Isn't the point to learn a new skill and add capabilities to your shop?

I agree, but rifling a barrel is at the extreme upper limits of a good
professional machinist and requires quite a bit of specific tooling and
preparation for production of a single barrel. Also, you wouldn't be
making one barrel because its a steep learning curve and you could
easily do a dozen or more before producing one worth testing.

I bought several books on rifling from Lindsay just before they folded
and what I got was either suited to a muzzle loader barrel of large
caliber or old pre- WWI tech suited to mass production.


The key here is button rifling. You're just pushing a die down the
barrel. A qualty press set up and a $200 button, you're ready to go.

A quality gundrill setup is also not horribly difficult. Two keys
here, you need to feed down to 0.0002 "/rev and you need high pressure
coolant.

Karl