Thread: Tikka barrels questions

Looking at Stagstalkers post about shortening Tikka barrels made me think about this question .How is we are told you cant ream out Tikka barrels as its to hard and wrecks gear .Yet we see they can cut threads no troubles, i'm no engineer but i would have thought the barrel would be just as hard on tools working on the outside ,its the same piece of steel isnt it ?? . I know the processes are different but i just would like to know why .

A carbide cutting bit is much cheaper to replace than a reamer.

there is just more wear on reamers.
just get the reamer you want to use and send it in with the rifle.

What reamers are good to get @Bill999 floating? Where's best to get them?

i dunno mate the guy doing it for me measure the bore and ordered it with my Creditcard
I did a 7mm 08 to 280
mitch maxberry ended up finishing the job for me
came out great if I remember right it was under $150 for the reamer

Originally Posted by stevodog

What reamers are good to get @Bill999 floating? Where's best to get them?

PT&G are a common place to get reamers, Pacific Tool and Guage in the US.

There is nothing very hard about Tikka/Sako barrels and they ream just fine with slow speed and plenty of cutting oil. no different to any other barrel. It always pays to use a roughing reamer first so the finisher only has a small amount to remove. I always made my own roughers out of silver steel and only bought factory finishers.

Cool, good to know

Outside tooling is normally carbide. Reamers are normally high speed steel. Cant deal with harder material as well. Plus way larger surface area cutting on a reamer

Good information to be shared as it’s often put out there that it’s an impossible type of job to do.
There may be someone else who could use the reamer after the job is done to basically halve the cost of the job also, I for one am looking at doing a 7mm08 to 284 or to Ackley improve it.


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AI the 708? I would be interested to split a reamer with you. Can you get 708 ai dies or just neck size after fireforming?

So if what gundoc is saying is the case why then do others want no part of it.? And isnt part of the cost of cutting a chamber a fee for using/wearing built into that? How many chambers does a reamer cut before its stuffed?

Some kind of average wear on the tooling is probably factored into the cost when a gunsmith does a barrel job. But if they believe (rightly or wrongly) that working on a particular barrel is high risk and likely to damage or break either the tooling or your barrel then they don't want to be liable for that.

Originally Posted by stevodog

AI the 708? I would be interested to split a reamer with you. Can you get 708 ai dies or just neck size after fireforming?

Yip Can get dies I’ve had 2 of them they go really good cheers


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Cool, good to know. I'm currently farting around with it downloaded as a bush gun with red dot sight.
Might ai it when I get bored.
Plan on fireforming with some shotgun powder and either a wad or keep the rifle pointing straight up, no wad.

Seen blog of a dude doing this and getting a weatherby look alike shoulder which performed the same and fireform completed on next load