barrel screw cut

[tika.308]

finally at last yesterday i phoned a chap who came highly recomended to me about getting him to sort my barrel on my .308 so i could get my new t8 which i have had since feb fitted.whilst speaking on the phone he asked if i had much on yesterday and i hadnt so off i went.got there and he soon had it in pieces and on his lathe,job done he also pulled the bolt into bits polished it all up and greased it inside,and then i went on to the range and 10 bullets later bob on.his name is mike norris near newport shropshire,top guy who really knows his stuff.very interesting to talk with.one thing he did say that every time you have shot a rifle with a sound mod on was to clean it every time,the gasses which are left in the barrel are very corrosive,and never store the rifle with the mod left on it allways take it off and fire wd40 through it and let it drain.there was a sako barrel in there and a lad had had a mod on it for 7 weeks and it was well and truly f$*k"d because he had done the very same. i had never met mike before but he made me very welcome and i had a very enjoyable afternoon.thanks mike

 

[downwind]

Tika, it's good to hear when someone provides a good service, all too often we only hear the complaints. Just as a matter of interest, is this guy a gunsmith and roughly what did he charge? (if you don't mind saying)
Cheers, Pete.

 

[tika.308]

yes he is a riflesmith,he builds rifles aswell.he charged me £90 that includes your service.

 

[Roe Hunter]

Good to hear about your gunsmith. As I'm not too far away from Newport, can you PM me his details please for future reference?

Agree on both points re mod:

Give the T8 a blast of WD 40 after shooting (seem to recall it says that on the leaflet I got with the mod when it was new), and was confirmed be a very experienced professional stalker I met in Scotland - the WD40 neutralises the very corrosive gases.

My deer rifle has a stainless barrel, and I soon found out that if I leave the mod on, I get corrosion in the threads very rapidly, due to the old 'dissimilar metals in contact = corrosion' syndrome - even applies on stainless!

 

[tika.308]

will do mate when i get home.

 

[Krabryn]

I too can really recommend Mike Norris. He's sorting out a lightweight A-Tec mod weighing afraction of the 2 lb weight T8 for my Tikka T3 243. Cheers K

 

[biker1]

screw cutting

hi i brought my rifle from norfolk sporting gun, they charged me 35 pounds to screw cut the barrel

 

[EMcC]

Sorry to put a downer on your post but for £90.0 I would expect nothing less than top service and a breakfast thrown in
You only went there for threading, the rest he chose to do and his advice is common sense, so it sounds as if he needed a quick bit of ready cash which tied in nicely with you wanting a quick job.

 

[Leon]

Sorry to put a downer on your post but for £90.0 I would expect nothing less than top service and a breakfast thrown in
You only went there for threading, the rest he chose to do and his advice is common sense, so it sounds as if he needed a quick bit of ready cash which tied in nicely with you wanting a quick job.

£90 is the going rate up here!! and you will wait three weeks for the job done so £90 for a good job while you wait is very reasonable....

 

[callie]

Quality workmanship never comes cheap !!!

 

[EMcC]

Quality workmanship never comes cheap !!!

I agree, but a lot of us seem to be lucky to get it at a better 'going rate' than that, but having said that, if the going rate is higher where you are and you have the convenience of getting it done when you want it, rather than when they want to do it, then I suppose that is another way of looking at it.
I certainly would not pay that much for what is a simple job if you have the kit and know what you are doing.

 

[JabaliHunter]

Sounds like excellent service to me and worth every penny if the rifle shoots and you are happy...

 

[tika.308]

it was worth every penny, i had never met mike before but hes a top bloke who really knows his stuff. the trigger is as sweet as a nut now and in the 2 years since i have had this work done its not missed yet really made a difference to the rifle. and to top it all the t8 only cost £100 brand new so a cheap job in all. i wouldnt go any where else and like they say you pay peanuts and you get a monkey

 

[DaveJelen]

I can highly recemend Mike !! if you want your rifle screw cut while you wait and walk away knowing its been done
right its worth the extra money for the peace of mind. Also he recrowns every rifle he threads and corrects work after bodge jobs
where crowns have been damaged in in the threading process.You also test fire your rifle before you leave so you know its firing
straight.
Dave(Jelen deer services )

 

[DaveJelen]

Sorry to put a downer on your post but for £90.0 I would expect nothing less than top service and a breakfast thrown in
You only went there for threading, the rest he chose to do and his advice is common sense, so it sounds as if he needed a quick bit of ready cash which tied in nicely with you wanting a quick job.

