Well, it's finally done after months of waiting for tooling and parts. I have a Ross Mk IIIB that is equipped with a Cooey rear sight. It was in fine overall shape except that the barrel was so bad it could be used for a sewer pipe.

I saw that Krieger made barrels big enough for the MK III action if you could find a gunsmith that could thread it, chamber it, cut the extractor groove and generally wrestle it on to the MK III action.

I was told that the CMPicon in Alabama would do it but when I called they wouldn't even talk to me or return my phone calls. Luckily my local gunsmith was either up for the challenge or too ignorant to know what he was getting into.

My local guy took the original barrel off. It was on so tight he had to make a relief cut to get it off. I shipped it off to Krieger to copy the contour and get general dimensions....then I waited.

I decided to go with a .308 bore with a 1-10 twist and 5R rifling. The barrel is so marked. I know everyone is freaking out about now but I handload everything. If you look at what's available in factory loaded ammo in .303 there is just nothing I think is worth shooting. So if I have to handload anyway, there are just so many more choices in .308 than .311-312. Also, I could get 5R rifling witch I find a lot easier to clean.

I had Manson make the custom reamer. They knew exactly what I needed and I had it way before the barrel showed up.

So it's now done. It's all rust blued and seems to match up really well. I haven't done any serious shooting yet but I'm sure it won't keyhole like it used to.

It's a MK IIIB the previous owner put on a Cooey sight but left on the front 3 prong sight. It's not a terrible sight picture but I'm thinking about swapping someone for a standard MK III hooded front sight. I think that make have a much better sight picture.

This whole project was nowhere near cheap so if someone else is thinking about it...beware. It's a straight forward job just with bigger numbers.
Information
Warning: This is a relatively older thread
This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.