http://www.truefliteriflebarrels.co.nz
By Nathan Foster
The Project
Early in 2008, I found myself with a few dollars spare to put towards an ongoing project, building two custom rifles, one for myself, the other for my wife Stephanie. At the time, my rifle featured a stainless steel Winchester Model 70 controlled feed action and a spectacular walnut stock created by Kevin Gaskill, the custom stock maker from Raglan. Stephanie's rifle was similar, a left handed long action Montana M1999 stainless steel action (almost identical to the M70 but with a superior bottom metal design) and a sleek classic stock, again built by Kevin Gaskill.
Above - a matched pair.
Both rifles had initially been fitted with foreign barrels but the results were only average. I had made a decision to rebarrel but could not justify the financial waste of an immediate swap. Time went by; a month turned in to a year or was it more? All I can say is the rifles sat and collected dust and it constantly annoyed me to be advertising my rifle accurising services with two in-accurate rifles in the lock up.
Enter True-Flite
I had been aware of the excellent workmanship from True-Flite for a long time. The company had recently changed hands when I finally had the opportunity to rebarrel the rifles and I was keen to explore the New Zealand made barrels for myself.
I have worked in the Stainless steel engineering sector for many years now and in my experience, there are two basic types of engineer - sorry dear readers but this ain't gonna be pretty. There are those that turn up to work to eat their lunch and believe that rough enough is good enough. Then there are the perfectionists. The perfectionists can be split into two personality types, the first type enjoy the challenge of striving for perfection, these people are hungry to learn and explore new methods, are willing to try and to fail in the search for success, they can take a joke and they can laugh at themselves. These are the kind of people that the world relies on for innovative designs, the execution of these innovative designs and are highly sought after by large forwards moving corporations.
Then there is the second type of perfectionist, the person who strives for perfection because if he or she doesn't, the sky will fall down on their heads. It is the second kind of perfectionist that consumers need to steer well clear of because these people cannot admit to mistakes, cannot learn new methods, cannot adopt new ideas, are on the brink of a heart attack from age 30 and are generally miserable to work with. I have yet to meet one single person that does not make mistakes in their work, regardless of quality control protocols and I simply cannot tolerate people who lie to the contrary.
It did not take me very long to ascertain that Grant Lovelock of True-Flite fell into the first category of perfectionist. Grant was immediately warm both through emails and on the phone. We discussed the project and from the start, Grant informed me that he had newly acquired co-ownership of the company and that he was still learning the ropes. I put him right on the spot when I informed him that I had two poor shooting rifles that I hoped he could improve on. I then put even more pressure on the poor guy when I asked to do the bedding work myself. Having me do the bedding work was a high risk for Grant as he would have no control over the final outcome regarding accuracy. After a discussion to this end, we settled on a plan. My 7mm Remington Magnum would be rebarreled to 7mm Remington Ultra Magnum while Stephanie's .280 Remington would be rebarreled to 7mm Remington Magnum which would require alteration of the M1999 bolt face, hopefully cleaning up any poor tolerances suspected within the action.
Above - The M1999 bolt face.
Above - The M1999 bolt face. The red arrow shows where the rim of steel on the bolt face had to be widened to accomodate the wider case rim of the 7mm Remington Magnum cartridge. This also created an opportunity for Steve Mann to true up the bolt face - to ensure that it was 90 degrees to the reciever and bore.
Turn around time for both jobs was extremely fast, Grant worked on my barrel while on a second lathe, technical guru Steve Mann worked on Steph's barrel. Steve soon discovered that the bolt face of the M1999 was not square to the receiver, not a poor reflection of the Montana but a reminder that when buying an action in the semi rough, such things need to be checked over while building a custom rifle.
