My CZ 527 got a new DIY barrel

JTPinTX

Custom Call Maker
I bought this CZ 527 in 2008 with the express intention of shooting the barrel out of it over the next 10 years. It was a 12 twist .223 to take advantage of cheap ammo and components. It was the gun I taught my young daughter to shoot centerfire with. She killed her first deer and first coyote with it, she put a lot of rounds through it and had a lot of kills learning to shoot and learning to hunt. I used it for practice as well. Often it was shot hot, sometimes very hot. I knew it was killing the barrel but that was its purpose in life back then.

3-4 years ago the round count was getting up around 4K and though it still shot OK, accuracy was for sure going downhill. I contacted James Calhoon and he had a brand new 9 twist factory takeoff barrel. I got it for $125 and put it on the shelf for whenever I had a chance to swap it out. Life got busy, I got distracted, my daughter started shooting my 6.5 Grendel AR, so it sat.

A couple weeks ago I decided I needed to get it out and get the barrel swap done. I had a lot of components on the shelf I could use in it and with the shortages going on I felt it was a good time to take advantage of that. We got a nice big lathe at work a year or two ago and I have been teaching myself to thread, been making my own jigs and fixtures, studying up on rifle work and practicing, all that good stuff. I spend quite a bit of time watching videos and then going out to the lathe and doing what I just watched.

The old barrel was on very tight and I had to be careful not to tweak the action getting the old barrel off. Right before I thought I was going to have to give up it broke free. I set the new barrel up in the lathe, indicated it in, and just barely, barely touched the rear face to true it up and take off a couple of burrs from the original factory install. I screwed it on the action and headspace was right where I wanted it. Probably a couple thou tighter than factory but still good to go.

I pulled the barrel back off the action and set it up in the lathe to thread the muzzle for the ASR brake for my suppressor. Indicated in the bore to about .0005 with my long stem dial indicator, cut 1/4" off the barrel to get a clean new crown, and threaded it 1/2x28. I took it slow and cut the threads to a nice snug fit all the way down.

I took it home and cleaned it real good and then coated the bore with Dyna Bore Coat. I let that set for 24 hours. The next day I shot 10 rounds of factory stuff hot and fast to set the DBC and got a solid zero at 50 while I was doing it. On the last round I intentionally shot the tack out of my target. I knew at that point it was going to be a shooter.

Now to the good part. That new factory takeoff is probably one of the best shooting factory barrels I have ever personally seen. I had a bunch of old various reloads on the shelf from the old barrel. It will shoot anything I put down it under 1/2 MOA for 3 shots, and most of it under 3/8". It did shoot one group with factory loads over 1/2 MOA, but it has not shot a single group of reloads over 1/2" at 100 yards.

2 groups with a 50 VMAX load, .279" and .326", a group with 50 Blitzkings, .382", a group with 52 AMAX, .218", a group with 55 Barnes TTSX, .498". This barrel is amazing. Cold windy shooting conditions and it keeps throwing bullets into little groups. And not only that, POI for the different loads is very close. To me that is also usually a sign that a barrel is going to be very consistent.

I think I have used up a years worth of the Rifle Gods luck on this one.

A couple of pictures of groups:

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Haha, I didn't think about rifle pics, but it looks just like any CZ with a factory barrel. Except probably more beat up. That rifle has gone a lot of miles in the truck, in a kids hands, and getting dragged over, around and through fences and brush calling coyotes. It ain't fancy, it is a workhorse. Right now it has one of the old original Vortex Viper 4-12x40 scopes on it. I may get a picture of it tonight though.
 
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Here is a picture taken this morning. We had freezing fog overnight here.

The other day I found the head and spine of a 225 lb boar I shot about 6-8 weeks ago. That is what is laying in the bed of the truck.

So, I guess it really doesn't look like any other CZ, lol. My daughter was 6 when she started shooting this rifle and the stock was way too long for her. I ordered and adjustable butt for it, chopped the stock down, and spent an enormous amount of time of time fitting the stock and trying to lighten it up. It was hard because as you cut it, the stock got real skinny real quick. You can't really see it in this picture because of the stock pack I have on it right now, but that stock will adjust down to about 12 1/4" LOP. I will get good picture of that here in a little while.

