A million dollar barrel, the story of the ACE Chamber System

When it's a labor of love, passion and commitment, anything is possible!
The pursuit of accuracy and it going into production  

How far would you go if you think you could improve the quality of something, even if only by a little?   How much time and effort would you put into a project when people are telling you "it cannot be done"?  How much would you risk to leave an industry in a better place than you have found it for others to enjoy?  Would you invest 7 years of your own income?  Would you risk a million dollars of your very own, when that is all you have?  This is the story of the ACE Chamber System.

I want to share with you my story.   The adventure that started seven years prior to the day of the above picture.  A story about the pursuit of perfection, of wanting better accuracy and the search for the final missing piece to making an extraordinarily accurate rifle with repeatable and sustainable results.  The ACE was designed to yield not just good accuracy or as good as everyone else, but better than has ever been done before.  This is my story and adventure with the dream of wanting to make a difference.

As with any young entrepreneur, (using the word loosely),  I dreamed of having a shop with 6 or 7passionate people wanting to build and create world class rifles similar to artisans creating masterpieces.  Something that would make the customer smile just by opening the rifle case and laying their eyes on it.  Something that gave people confidence in their equipment and in return, giving them confidence in themselves and their shooting abilities.   A rifle that would be a generational gift, an heirloom passed down to the next generation along with all the great stories of fantastic deeds accomplished with it.

Many years in and mastering the curvature of the bore, I have done all the above except for one crucial part.  It was still just me.  The talent of using and dialing in barrels using spiders (will save that for another story) is a rare talent.  Most gunsmiths do not know what they are and of those that do, 95% of them will say "no thank you".  It is a long drawn out and tedious process of dialing in the area where the perfect throat will soon be in a new barrel.   Hidden from the eyes, with only tools and an extraordinary touch to guide you as you slowly turn the curve straight so the bullet will hit the lands and grooves squarely when fired.  Done without spiders, most factory rifles are out by .010 of an inch and most custom rifles .003-.005.   Sounds pretty good until you read some old benchrest books that say for every .001 your throat is out of concentricity it will open your groups up at 100 yards by .1 inches.   Is is a coincidence that most factory rifles only guarantee a 1 inch group and most "custom builders" only guarantee .5"?  Is there a correlation between them?  Maybe, maybe not. But, it sure makes you think.

Some early examples of custom rifles built with spiders!

An entrepreneur of one!  The wall, or at least that is what I called it...a growing business with no one to hire.  Or at least someone that was willing to learn to chamber with spiders.  Everyone loves the art but I am amazed on how few have the discipline to become an artist of sorts.  There are a lot of gunsmiths out there that love to build rifles, but few want to go beyond the bare minimum of accepted practices.  I ran into this firsthand as a young business owner and a hopeful future leader.   I could lead them to water, but I could not get them to drink the from it.  No matter how hard I tried or the explanations of wanting this critical part (the throat) to be perfect, it fell on deaf ears and eventually a defining silence in shop with just me working all alone.  "Sorry, I just want to build hunting rifles" was a common theme to hear as the tools and resignations were laid on my bench.  

The cruel reality was setting in that I was going to be limited by my own two hands for the rest of my career if I wanted to continue building rifles this way.  "Maybe best practices are just as good"  I would say in my head.  But, with each range trip getting ready to deliver another  rifle built using spiders said otherwise.  "You have found the way to exceptional accuracy" I would say, but the question always lingered.  How could I possibly do it at scale?  So, as months ticked by with sleepless nights wondering and tiresome hands filling each order one by one my dream appeared to be slipping away. 

A Thanksgiving to remember.   I can remember it, as if it was yesterday.  Machining away on another barrel using spiders to make another custom rifle.  My heart was sickened and saddened as the reality set in that I was and will always be the sum of my company.   When I get old or tired or injured, my business and legacy will stop.  Like a broken record, this played over and over in my head.  Then it happened, like something in my brain said to me "you are looking at the answer" but still couldn't see it.  "Look again," the voice said.  Have you ever had that feeling that something was right in front of you eyes, you know it's there, but you just can't see it?  That thought kept me staring for several minutes.   The lathe is now off, the room is quite and I stand there blank faced and staring like a zombie while my mind is straining to see something.  Anything.  And then...there it was.

I couldn't believe it.  Right in front of my eyes a measly  12 inches in front of my nose and it had  been there the whole time.  The answer to that nagging question was right there in front of me.  How do you make the perfect throat every time without spiders and do it at scale?  The full length sizing die setting a shelf right in front of my eyes was the answer.   If you want to make a perfectly straight throat, stop chambering the barrel to make it.  Get the chamber out of the way and simply cut the throat in the first inch of the barrel.  Then, in my mind it got even better as I put two and two together because the absolute straightest portion of the the barrel is that first precious inch.  With my brain now going even faster the realization set in, simply attach the chamber when finished. Voila! And, there the ACE was born!

If we can make a full length sizing die that forms our brass back to perfect dimensions for reloading, why can't we make the chamber?  After all, they are almost identical and the process on how to make it is already known.  Just a few modifications and we could attach what would appear to be a full length sizing die right to the barrel.  If it can form brass back to perfect size, why couldn't it be made to support the loaded round too?  With pencil, paper, coffee and an excitement like I have never known before swept over me.  Like figuring out the Da Vinci code, line by line, it was being laid out in front of me.  Was this the answer I had been looking for?  I wondered if it could be that simple?  If it was, why hasn't it been done before?   Surely I cannot be the first person to think of this.   Five days later I was on a plane to travel 2300 miles from my home to share this idea for the first time with people I knew, respected and trusted.  What were they going to think?  Were they going to laugh me out of the building?  Should I even be on my way to share this crazy idea at all?  Will they think I am an idiot?  All of these things and more were going through my mind on that airplane.  But my heart was telling me to go forward with a little flicker of hope that this just might be the answer. It kept me awake for the entire flight and the entire night before the next day's meeting.

More to come in part II.  The making of and inventing the prototype...the ACE!

More to come in part II.  The first prototypes.