Thread: 303 bullets tumbling

Originally Posted by Jhon

Quote: "Now ive got to try and find another barrel, is it going to be better to cut my losses and find another gun or is there someone out there with a supply of new barrels?
Where did all these surplus lithgow barrels end up? I believe that there were a number of guns assembled from the surplus stock that was sold off and all have serial numbers that dont match." UnQuote

Matching numbers matter if you're a collector. Otherwise so what? There's a lot of old 303s coming up for sale at ever increasing prices it seems. Good barrels are the exception. I've never rebarreled one but have kept my eye on prices. I would only do it if the rifle had really nice sporterised wood by e.g. Parker Hale or Churchill of England. Why rebarrel a military rifle that Bubba has sporterized with a wood rasp? I'd expect a quality rebarrel job to cost $800 plus by a reputable GS. Is it worth that to you? Then to get it reasonably accurate you have to set it up with correct fitting of wood and tensions at wrist, Mag plate, forend tension screw etc. Not a trivial exercise but feasible and plenty of accurizing info is available online. Just be aware that rebarreling of itself won't necessarily make the rifle an excellent shooter. Might make it adequate tho if Minute of Deer is your goal.

Im not worried about serial numbers matching, especially for a sporter like this.
I was just getting at the fact that there is a bunch of lithgows out there that were assembled from unmatched surplus parts.
Hopefully someone here has some barrels, i do have some contacts to call.

I didnt realise a rebarrel was so complex. I thought you could just screw out the old and screw in the new one, how does the wood affect anything?
At $800 I can buy a full wooded rifle complete with a good barrel, but I still want a sporter, so may have to shop around.