Hopefully what I'm about to explain may be of value to a few other builders. A couple of weeks ago I was at the point where I was ready to solder these barrels into the mono-block. Before I did, I decided to put all of the components, including scope and rings, on an accurate scale, to determine aproximately what the finished rifle was going to weigh. I was astounded to find that it was going to be just a couple of ounces shy of 11 pounds, a fine weight for a .45 calibre dangerous game rifle, but far too heavy for a 9.3 x 74R. There are a number of areas where I'm going to shave some weight, but the most obvious was the barrels. When I set them up in my lathe, between centres, there was far too much chatter to get a good finish.

I took the barrels to a local precision grinding company and asked them to remove .025" from the radius for a total reduction in diameter of .050". They set the barrels between centres and ground .001" per pass under a heavy flow of coolant along the entire straight taper of the barrels. They were even able to blend the rear end of the grind very nicely into the radius at the front end of the breech reinforce. The total charge for this service was $80.00, which I think is extremely reasonable.

The best news is that this grind resulted in a weight reduction of 10 1/4 ounces for the two barrels. That's a big reduction in just one component. Something to bear in mind if you have a similar problem. And by the way, the resultant finish is like a mirror, and the finished diameter of the two muzzles doesn't differ by .0001"!