Yesterday whilst shooting Art' 499g bullet with the X7, it became obvious the QLA had to go. For years i paid rent, and bought beans working as a carpenter. Them old carpenter used to say, 'Never walk when you can ride', 'Never stand when you can sit', 'Don't use a hand tool, if a power tool can do the job'. The last allowed us to keep our job, because we made more money for the company. The following photo show the tools used this morning to rid the X7 of most of it's QLA.















The idea to use the last tool pictured came from semisane. He used the tool to remove his X7' QLA, and i could see the value of what it did, so i stole his idea. The hardest thing for me to get done was to measure the actual depth of the QLA. I wanted to know the exact depth, because i wanted to retain a short length of QLA to kinda protect the rifling. Once i kinda figured out the depth i proceeded.

A cut line was marked by the tool shown to me by semisane, and the barrel was quickly cut off. The cut wasn't square because i wanted to be sure to cut the barrel long and veered. The barrel was kinda squared up with the grinder. The barrel was more and more squared up with the grinder. The burr was removed from the outside with a file. The burr was removed from the inside with a countersink turned by the drill motor. The file was used to kinda smooth the end of the barrel.

Then i headed out to shoot the rifle. It seemed to shoot good, but i came home because it was raining.

When i returned home, i cut the ramrod, and drilled, and tapped it. The end of the barrel was kinda smoothed some with the file and the sanding block; more work is required. The photo show the results. NOTE there is about 1/16" of QLA remaining. This should protect the rifling, and made crowning the barrel less critical--at least i think so.