Dzaw,
If you can get it off the ground, the small shop will add machines and workers to supply the needs. If you build it there is allways someone to buy it. If i would of said to my customers 10 years ago, you can get a Carbon Wrapped barrel and it will cost you 1000.00 they would all laughed at me, now everyone who contacts me about a custom rifle, the first words outa thier mouth is, "what about a ABS carbon barrel"? nothing about the action or stock its about the barrels. Not everyone can afford a carbon bbl, like what D-A is talking about, you can get several for the one carbon. I don't take a lot of orders as i'm not interested in full time gun work anymore, but most of my customer base is looking for the "Unique" rifle, odd ball wildcats, high dollar barrels and actions. Any new discovery is allways met with skeptisium. I read the artical about the new Boron coating for bullets, by David Tubb. I talked with some the guys about it, i got the same response from all of them, "oh somthing new to spend our money on and it will all be hype" One never knows until you try it. Well i'm going to give it a try, if it works then great! If not ok too.
I think ABS has been testing different bore coatings, nitrides ect, In conjuntion with thier bbls.
Barrels are concidered "consumables" Actions are not, therefore high priced barrels will only cater to the well to do shoppers or a guy who is spending his savings for a one of a kind rifle.
There also seems to be several different crowds in the shooting comunity. The shooter that uses std rounds with normal or factory type loads. Then there are the shooters that press the envelope a bit more by using a more benchrest mentality, slower cals, longer barrel life rounds, they still want the ultimate in accuracy. Then we move into the guys who want to vaporize varmints with the fast small cal guns, (i fit there)P-Dogs with my Swift and 45gr bullets. PooF they be gone! Then we go into the big game hunters that want to have a large case to push a heavy bullet as fast as possible, (the overbore crowd)what ever that is supose to mean? They are all guns arn't they? So what if the barrel on my hot rod 338 only lasts 1500 rounds, it is made for a special purpose, to spit big bullets like they is little ones. To each their own, this is what makes it all interesting...differnt groups of shooters with different opinons.
~Gun Nerd