Tikka spins in barrel vise

[43.6N]

Attempt #50...torqued barrel vise until I physically could not go tighter using a cheater bar on taped barrel. Action wrench snug but not tightened with a lot of torque and 4 lb dead low hammer. 1 whack and the whole thing shot out of the vise with a bang. Barrel and action still together. I marred the cerakote on the action. Next tomorrow will be fine grain sandpaper because I don't think the barrel has a resale value being a 243 with 1:10 twist

I like to use pine shims to take up the space of the barrel taper.

 

[HuntHarder]

I'm still hoping someone can put a torque figure on this...

Gotta be close to a metric shit ton inch lbs.

 

[5MilesBack]

I'm thinking I'm going to have to get me some grade 8 bolts to replace the stock ones on the Viper before I even try to tighten mine down. I have a tendency of snapping bolts in just normal tightening of stuff.

 

[MThuntr]

Gotta be close to a metric shit ton inch lbs.

I don't know if my torque wrench will measure that high but I do have a 1/2" electric impact that might send a few ugga duggas soon

 

[Choupique]

Why not just put the action in a vise and use a 4 foot pipe wrench on the barrel?

 

[43.6N]

Gotta be close to a metric shit ton inch lbs.

Inch pounds? Nah bro, yard-pounds

 

[MThuntr]

Why not just put the action in a vise and use a 4 foot pipe wrench on the barrel?

That is becoming a potential option

 

[Billy Goat]

I put my barrel vise in 20 ton hydraulic press.

I also overtightened my action wrench initially causing more issue. So don't do that.

Broke free pretty easy with dead blow. The galling that followed sucked.

 

[ColPenguin]

Put a little rosin on the barrel to give the drywall tape some more grip.

Brown sugar gets messy to cleanup after it is compressed.

 

[Choupique]

Do it. Ive pipe wrenched barrels and kept on using them before. A bit unsightly, but yall like that kinda stuff around here anyway.

If that doesnt work, a 6 foot cheater pipe on the end of a 4 foot (steel) pipe wrench will flip the whole world over with a fat dude jumping on the end of it. Ive seen a guy split a 3" heavy wall pipe 90 like that.

 

[mtnbound]

I have a Tikka in 243 that is going to become a 22 Creedmoor. Currently this barrel and action are cerakoted making them slick as heck. I'm having a hell of a time getting my Viper barrel vise to hold onto the barrel without it spinning. I took a utility knife around the barrel/action junction to make sure cerakote isn't holding. I've tried some heat, free-all, and percussive persuasion and nothing with break it free. At first I used a leather pad for grip then added some resin. I tried torquing the hell out of barrel vise with and without gripping material.

Any ideas? Way more heat?

Edit: a friend suggested cutting the top of the barrel vise down the middle to increase its ability to move to the contour.

Yes, cutting the vise is a good thing. I have not had any luck with drywall tape, but a thin piece of leather from a glove has worked for me. I tighten the crap out of the vise and let it sit for a few minutes, and see if I can get it any tighter.

I make sure the vise plates on the muzzle side are not touching. If the vise plates are touching, I slide everything closer to the action.

I have a 4lb deadblow hammer, and I grab it with both hands and think "Hulk smash" as I hit the action wrench. handle.
Correction 8lb deadblow hammer.

 

[UncleNommies]

If you're trashing the barrel, make a relief cut close to the action. It relieves all the torque pressure. I spun my barrel off by holding the action in my left hand and a pair of channel locks on the barrel. Whole ordeal took me 10 minutes with an angle grinder with a cut off wheel. Even did it all on a bow target

 

[Kauaihunter]

How is your vise mounted? Any flex or give will make removal tougher. I haven’t done a cerakoted rifle but if you’re removing the coating, the following should work. Yes it’s a lot of tools but it works.

For initial removal of the factory installed barrels, I use drywall tape inside a tapered barrel bushing specifically for the Tikka contour. Then crank down on the bushing with a Wheeler action wrench. That damages the outside of the bushing but I don’t care about the bushing. Next I install the barreled action with the Wheeler/bushing installed, into my Viper vise, again wrapped in drywall tape and torqued to 50 ft/lbs. The Wheeler handle is oriented so it contacts my workbench so the wrench cannot rotate. Drywall tape wrapped around the action and a second Wheeler is snugged up with the flat sides against the sides of the action. One or two at the most, good whacks on the Wheeler handle and the action spins right off by hand.