Once I had the barreled actions home, I set about blasting the barrels and doing the bedding, both jobs usually done by True-Flite. I'm glad I had a chance to blast the True-Flite barrels. On the True-Flite website it stated that their barrels were made from an incredibly tough 416R steel. What an understatement, I have blasted a good many barrels over the years using glass bead with 80psi at the gun but even with new bead, my blasting barely altered the polished finish of the barrel. I was absolutely gob smacked at the toughness of the two barrels. Standard glass bead left a smooth opaque finish while Garnet produced the more typical blasted look as found on Remington stainless rifles.
With great care, I bedded both rifles and it was soon time to take them out to the range. Then, out of the blue, a problem cropped up. The 7mm Remington magnum was so tight in its headspace that it was stiff when closing the bolt. I phoned Grant and this is where buying from A) perfectionist number one and B) your own country really counts. Grant asked to have the rifle sent back straight away. On inspection, it was found the head space gauge that came with the business was not up to the task at hand. A new headspace gauge was purchased immediately, the barrel re-reamed and within a few short days, the rifle was back and ready to go.
Above - The picture above shows what head space is measured against
Above - The picture above shows what head space is measured against. Put simply, head space measures the distance between the bolt face and shoulder of the chamber (distance (a) in the picture above). If this distance (a) is too great, the case may rupture at the base of the cartridge (b). If the barrel has not been reamed deep enough, the cartridge will be too long at the shoulder for the chamber.
In the meantime I had been putting the RUM through its paces. I was over the moon, the first groups firing a 160 grain bullet at 3200fps went inside .75MOA and that's how the rifle stayed as loads increased. The RUM was really new territory for everybody involved. The 7mm RUM cartridge is fundamentally flawed in its design because the magazine lengths of all current magnum action rifles dictate a bullet jump of over a quarter inch.
In other words, 7mm projectiles must be seated deeply into the RUM case in order for the cartridge to fit in the rifle's magazine. In contrast, the RUM chamber has a long throat, so long that if 140 grain projectiles are utilized, there is a moment during firing when the projectile is neither guided by the case neck nor engaged in the rifling. Instead, the reloader must hope like heck that his ammunition is lined up absolutely concentric to the bore. The 160 grain bullet weight does only slightly better in the RUM, just entering the rifling as it leaves the case mouth. According to Remington engineers, the excessive free bore was created in an effort to allow projectiles to get up to speed (in order to obtain superior performance to smaller capacity magnums). The truth is, they are dead right, the 7mm RUM is terribly overbore. The rest of the RUM families are much the same in design.
Above - throat length explained.
Above - throat length explained. (a) shows the throat length or "free bore". (c) is the projectile ogive, (d) is the projectile bearing surface. (b) shows the distance the projectile must "jump" before the bearing surface engages the rifling. The throat length dictates the maximum cartridge over all lenght (COL). The COL of factory ammo is designed to work safely in all factory producted rifles. Handloaders have greater flexibility as they can seat projectiles close to the rifling for optimum accuracy so long as a good porportion of the projectile bearing surface (d) is gripped firmly by the case neck. With a custom barrel, custom reamer and seperate throating reamer, the throat length can be altered to suit a variety of applications. In my rifle, the magazine lenght dictated a short COL which resulted in too much bullet jump. In contrast, Steph's M1999 has a long magazine for the sized cartridge she is using. The long throat and long COL increases powder capacity and potential velocity substantially.
Getting back to the project, Grant and I had also decided to trial his prototype canted land 4 groove barrel with a twist rate of 1 turn 9 in inches. As I am always researching ballistics, I was keen to find out whether the rumor of higher velocity and lower fouling with canted rifling were true. The result- an emphatic yes, fouling was vey low and the combination of a long throat and the canted lands allowed me to increase velocities considerably until accuracy fell off at 3480fps. I soon settled on a load consisting of a 160 grain bullet at 3275fps and within a short period of time, the RUM became a real favorite of both myself and hunting clients, regardless of its absurdly large case capacity.
