32 .309 .311
358 .348 .350
375 .365 .367
44 .419 .422
457 .448 .450
I will go through all the steps of making reamers, from the start of reamer blanks from a piece of tool
steel, to the finish reamer, ready to be used to ream the barrel. To start you will need a vertical milling
machine, and an indexing fixture. These two items are the two main pieces of equipment necessary to
make cutting tools.
I will go through with you on making a complete set of tools for a 308-barrel. You will need two each,
5/16-inch (.312) drill rod, and 6 inches long. Once you have the two - 5/16 inch drill rod cut, go to the
lathe. Chuck up one of the pieces and using a 1/4 inch center drill, center one end just deep enough to
get a good center. The other end uses 3/8-inch center, and center it to the outside edge of the drill rod.
The reason for this is that on this end you will attach the pull rod to the reamer. In most reamer
operations, using the lathe you will note that tubing is used instead of a solid rod. The reason that I use a
solid rod is that, (1) it is much cheaper, (2) it is more rigid than tubing and seems to eliminate the
chattering that you get from time to time.
Also if the reamer gets dull or it should plug up, with the tubing, it would wind up the tubing and ruin it.
With a solid rod, you will be more able to stop the machine before it ruins the reamer. If it should freeze
up in the barrel, the worst that will happen is that the reamer will pull out of the sweat joint that attaches
the rod to the reamer.