Another way of looking at it Eddy is, would you be happy with 'Bob's Garage' on some side street doing the service on your new Land Rover? Or if the Land Rover dealers only charged you 35 quid for a service. Would you be confident that they had done a good job? .............. I doubt it!

Quality workmanship is worth the extra money.

 

[flyingfisherman]

Im with davejelen on this one.. theres all too many gun shops out there that think if they can buy a lathe then they can screw cut barrels. Ive seen and heard some horror stories about threading jobs. If you have spent good money on a rifle, the last thing you want is some half a**ed job which could ruin your rifle.

Mike Norris is partner in Brock & Norris, one of the well known rifle smiths in the UK. Up there with the rest of them. Ive had lots of work done by Steve Kershaw, which includes a full rifle build and cant fault the man. Its great when you can find someone who provides a great service even if it does mean paying a little more for the job.

again.. ''Quality workmanship is worth the extra money.''

 

[Dovebob]

Mike is a very knowlegable and extremely engaging bloke. A couple of hours at his workshop is a treat for anyone interested in rifles.

I was lucky enough to own a second hand 7mm Rem Mag custom rifle built by Mike. It was the sweetest thing I've ever fired and its accuracey far exceeded my shooting skills. A few folk had a go with it while I owned it and many reached the same conclusion.

There are probably cheaper smiths available, but having been to Mike's and seen him at work, I wouldn't go anywhere else.

This is a shameless plug, but Mike has built a rifle which is to be raffled for H4H at the Midland Game Fair in September. I've seen it - its a peach. There's a chance to win a top of the range custom bit of kit for a few quid, whilst supporting H4H.

Cheers,

Bob

 

[Jelendeer]

Gotta agree with you guys. Mike has done some stirling work for us over the years. I personally wouldn't go anywhere else for quality work.

I learned many years ago that a cheap job is the most expensive thing you will ever buy. £90.00 is a damned good deal for the professional service you get from Brock & Norris.

Regards,

Mike
(Director - Jelen Deer Services) Jelen Deer- Committed to excellence

 

[MrYou]

exellent, i just e wary of the clean thru with wd40, as its flamable . I seen 2 mods turn into extroset missiles , after ignition, with a round thru !! great to see from a distance , change of underwear needed if you holding ..

 

[Brithunter]

Another way of looking at it Eddy is, would you be happy with 'Bob's Garage' on some side street doing the service on your new Land Rover? Or if the Land Rover dealers only charged you 35 quid for a service. Would you be confident that they had done a good job? .............. I doubt it!

Quality workmanship is worth the extra money.

Just because you pay a lot does not mean you get good quality or good work and using car dealers is a very poor example a shtye are some of the biggest rip off merchants out there. The immobiliser module went on the car we recently brought. This has to be fixed by a main agent due to the way VAG have it set up............................................... just so they can rook you. They charged 3 hrs labour to run diagnostics fit the module (under the dash) the dash was already out as the local guy had already found the problem but cannot recode them only VAG VW and Skoda main dealer scan do this. So they re-fitted the dash ( they agreed to accept the car with the dash out as they had to remove it anyway and having the chap put it back just for them to remove seemed daft in the extreme, even they agreed to that point) and the invoice says road tested.. all OK... well we had no speedo,,...................... turnes out they never even put the cable onto the speedo head no brake lights, hazard lights, interior/courtesy light or clock. They claimed it's nothing they did but the would put it right for another 1 1/2 hrs labour. The road test claim is bogus whic they have had to admit to and it's just soemthing we put down .

Got the local guy out to see what they did and it took him 20 minutes to find this out take out instrument panel re-connect speedo then check fuses... they had not plugged the fuse box back in properly and for some reason they removed the top column shroud. This means removing the steering wheel in normal practice but not they prised it off breaking off it's retaining tab sp now it does not fit..

So now we have a dispute over the charges for labour as it obviously did not take 3 hrs to bodge the job, not road test not spare keys as on the invoice. So under the 1982 Consumer services act we are rejecting their invoice and claiming the costs to repair their shoddy work and lose of use of vehicle whilst they messed it up.

As for screw cutting the muzzle of barrels i have said before that I am surprised that none of the folks doing this professionally seem to have the proper thread gauges which is very strange as the standards and tolerances for these threads have been laid down for a long time. I have not even seen the "Wires and Mics to check the effective diameters in use which must be the cheapest option for checking threads. One such type is the Ovee spring gauges.