Above - canted lands explained
Above - canted lands explained. Figure 1 shows a standard four grove barrel. Figure 2 shows the canted land system with gentle leading edges. This rifling system has shown to produce less copper fouling, higher velocities and in ultra velocity cartridges, less incidents of mid air bullet blow up when using projectiles with extremely soft jackets.
With the return of the 7mm Rem mag, I settled down to build loads for Stephanie. This rifle grouped into .6" but something was amiss. The rifle would put two shots through one hole and third just a tad apart, opening the groups up to the .6" average. It took me a while to work out that the rifle was superior in quality to my reloading skills. This rifle had the potential to produce one hole groups of .3" but I had to lift my game- how embarrassing. This barrel also featured the canted land 1:9" rifling which resulted in high velocities with low pressure. After a bit more experimenting, the rifle was set to go, its hunting load consisting of a 140 grain bullet at 3260fps.
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Bad luck (or was it bad management)
About six months or so passed and I was having the time of my life with the 7mm RUM. I used it for close range work, I used it for long range hunting, I took running shots with it and I even took it into waist high scrub while tracking an angry boar- and I nailed the sucker too! Everywhere I went, the RUM went with me and several hunting clients were taken with it too. The only time I didn't feel so fond of it was when I had to go to town to buy more powder. Steph was also having a good time with her 7mm Rem mag, especially shooting at field targets as far as 550 yards. Then all of a sudden, every thing went pear shaped-literally.
I was out with a client on a spring hunt; the weather was a mix of cloud and rain. The client had no rifle with him while visiting NZ but as he liked to play with big toys, we took the RUM. I don't know how it happened or who was holding the rifle but I can only assume a drop of moisture entered the muzzle of the RUM which I had neglected to tape up once the hunt was in its second day. Where my old Swede would have just blown a droplet of moisture out ahead of the bullet, the overbore RUM didn't take kindly to the interference. Have you ever heard of a gain twist barrel? What about a gain caliber barrel!
I was absolutely devastated that my new toy was broken. Grant gave me a good deal of ribbing including comments regarding me as a regular source of income for True-Flite. Nevertheless, we also had a master plan which could now be fulfilled. After the original 7mm RUM chamber had been cut, Grant and I had sent our co-owned 7mm RUM reamer back to the States to have it reground with a shorter custom spec throat. The long term plan was to one day trial the shorter throated version. Grant also keeps a 7mm throating reamer which would give us the option of lengthening the throat if pressure problems occurred.
Above - the 7mm RUM.
Perhaps out of sympathy, Grant rebarreled the RUM in record time. The new rifle proved even more accurate than the last, the load is the same 160 grain bullet at 3275fps however this is near max. Groups average around the .3" mark, exceptional for a sporting weight magnum. In the field and over a day bag, this is producing 2" groups at 450 yards and 3" groups at 600 yards, regardless of our Taranaki gusty winds. Having two reliable tack driving rigs has really been an absolute joy.
Above - a happy client with the 7mm RUM.
In conclusion to my dealings with True-Flite, both workmanship and communication was above all expectations. True-Flite had me excited from go to woe and the results were amazing. It has also been a major help to me personally with our company, to have people that I can brainstorm with and share information with. That's a hard thing to come by these days. You will have noticed that I held nothing back in my review. It's all very well to hear about immediate success stories where the consumer lives happily ever after but what I value is true integrity, especially in the search for the accurate rifle. I have said it before and I will say it again now, the act of pushing a tiny piece of alloy through a rifle barrel and expecting it to hit the same place every time at 100 yards is a truly remarkable feat of both human endeavor and modern engineering.
Above - the author with the 7mm RUM.
For those considering a change of barrel or the building of a full custom rifle, do it, you won't be disappointed. True-Flite back their workmanship so whether you are a target shooter or hunter, you can be assured of optimum results.
Disclaimer/ WARNING: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and are not endorsed by any manufacturers. Terminal Ballistics Research and the author take no responsibility for the use or misuse of any views, opinions or information expressed in this article.
