DIY Tikka Barrel Swap, By Dioni Amuchastegui

[Castle Rock]

I should have made the top block bigger
A sprinkle of sugar or layer of paper provides plenty of grip

 

[ThatDUDE]

I have had good luck with the Wheeler barrel vise and some powdered pine gum rosin to get the barrels off the first time. Once the barrel is off I use a Viper Barrel vise to reinstall and swap barrels.

 

[willfrye027]

I need to bite the bullet and buy the gear finally so I can stop shipping things back and forth to the smith..

The PMA gen 2 seems like a little better design than the viper vice, would you guys agree?

I'm having a hard time jumping all the way to the SAC bravo because it's magnitudes more expensive but might if it works that much better than the PMA gen 2. Am i looking at it right with the SAC bravo in that it looks like you need to purchase something additional to clamp onto the damn thing rather than just bolting it to the bench? Looks slick and all but I dont think most people have all the bullshit clamps and such on their benches. Edit: see now that you can bolt them directly to bench but it’s not entirely clear what’s needed to do so.

I guess another route is to just have a smith chamber the first replacement barrel on each tikka and just have a good enough setup to swap barrels moving forward..

I’ve had no issues with a cheaper mech force vise and wheeler action wrench. The vise is actually bolted down onto my reloading desk. Janky but works

 

[Castle Rock]

It is pretty simple to drill a couple of hardwood blocks and clamp them to a table or put them on a press
I made them fit the barrel better by molding them to the barrel with devcon

Found a better photo

 

[Dioni A]

Found a better photo View attachment 627389

I love it! It's very reasonable to think that a guy could do this without buying any tools at all if he was properly motivated and creative.

 

[wind gypsy]

View attachment 625744I should have made the top block bigger
A sprinkle of sugar or layer of paper provides plenty of grip

Like it! How do you do the cutouts in the blocks?

 

[Castle Rock]

Clamp the blocks together, drill them using a couple of different drills, and roughly taper the separate halves with a drum sander on a dremel then bed to the barrel using devcon
If I was to do it again I would use 3”X 3” blocks 12 inches long

 

[shortside]

View attachment 618836The easy way to remove a factory barrel

What is this tool in the action?

 

[Dioni A]

What is this tool in the action?

That's an inside action wrench. It uses the bolt lug raceway as the wrenching surface instead of an outside action wrench. This allows you to attach a torque wrench. I would be concerned about banging up the inside of the action using this method but it seems to work for him. Could definitely make the bolt run rough. Those wrenches are also known to break if you try to use them for barrel removal.

 

[NSI]

they are designed to break before they damage the action. use them for attachment, not removal. and never use with impact.

-J

 

[Lytro]

Awesome write up! I did my second Tikka build this summer and attempted to remove the barrel on my own with a Viper vise and Wheeler external wrench. I unfortunately seemed to have a more stubborn barrel and I was unable to crack it loose with my equipment. I do think starting off with a blued action made it a bit more difficult due to less grip on the barrel. Eventually I called the smith I used for my last one and he ended up needing to go HAM on it with the biggest pipe wrench he had.

In hindsight, I should've just started out with the smith again. He picked up the barreled action at my house, did the barrel removal, cerakoted the action and the stainless pieces on the carbon prefit, torqued the new barrel/checked headspace, and dropped it back off at my house a week later for only $100.

 

[Dioni A]

Awesome write up! I did my second Tikka build this summer and attempted to remove the barrel on my own with a Viper vise and Wheeler external wrench. I unfortunately seemed to have a more stubborn barrel and I was unable to crack it loose with my equipment. I do think starting off with a blued action made it a bit more difficult due to less grip on the barrel. Eventually I called the smith I used for my last one and he ended up needing to go HAM on it with the biggest pipe wrench he had.

In hindsight, I should've just started out with the smith again. He picked up the barreled action at my house, did the barrel removal, cerakoted the action and the stainless pieces on the carbon prefit, torqued the new barrel/checked headspace, and dropped it back off at my house a week later for only $100.

That man is not a gunsmith. He's running a charity! Holy crap, where can I get his phone number.

 

[Lytro]

That man is not a gunsmith. He's running a charity! Holy crap, where can I get his phone number.

He’s a super good dude. He retired after being a smith for Dakota Arms for over 30 years and is located in Spearfish, SD.

 

[Castle Rock]

they are designed to break before they damage the action. use them for attachment, not removal. and never use with impact.

-J

Nonsense

That's an inside action wrench. It uses the bolt lug raceway as the wrenching surface instead of an outside action wrench. This allows you to attach a torque wrench. I would be concerned about banging up the inside of the action using this method but it seems to work for him. Could definitely make the bolt run rough. Those wrenches are also known to break if you try to use them for barrel removal.

I can assure you that this action wrench will not break, I turned it out of a jackhammer point

 

[Dioni A]

Nonsense

I can assure you that this action wrench will not break, I turned it out of a jackhammer point

I don't know if it's a good representation for you to advertise a custom built one-off tool that nobody else is going to duplicate and make no mention of it being a non-commercially available product. You could very easily mislead somebody and there are many accounts of people breaking those trying to remove the barrel.

Not trying to beat you up on it just doesn't seem like a helpful story to tell.

Cool tool though.

 

[Castle Rock]

They are widely available commercially and NONE of them are designed to break

 

[Dioni A]

They are widely available commercially and NONE of them are designed to break

They may not be designed to but I've read more than a couple stories like this and it doesn't take long googling to find them. I'm sure your system works well and would probably be fine most of the time. There's definitely times where it won't be though and want to at least point that out to people reading this.

 

[NSI]

 

[NSI]

Guys do what you like. But don't recommend that others without your experience use an internal action wrench to break loose a factory Tikka barrel. That is not what they are for, and the consequences can be a broken action wrench if you're lucky, or messed up action internals (obvious or not) if you're less lucky.

-J

 

[Axlrod]

I have used the bug holes on a half dozen barrel removals. I clamp the barrel in a 10 ton press, put an 18" adjustable wrench with a 3' cheater on the action wrench. No way you are breaking that action wrench with a couple hundred foot pounds.