Barrels on factory guns are largely awfully made if you look at them with under a borescope
Yup some may shoot
Some may shoot well sometimes
Others you struggle to get to group at all consistently
Custom barrels usually start from decent quality steel, deep drilled, honed , rifled, polishes , profiled and heat treated
Most button barrels start around £260 -£300 for decent quality barrels that are reliably made and have good quality steel
Then factor in at least five hours work to strip out the old barrel, prep, measure the action with tools upward of £400 each (my micrometers of which I have four, depth, thread, internal, external ) are all high spec and certified meteorology level )
Set up the barrel in the lathe using 1/10000” dti at each end using pin gauges (£800 per calibre set ) in the 1k Bison 6 jaw chuck
Get the barrel running as close to tru as possible then cut the tenon, check tru again , cut thread for action, check for fit, check tru again, rough out the chamber, cut chamber with reamer , check headspace and adjust.
Polish chamber after checking run out
Flip barrel - prep and set up again to run at zero or as close as possible
Cut muzzle thread, fit thread protector, cut crown and blend in thread protector
Clean and polish crown
Clean barrel
Prep and clean action again
Fit barrel and torque up
Check headspace
Complete submission for proof
Send and await return
All in on a simple re barrel your looking at 5-6 hrs work easily
So factor in your barrel cost and then my labour charge of £280 plus £80 for proof and your looking at roughly £660 to fit a quality barrel that is a plane ride improvement in quality over the factor barrel and fitted by someone who actually cares about how the gun shoots once it’s back with the customer
Given the level of outlay for equipment required and skills needed to fit a barrel properly and risk I’d suggest that 700 is a baseline level of cost