The Viper alone has been fine for installs and future swap outs with an internal action wrench and 80 ft/lbs of torque for shouldered prefits. I did this removal on Friday and this procedure has not left any marks on removals so far.

Edit: when you wrap the drywall tape, wrap it as tight as you can and with the loose end pointing opposite of the direction that the action will spin. If it does slip a little, the tape will tighten up rather than come loose.

 

[Castle Rock]

Attempt #50...torqued barrel vise until I physically could not go tighter using a cheater bar on taped barrel. Action wrench snug but not tightened with a lot of torque and 4 lb dead low hammer. 1 whack and the whole thing shot out of the vise with a bang. Barrel and action still together. I marred the cerakote on the action. Next tomorrow will be fine grain sandpaper because I don't think the barrel has a resale value being a 243 with 1:10 twist

You were led to water, but didn’t drink

 

[Castle Rock]

Brown sugar gets messy to cleanup after it is compressed.

Warm water on a rag if you struggle to do the simplest of things.

 

[diverc18]

I had the same issue with my first T3x and viper vise.Tried drywall tape, leather, brown sugar and could just not keep it from spinning. I ended up bending the top plate of the vise trying to keep the barrel from spinning. I said screw it and grabbed a 4 ft pipe wrench and a 5 foot brass nipple on the external wrench and it finally broke free. I recently swapped the vise top to the sporter barrel top and torqued it to 65ft lbs and was able to break my last tikka free easily with no marks on the barrel. The barrel did spin at 50ft lbs though .

 

[Miflatlander91]

Had to use a pipe wrench to get a 30-06 barrel off cleaned it up with some sand paper and it’s good to go. Mine was bare obviously no coating


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[MThuntr]

You were led to water, but didn’t drink

How so?

 

[HandgunHTR]

Attempt #50...torqued barrel vise until I physically could not go tighter using a cheater bar on taped barrel. Action wrench snug but not tightened with a lot of torque and 4 lb dead low hammer. 1 whack and the whole thing shot out of the vise with a bang. Barrel and action still together. I marred the cerakote on the action. Next tomorrow will be fine grain sandpaper because I don't think the barrel has a resale value being a 243 with 1:10 twist

Based on this, I have to ask, how are you tightening up your vise? If you used drywall tape and snugged the vise down you shouldn't get any marring of the barrel, even if it does turn. The fact that it marred and jumped out of the vice tells me that you are getting limited contact, probably only on the front edge of the vise.

So, wrap the barrel with drywall tape. No more than two layers. The tape will compress and every extra layer just adds to that.

Put the barrel into the vise so that the front of the vise is no more than 1/4" from the action. You have to have the shank of the barrel well supported in the vise. Tighten the front nuts down to just finger tight to hold the barreled action.

Then tighten the rear nuts down to finger tight. If you see the vise start to bind up, give it a little whack with your wrench or dead blow to loosen it up.

Once you have all the bolts finger tight, make sure you have contact on the barrel in both front and rear. If you don't, loosen the nuts opposite of where you don't have contact and tighten the other nuts in order to get contact, then retighten the nuts you loosened. The Viper vise will bind up at times. This is how you fix that.

If you do plan to do a lot of Tikkas, then I would recommend splitting the top of the vise. I did mine and it keeps it from binding and allows for better grip on the factory barrels.

Once you have contact front and back, tighten the nuts in a criss-cross pattern starting at the back. It doesn't matter which side. Just back-front-other back-other front, repeat until they don't turn anymore. It isn't a bad idea to whack the vise top every now and again to make sure it isn't binding side to side.

Finally, it seems like you already know this, but don't put the action wrench on too tight. It should be just forward of the ejection port and I have mine finger tight, plus 1/2 turn of the nuts.

 

[Shortschaf]

Cut the vise in half. The viper doesnt have enough flexibility to bite the tiny shank of a t3x

Then again it may not be enough for your cerekote problem. Never dealt with that