To help make it balance out with a suppressor and make it easier for her to handle I had cut the original barrel to 18". When I did that the forend looked too long. So while I was refinishing the stock after putting on the adjustable butt, I cut a little off the forend and gave it a slash cut tip instead of a round one.

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Muzzle threads. Probably would not be enough shoulder for a direct thread can, but I cut the threads tight and used Rockset on the ASR brake.

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Threads look good. And IMO that's enough shoulder for direct threads all day long. I have one with less than that and it seats up fine. Tight threads are a big help.
 
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Our lathe is a Rockland 19x96 gap bed, it will swing 19" over the bed, 26" if you take the gap out. Big machine. Pass though bore on the headstock is 3". I made this spider to go in the outboard side of the headstock to help indicate in barrels.

Bad thing is that the headstock is so long I had to make an extension to screw on the barrel so that it would reach the spider. Good thing is this lathe will cut both standard and metric threads. CZ uses a 25x1.25 metric thread on their barrels. So I made a bar out of 1 1/4" pipe, trued it up on the OD, welded a plug of steel in the end, drilled and bored it to 23.65mm, and cut internal 25x1.25 threads in it. Screwed that on the end of the barrel to reach the spider. That stabilized the back end of the barrel.

We have a 4 jaw for this lathe but normally run the 3 jaw here at work. Changing it sucks because it is so heavy. So instead of changing it I got out the action trueing jig I built, chucked it in the 3 jaw, and used the two end sets of brass tipped screws to indicate in the bore. Basically I could run the indicator up and down inside the bore and tweak the action trueing jig screws to get it running true. That method would probably make most real gunsmiths cringe, but it worked. I have heard it said before that true is true, and it doesn't matter how you get there. So there is that.

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The things we do for our kids, lol. The adjustable buttstock I put on made this rifle ugly as sin. But it let my daughter have a rifle that fit her good during the years she was learning to shoot. Because of that she liked to shoot, and wanted to go, and shot a lot, and therefore learned to shoot well. It was the price that had to be paid I suppose.

Now that she is 13 and can shoot a full size rifle it may be time to temporarily retire this old stock and get a pretty replacement for it. I will keep this adjustable one though. In 4-5 years I imagine my grandson is going to be needing it back on there.

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That looks like some fine work to me. I wish I had machinery like that and the know-how to use it. Someday, always been a goal of mine. Good work.
 
Thanks guys. I have some loads ready to go and my rail for it got here yesterday. Now I can mount my XQ50 Thermion up on it and start using it for some of my night calling.
 
Good work and great story!

I am surprised that you can get that much accuracy out of that large of a lathe. I always think of the big heavy lathes as work horses that have been worked hard and “put away wet”!

As far as 527’s go, I love them!

My two are a 12 twist American in 223 and an American in .204 Ruger

My drag around rifle in .223 is the Ruger American Compact. I am a farmer and that Compact is my truck and tractor rifle.

Three 44s
 
When we bought that lathe it did need some work. It definitely had been used a lot, and used hard. But we got it so cheap (and with a lot of tooling), it was worth it. Lots of people don't have room for a machine that size so sometimes you can get a deal. We stripped it down and cleaned everything up good, replaced a few worn out parts here and there, and it runs great now. It has a few little things a guy needs to know about to get the accuracy out of it but no biggie.

Originally Posted By: Three 44sGood work and great story!

I am surprised that you can get that much accuracy out of that large of a lathe. I always think of the big heavy lathes as work horses that have been worked hard and “put away wet”!

As far as 527’s go, I love them!

My two are a 12 twist American in 223 and an American in .204 Ruger

My drag around rifle in .223 is the Ruger American Compact. I am a farmer and that Compact is my truck and tractor rifle.

Three 44s
 
Here is another group from some of those "leftover" loads from the old barrel. I was verifying my 200 yard zero yesterday. Had just a touch of wind from 9 o'clock drifting it to the right. But .538" at 200 is an absolute screamer group for me. That is dang close to 1/4 MOA.

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