Shortening barrel on Chaparral advise please

[Milano]

Hello,  My wife bought me a Chappy 76 22" octogon barrel  45-60 for our wedding and it's a using rifle.  I work on cattle ranches and am ahorse back a lot, meaning the rifle is a using rifle.  What I would like to do is cut the barrel down to maybe an 18".  I would really rather rebarrel or send it off.  No one will touch it though.  "Buy a Marlin", "it'll cost more than worth", etc etc.  So I am going to do it!  The problem is that I have never done this before.  I could use advise and help with my plan.

I think I will buy this dovetail jig:
www.dixiegunworks.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_96_220_675&products_id=13083

Cut the barrel off, dovetail the front sight, shorten the mag tube, then dovetail for the magazine tube retainer "thingie".  This is obviously abridged but basically that's my plan.  Anyone have advise about this?  Insight?  Where to get extra parts for when I mess it up? 

[kwilliams1876]

i have ridden alot here in montana toting my big lever guns. i just don't see the need for cutting down from 22 to 18"......a bunch of work for little gain. not much sight radius left at 18"......what are you going to do with the forend, as that would need to be cut too?  have had many rides with the 28 inch barrel '76 and that is a pain working through timber.
best
kw

[Baltimore Ed]

I've built several muzzle loaders over the years and cut a bunch of dovetails by hand, some were pretty and some not so much. An ugly dovetail isn't too bad as long as it holds tight but if you do a bad crown job you will totally wreck your rifle's accuracy. If you are not going to remove the bbl and put it in a lathe to cut and crown then check out Brownells for their hand muzzle crowning tools. $$$ I've used a borrowed set on shotguns and AR bbls with good results. But I've got to agree with kwilliams, a 4 inch shorter bbl isn't worth the effort and just how narrow is your horse anyway? I'm not a horse person but don't you guys carry your longguns in a scabbard? or slung? Put your money to better use, buy a nice scabbard, install sling swivels and get ammo or reloading stuff and learn your rifle. Good luck.

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[kwilliams1876]

balt Ed
good point on scabbards. i have several as one does not work well for all rifles. every time i tack up for a ride i adjust the scabbard and the way i hang it...for what ever rifle i take.  don't rig the gun the way you see hollywood doing in so many westerns.....a sure way to lose the gun when going up hill. the us military had it perfected by the time of the m1903. i know of 2 cases where hunters lost their rifles in the dark....found one 3 yrs later still looking for it in the mountains. the scope might still be good.
best kw

[Milano]

Thank you all for your good sensible advise.  The rifle never grouped that well anyway and I would rather try my hand at shortening the barrel myself.  If anyone has experience at doing it without a lathe, I would appreciate the help.

Are the Chaparrals the same parts as an original Winchester?  I have heard that Ubeti's are not, that is why ask.

[Baltimore Ed]

I've got a Chappy NWMP.45-60 carbine that had toggle link issues but works fine now. Shoots good. What loads/ bullets are you using? Shortening the bbl will not improve your groups unless the crown is dinged up or it was cleaned to death and the rifling at the muzzle was damaged. Don't know where the keyhole round came from.

[kwilliams1876]

i sold my chappy after exhausting months of load development. the rifling was barely .0025" deep and therefore would not shoot jacket or lead bullets---smokeless or black. had tumblers and key holes frequently. other than that i really liked the gun as much or more than my uberti.
best
kw

[Baltimore Ed]

KW, you've explained my ?? keyhole. I've not shot my rifle that much I'm afraid. If the rifling is indeed shallow then hard bullets with limited velocity should work. When you push your bullet too hard and strip the rifling you get keyholes and poor accuracy. Happens with muzzle loaders alot. Not a good thing for a serious hunting rifle.

[kwilliams1876]

Baltimore ED
mine was a 45-75....which of course offers all kind of bullet choices. i have a mold collection plus tried all the jacket choices. nothing really worked to my satisfaction at 100 yds, so was not a montana hunting gun choice. too bad really. my rifling was probably closer to .002" which is a hair over "bore scratches"

[Baltimore Ed]

Sorry to hear that. Any chance you can send it back to Uberti for a bbl replacement? Is it worth relining the bbl? You really need to send your rifle to DustyTexan to upgrade to a .50 cal. He does real pretty work. I'll dig my NWMP carbine out of the safe today and measure the bbl innards to see if I've got the same problems.
Years ago, at the NE Regional in Md, I bought a like new used Uberti Cimarron 1873 with a 30 inch bbl that had a totally bad from the factory barrel. After some haggling (they claimed that the rifle wasn't theirs but their name was stamped on the bbl??) I shipped the rifle to them in Fredricksburg, Texas where it languished for a year waiting for another 30 inch bbl. Eventually the bbl was replaced and it shoots ok now. If I shot it more I'd invest in a nicer tang sight and spirit level front sight.
 
As near as I can measure with my calipers, at the muzzle, the lands to grooves dif is .006, I measured the thickness of the bbl at the lands and in the grooves.