[wyt_tail]

Actually, I always heard that Eben used Virgin Valley barrels until they closed shop. He now claims that he makes his own. I do know he stamps his barrels as his too. I don't think he would be able to do that if he did use someone elses barrel blanks as there could be liability issue. I also use SSK and those barrels are Shilen. I think the SSK barrel is my best shooting barrel but Ebens' are a close second.

But as I said above, if you paid $485.00 for a barrel, I don't think you would want a second. The .243AI, although is a cat, still has Non-SAMMI specs as you can buy dies from Hornady, RCBS, Redding, etc and still have the same headspace and same die dimensions. Using a set of normal .243AI dies and bumping back the shoulder too far will give the cases improper headspace. This will happen if the reamer is pushed farther into the old chamber to clean it up. I would say it has to be pushed up at least .045" farther to clean it up.

Don't want to get to the point where I am dogging Fred but if he cared about his customers, he would just make a new barrel. The only other thing that can be done with this barrel is to make it into another cat that has a bigger chamber like a 6mm Ackley. Then you still have the barrel being stamped .243 Improved though. That would be a suggestion for my friend but he already bought the .243AI dies.

As mentioned, I just wanted to see if there were other people out there who run into this with Bullberry and although they lost me as a potential customer, not trying to tell anyone whom or where to buy their custom barrels. I just feel bad for my friend because he wanted to build a .243AI as I just did and we were planning on working on loads together and now it will be a different ball game that wasn't his fault.