Recessed Crown & Brake??

[hnts4fun]

I've hunted for half a century and owned and shot more guns than I can count, BUT I've never shot with a muzzle brake or owned rifles with recessed crowns. I now own two such guns and I'd like to put brakes on both of them.

My first inclination was to locate a brake, buy it, and have a local machinist install it for me. Now I'm seriously considering sending the barrel or barrel to action to one of the LRH smiths and have him do the whole thing.

I'm looking at expansion chamber brakes and am trying to figure out how to get to a close enough fit between the rear of the brake and the muzzle opening. I know how important the crown is to accuracy potential. Some of the posts I've read advocate cutting a little off the barrel and doing away with the original recessed crown; recrowning, and fitting the brake closely to the muzzle opening.

I can't do any of this job myself so either way I will have to involve a gunsmith in the project. As I mentioned earlier, I thought I'd pick a brake I liked and simply have a gunsmith thread the barrel, because I thought it might be cheaper,... it seems there's much more to it. One of the rifles is a Sendero 7 mag and the other is a AR platform 308. Both sport heavy barrels and neither are fluted.

I'd sure appreciate any advice you folks could pass along; especially any gunsmiths, with a few minutes to spare, who have installed brakes on guns that came with a recessed crown.

Thank you!
Matt

 

[J E Custom]

I would recommend going with a local smith and having him do the install.

I would also recommend re-crowning after the threads are cut and the brake is fitted and timed.

This way the crown is flush with the back chamber.

A straight 90o cut or a 11o crown will work and it is a good time to re-crown for a potential
accuracy improvement.

I like the 11o crown but the 90o is fine because the muzzle is protected with the brake installed.

J E CUSTOM

 

[hnts4fun]

Thank you.

So you are saying to let a local smith cut the recessed muzzle/crown off and "start over" with a squared, flush muzzle.

Matt

 

[Kevin Cram]

Depending on the experience and quality of a local smith you may get a botched muzzle brake job. I've seen and fixed several like this. I have a local smith that keeps me in business by fixing his screw ups. There are several of us qualified smiths that sponsor LRH and would be glad to install a muzzle brake for you. I normally re-cut the crown when I install a muzzle brake because I'm already dialed in to do so. I'm not taking much just .020" - .030" for a good clean crown. I primarily do a 90 degree crown with muzzle brakes. If you have any questions I'd be glad to work with you on this, just shoot me an e-mail or give me a call. My website is in my signature. Feel free to check out my rifle smithing references here on LRH.

 

[Moman]

Feel free to check out my rifle smithing references here on LRH.

You wont go wrong sending your gun to Kevin for the work. I sent mine all the way across this county for a complete rebarrel/action trueing, brake installation, and his work is first class. It's a little more in shipping costs, but worth every penny of it. Every thing about the rifle is precise, and it's crazy accurate. Look into the accurizing packages too.

 

[hnts4fun]

Moman, Kevin, thanks for taking the time to respond.

Kevin, your reputation on LRH speaks loud and clear. Like many others I was trying to "general contract" this part of the project in order to:

1) Gain a little knowledge.

2) Save shipping bother.

3) Save a few bucks by staying local.

I'm also smart enough to not want to pay for a job twice. Kevin, I'll drop you an email in the next day or so. Thank you again for your time.

Matt

 

[gunner69]

Don't wreck your crown cleaning your barrel! The Crown Cradle is a bore guide for the muzzle crown end of your barrel - the last thing the bullet touches on the way down range!

Get it here!

Products / Crown Cradle

 

[Punisher]

Most of the gunsmith sponsors here are who you need to talk to. When I was younger, I had a smith install a brake on my rifle. In 15 years, I never took the brake off for cleaning, one day I took off the brake to put the brake on another rifle that I liked more and the crown job was aweful, the muzzle looks like it was cut with a hacksaw and was not straight cut at all. The threads were definately cut on a lathe, but the muzzle was not cleaned up. It turned out to shoot just fine. But very poor craftsmanship.

 

[FEENIX]

Considering the thread is 2011, I hope that the OP has since moved on and if Kevin did the work, I'm pretty certain it was done right.

I'm lucky that all the muzzle brakes I have to date gives me the ability to readily inspect the crown.

Not the best picture but below is a JP Enterprise Beenie Cooley MB ...