cast bullet at approximately 1200 fps.
Tom and wife Sylvia are both excellent shots.

Throttle_monkey1 · #5 03-23-2017, 08:17 AM

Very interesting!

catnthehat · #6 03-23-2017, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ralph m

The bubblegum and wire on the barrel add to the homespun effect, but as you can see, this is a serious rifle. The target was shot in competition at 200 yard, scoped sighted, and that is a 10 shot group inside the bulls-eye which is 1.5" in diameter. The score is 250/250 which is a perfect target. That group is close to 1/2 MOA with a .32 caliber cast bullet at approximately 1200 fps.
Tom and wife Sylvia are both excellent shots.

From what I was told there was a few glasses of scotch involved in the brainstorming of this project!

Tom told me that the bubblegum is actually epoxy, and the wire is there for effect of course.
The fact remains that as you stated Ralph, both Tom and his wife are super shooters!
Cat

Deer Hunter · #7 03-23-2017, 08:43 AM

Yes, very nice mounts too.

gtr · #8 03-23-2017, 08:54 AM

Nice scope.

bubba300 · #9 03-23-2017, 09:01 AM

Cool,thanks for sharing

tikka250 · #10 03-23-2017, 11:26 AM

I always love this story. If you ever want a good chuckle look up what some of the us forums say about this story. Lots of guys refuse to believe it and of course the guys that do think us canadians are nuts

Grizzly Adams · #11 03-23-2017, 12:19 PM

Good story and re bar barrels apparently shoot well, but knowing what I do about re bar, betting that turning it into a rifle barrel must be a real challenge. Ron's a true craftsman, they don't come any better.

Grizz

cody c · #12 03-25-2017, 12:34 PM

I had a rebore with gain twist done by Ron recently, when I went to pick it up he was nice enough to give us a tour of his machines, including his gain twist rifling cutting machine he built himself, including tooling and carbides, really interesting stuff and a nice old feller. I doubt he has too many years left before hanging up his tools, if folks only knew what they're going to be missing, well it might be too late, hopefully his family takes it over and he passes on his skill, the gain twist makes a lot of sense over conventional twist barrels.

Grizzly Adams · #13 03-25-2017, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cody c

I had a rebore with gain twist done by Ron recently, when I went to pick it up he was nice enough to give us a tour of his machines, including his gain twist rifling cutting machine he built himself, including tooling and carbides, really interesting stuff and a nice old feller. I doubt he has too many years left before hanging up his tools, if folks only knew what they're going to be missing, well it might be too late, hopefully his family takes it over and he passes on his skill, the gain twist makes a lot of sense over conventional twist barrels.

Gerald is a machinist by trade, think he has his fingers in there. When Ron built the rifling machine, made the newspapers, first time I actually heard of him. Quite the shop, just watch where you walk.

Grizz

.300ultramag · #14 03-25-2017, 06:23 PM

Amazing project, makes you wonder how much talent is required to make a barrel that shoots better than obviously a few big name gun makers finished project?

cody c · #15 03-27-2017, 07:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by .300ultramag

Amazing project, makes you wonder how much talent is required to make a barrel that shoots better than obviously a few big name gun makers finished project?

I'm sure skill/talent has a lot to do with it, at around 83 years old he also has a significant amount of experience in line with that, he said he was a tool and die maker as well at some point, and mentioned his barrel drilling machine seemed to have sweet spots at certain speed where it seemed to cut smooth although it could easily run faster, it seemed to cut just a little bit better.

Back to barrels, and most of this is rehashed from Ron, but a hammer forged barrel uses a mandrel in the middle with the shape of the rifling, and hammers the barrel around it as I understand (so hammering the metal to shape on a die) and button rifling pulls a plug through forming the metal outward (stretching the steel outwards to form the rifling) where as cutting the rifling in with a tool (his pulls a shaft through that has a carbide cutter which rotates the barrel as it pulls a cutter through, the last method seems to work well for him, and the other methods work well but are on the basis of stretching, hammering or deforming steel, so I can kind of understand how his method may have its benefits.

His gain twist cutter rotates the barrel like a lathe on one side, and pulls the cutting tool faster initially and slower towards the muzzle end. Quite the machine, it does look well used in his old shop there

Livefree23 · #16 03-27-2017, 01:22 PM

Wow how amazingly cool.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

gatorr · #17 03-27-2017, 02:58 PM

Ron is a very nice fellow. Drove from Edmonton to drop off my rifle to have him rechamber it for me. He asks where iam from so I tell him he says "you in a hurry?' I said no so he says follow me we will do it right now. So I spent a few hours watching the master re chamber my rifle while shoot'in the s***. He has so much stuff in his shop its amazing he knows where everything is. lol

roger · #18 03-27-2017, 05:27 PM

There is enough gun wise talent in Alberta to build a quality piece of artillery.
If your going to build a customized rifle let's do our best to help out the 'local' shop.
I have to admit that seeing the rebar story years ago only helped to seal the deal on a gain twist for my project.
Some of the credit here should go singleshottom here for going to big shoots!

