John Taylor wrote on Oct 5^th, 2020 at 9:13pm:


I have silver soldered them in the past, also ground down drill tips to form a pilot. But looking at the PT&G drill with interchangeable pilots prompted me to order one - should be a nice tool to have.
But their shipping charge - holy moly - $44.00 to ship a drill bit seems over the top to me.

Forgot to add:  threaded end to attach to extension rod is a great bonus too and inter-changeable pilots make it a valuable tool - useable for some other calibers too.
As for the freight charges, I'm not sure what's with that. I do know that there's some extra paper work needed to ship to Canada. Maybe a standard "paper work upcharge"?. Maybe if I had ordered a couple other small items, the freight may be the same and spread out over multiple items ? I'll give them the benefit of the doubt any way. 

I don’t remember the relative dimensions, but I had Bienke&Bienke put a thick .25 caliber liner in a shot-out .30-30 Savage 99 barrel and chamber it to .25-35.  There couldn’t have been much more than a shell of that slim barrel left past the chamber end when it was drilled out.  The drill had cut through the bottom of the front sight slot, and I had to file the rounded liner surface flat again to get the front sight reinstalled.  The gun shoots great, so it obviously was not a problem.

I drill and tap the shanks of liner drills 1/4”x 20 TPI so I can screw in extensions of various lengths as the hole goes deeper.  My lathe doesn’t have the center distance to handle a single long extension from the beginning.  Also, I don’t like the sag from an extension, even with a pilot; I’d rather start the hole with the drill itself and have the whole thing fully supported in the hole before adding to the end.

I got a flat fixed at my tire store yesterday.  I asked the manager how much, and he said, “Just give the kid who did the job what you think is fair.  If I charge you, I’ll have to do a ton of paperwork, which means I’ll have to charge you $35.”

I slipped the kid a sawski and he seemed happy.  Bureaucracies are sucking us dry like vampires.

I found it works best to install a sight plug in the dovetail and drill through it. This helps to keep from damaging the barrel from chips getting caught and also keep oil from coming out if you use pumped oil through the reamer. Make sure it is a tight fit or it could shift when the drill hits it. After the liner is installed I use  dovetail cutter to cut the dovetail through the liner.

Sort of off topic, but Bent Ramrod mentioned how thin the liner must be on a liner chambered for 25-35.  It it reminded me that 50 caliber machine gun barrels have a short satellite liner that goes from the cartridge shoulder and about 9” into the bore, and a sort of chamber insert.  See the link below:


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