I've had more than 20 bbls rebored and not one of them had any problems at all, all of them were accurate and held up just fine.
I have no problem at all with a "quality" rebore.
DM
On another forum there was a thread where a pre 64 owner had his 30-06 bored out and chambered for 35 Whelen. On the first shot with factory ammunition the barrel blew. There were lots of recriminations, only one of the posters suggested the barrel ruptured because it was an old barrel. That's what I believe.
Barrels are pressure vessels, they expand and contract each and every shot. A barrel made of good materials should survive one lifetime of use. Very few blow up, though rarely one does make the news. In 2001 a match M1a blew up, owned by Chris Comer and Clint McKee of Fulton Armory paid to have the barrel metallurgically analyzed. The report was on the now defunct Gun Zone. The barrel was of substandard steel, showed fatigue cracking inside the chamber, and it finally broke in half, making a most spectacular kaboom. Blew the receiver ring as I recall.
This was something I copied at the time:
Chris Comer went to the rifle range and was sighting in his match M1A with the new California-legal muzzle brake (1½ foot impact difference... higher!) He had it sighted in with Federal Match. He then decided to try some of his hoarded German .308 that he has shot hundreds of rounds of from this, as well as other, rifles.
Headstamp of unfired 7.62 X 51 / MS 66-59Close-up of the casehead of the "7.62x51" over "MS 66-59" round fired in the catastrophic failure of Springfield Armory M1A #035789. Note the backed-out primer. Click to enlarge.First round detonated, it appears, instead of ignited. The gun disintegrated and probably would now almost fit in a shoe box. Chris rolled to the left as the scope went skyward, receiver split apart, barrel split open like a banana from the breach and halfway down, stock broken foward of the pistol grip.
Close-up of the "7.62x51" over "MS 66-59" case mouth fired in the catastrophic failure of Springfield Armory M1A #030550. He was shooting the weapon off of an ammo can holding onto the magazine. His left hand and forearm were a little bloody but he could, with pain, make a fist. All five fingers were intact. If he had been holding onto the forearm as he normally would, I think he would have had a stump left or been missing a few fingers.
The headstamp on the round reads "7.62x51" over "MS 66-59."
What was reported at the time, Chris was firing at Desert Marksman Range Southern California Jan 2001
You can imagine the hundreds of posts speculating that Chris's ammunition was spiked, a bore obstruction, rats had built nests inside, etc, etc, prior to Clint McKee's report. Turns out, poor quality steel.
I watched about half of this. The owner of a BFR revolver fired 500 to 600 rounds and the barrel split. Could have been poor metal.
I think it is safest and most prudent to simple replace old, worn out barrels instead of attempting to make them go through another lifetime by boring them out. Reboring is cheaper, but you have one of those one in a million accidents, your medical deductible will far exceed any savings from the rebore job. Am I being over conservative? Maybe, but I still have my hands and eyes. Lose those and the replacements you get will not be as good as OEM eyes and hands.