singleshotom · #19 05-15-2019, 08:29 PM

Well I just stumbled into this Thead and was surprised to see that there was conversation about my gun still! First off Ron Smith have been competing against each other since the early 70’s. We have grown to be very good triends and I was very lucky to how’ve him share his knowledge about barrels, bullets, building guns, shooting etc. He was also a great teacher as far as running machining equipment in his shop. He has also cost me a lot of $ not only by bets we always had at shoots but, his constant desire for me to tool up my shop which I blame him for building! which has included 3 lathes, two mills, a surface grinder, and many various grinders. I also have a rifling machine which needs a bit of work to finish it! So with all that I’m not sure if we’re really friends Lol.
Anyway many yrs ago during our Black powder days I had an idea to make a gun out of rebar with a old horse chewed 2#6 off a corral. But for over 20 yrs Ron kept saying NO! Your going to bugger up my equipment with that ship! Well to make a long story short on a NewYears morning at his place we’re he an I sipped a wee bit to much scotch the night before, woke up very early in the morning an snuck out of the house to not disturb our lovely wives ummm ...We went to the shop an Ron said you know that rebar you brought overhere yrs ago go get it and let’s give it a go! Well we fiddled a lot to get it turned true for centres. And then in the deep hole drill it went, he watched one side I on the other hands on switches and valves waiting for squealing or a big bag. But low and behold nothing smooth as silk finished dead Center... perfect. Well into the other side and set up for reaming, again apprehensive but smooth as silk!

260 Rem · #20 05-15-2019, 08:46 PM

Thanks for sharing the story Tom

Twisted Canuck · #21 05-15-2019, 08:56 PM

Very cool story, glad you brought it back up and added to it, straight from the horse's mouth as it were. I've done a few scotch induced things, but nothing that ever shot any good.

Well, my one daughter is a pretty handy shot at skeet...

singleshotom · #22 05-15-2019, 09:04 PM

We inspected it scoped it stared through it and were amazed it looked perfect...Well we headed to the house our shirt buttons ready to bust, which stopped when we saw the ladies lookin at us! Well a quiet brkfast and my wife an I head home after Ron an I agree I’ll be back to rifle the rebar when I can. Well the next evening I get a call from Ron an he says what action are you going to put that barrel on, which I told him a log junker Hywall I had! He said I thing you better use a good action because this thing might shoot. I asked him why and he said he got up in the morning and rifled it and it had a couple of tough spots but rifled perfect!
Well I took My Yost action over a couple of weeks later and Ron fitted it, chambered it and we test shot a couple of shots, all was good.
Ron’s grandson came over an we studied the gun an came up with a few ideas to entertain an confuse the competition, bubblegum snare wire etc.....
We after doing sight and scope mounting at home along with a new forend.. we took it out to our 200 range and worked up a load which worked better then any other schultzen gun I ever had or shot! We went to Spokane and I shot a 250 we asked the Americans there to keep quiet about it because we planned on unveiling it at the Big shoot at Raton NM. In August we headed to Raton and unveiled it on bench 40 or so and a crowd formed, inspecting, saying bs, not believing! I ended up shooting a 250 Nd a 249 out of set of 5 targets and placed 3rd over all on the bench! Ron and I stood side by side laughing at what had done, happy, not believing, and receiving compliments from so many shooters!
This barrel is probably the most talked about barrels RKSEnterprise has ever made. Anyway a joke turned out to be a golden egg, I’ve had offers to buy it from several places NY, Germany, other places in the USA but to me it’s priceless! Yes I’m still shooting it and it will out shoot me still, wind is our enemy always and not reading it is my fault........... We have also built a 22rf on a martini our of rebar the guns lil brother and it also shoots very well!
That’s basically how why and when, like I tell Ron the more we think we know what the best barrel should be this thing proves we know nothing!
Ron swears he won’t ever build another one because it would never be the same an I agree!
I’m the luckiest guy in the world to have Ron as my mentor and best friend, and we’re Albertains an proud of it fellows!!
Thnx
Sst
If someone can google rebar gun barrel there are some pics of them both and also some of a guy who made one of rebar with a 22rf liner and put it on a Singleshot shotgun....... not that one lol!!

tikka250 · #23 05-15-2019, 09:35 PM

That's an awesome story. Thanks so much for sharing!

Don_Parsons · #24 05-16-2019, 07:10 AM

Wow,,, simply awesome...

Thanks for sharing all...

Purhaps I'll finish my water pipe 22 rimfire one day,,, home make pull rifling rod I get to turn by hand...

Slow and steady on the twist well keeping an eye on the tape measure fore sure. LOL

PS: No tippys for me unless it's a candler glass of Hennessy.

👍