i have a win. model 70 in 300 wm. was thinking of changing out the barrel for something different or not.maybe a 264 wm or 257 wby. so many manufactures of barrels, what the best bang for the buck. looking for 26 to 30" 1.25 tube. i want something heavy that sits like a rock. whats evrybodies opinion on lija, douglas, hart, kriger,pac nor etc. basically who's the shit and who's just thick soup.
barrel info
- Thread starter str8meat
- Start date
I like cut rifled barrels as they seem to be more consistently accurate from barrel to barrel compared to button rifled barrels. I've used considerably more button rifled barrels and I've had some incredibly accurate ones but I've also had some that wouldn't shoot 2" groups at 100yds either. The exception to that is Schneider barrels. I've never had a bad Schneider and I've used 10+ Schneider barrels. I've had bad Pac Nor's, Lilja's, Hart's, and Shilen's though. I haven't had a bad cut rifled barrel yet. Just my .02.
The is a good article I read the other day. It unbiased from a company that makes barrels both ways.
WHICH METHOD MAKES THE BEST RIFLE BARRELS?
Here that at Border Barrels we used to exclusively cut rifled until the demand for our barrels outstripped capacity. The principle problem was (and is) the availability of cut rifling machines - you don't exactly trip over them at machinery auctions. Also, a high level of skill is required to maintain the tooling. Like all old technologies, cut rifling is slow and requires a high level of skill to make and maintain the tooling. This makes it expensive. The other side of the coin is that the tooling is readily made with simple machine tools and is very flexible - by which I mean that a large range of twists and bore dimensions and numbers of grooves are readily achieved using the same cutter and rifling head. This makes cut rifling an efficient way to go if you are making custom barrels in one's and two's to a customers specific requirements and you can charge a hefty sum for your efforts. But cut rifling machines are expensive to buy and expensive to operate. Some people have made their own rifling machines using CNC technology to overcome the difficulties in rifling machine design. Bartlein barrels in the United States use a home-built CNC machine. And in the UK, Holland & Holland have a CNC rifling machine.
Having started out as a custom barrel maker making custom barrels in one's and two's, we found that more and more of our work was in longer and longer runs of barrels of the same type and when it takes an hour or more to rifle a barrel, it sure leads to long days.
So we invested in plant for button rifling. The button rifling machine is relatively simple and cheap to build, (compared to a cut rifling machine), and the buttons are also available and very cheap - in terms of tooling cost per barrel. Also, no real skill is required to pull a button down a barrel. Boots was right! What all this is leading up to is that we have experience in making barrels using the two methods most commonly used in making top quality target rifle barrels and we can be pretty objective about the pro's and con's of cut rifling and button rifling. Hammer forged barrels do not have a very visible presence in the accurate gun world, so I will confine this discussion as to the relative merits of cut versus button rifled barrels.
If it is so easy to rifle barrels using a button, why do some barrel makers persist in the difficult, time consuming art of cut rifling? As outlined above it is critical in an accurate barrel that bore and groove dimensions be uniform end to end. When buttoning a barrel then it is critical that the steel be very homogeneous and of uniform hardness along the bar. If not then the button will engrave deeper into the soft parts than the hard parts so giving varying dimensions down the barrel. The button rifled barrel maker is very much in the hands of his steel mill to supply him with uniform, homogeneous steel.
The depth of engraving of the button depends also on the thickness of the bar at the point where the button is. If the bar is thin then the metal can then just expand elastically allowing the button the pass without doing much engraving. If the bar is thick there is more resistance to the button and so it will engrave deeper. To hope to get uniform bore dimensions it is critical to pull the button through a blank which has the form of a parallel cylinder. A button rifled barrel must be rifled and then stress relieved before it is profiled. There is always the problem that any residual stresses are going to make the barrel move when profiling, so leaving you with a barrel that is bent or bell-mouthed.
The tendency of the bore dimensions of non-stress relieved buttoned barrels to expand on profiling the outside had been used by some manufactures to advantage. Barrels having bore dimensions that vary over the length can be made to shoot well if the muzzle end is the tightest part of the barrel. The bullet will then make a clean exit without gas leaking around the sides to destabilise it. When mass producing barrels it is then possible to allow a fair degree of variation in the bore and groove dimensions down the barrel, provided some choking at the muzzle is included in the manufacturing process. If the buttoned barrel blank is profiled so that the last inch or so at the muzzle end is left at a larger diameter than the rest of the barrel, the expansion of the bore dimensions will be least at the muzzle so leaving a slight choke. That is why the barrels on almost all .22 target rifles look the way they do.
Cut rifling a barrel puts no stress in the steel and so it is possible to profile the barrel after the drilling stage. Any moving around the barrel is going to do will be done and the barrel can be reamed and rifled after profiling. The problem of stress induced changes in bore dimensions during manufacture can be eliminated.
When making fluted barrels, the fear is always there that putting, say, six flutes on the outside of the barrel will leave the bore shaped like a hexagon instead of round. (Like it should be!) With cut rifling, the barrel can be completely profiled and fluted after the drilling stage and then reamed and rifled. All the niggling doubts as to whether fluting the barrel will ruin it can be dispelled if it is done this way - but this manufacturing route in not available to you when you button rifle a barrel.
The exact twist of a buttoned barrel is also unpredictable. The button tends to slip in the barrel so what set out to be a 12 inch twist may end up as a 12.5 inch twist. This is not a problem if the twist is uniform, but if it varies down the barrel - particularly if it slows - then like as not, it will not shoot.
Another problem, is that the button may not engrave as deep on one side as on the other so leaving a groove circle that is not concentric with the bore. The result is bullets leaving the barrel which are not balanced and so unstable. This becomes less of a problem if you have lots of shallow grooves instead of a few deep ones.
Selection is the key to success with buttoned barrels and barrel makers like Hart, Douglas and Shillen grade their barrels by using an air gauge to judge the uniformity of bore and groove dimensions in each barrel. Ultra Premium Select barrels carry a premium price tag and are used by the bench rest fraternity. The lower grades get turned into regular target barrels and sporter barrels.
None of these problems arise in traditional single point cut rifling a barrel. Groove circle and bore are always very concentric. Because very little work is being done on each passing cut the twist rate is very consistent and very uniform. As a general rule, I find that button rifled barrels are not as uniform in bore dimensions straight off the machine as a cut rifled barrel. Button rifled barrels usually need a deal more lapping than a cut rifled barrel due to this problem.
Exact dimensions are easier to achieve by cut rifling and are not dependent on the hardness or thickness or type of steel as they are in buttoning. No stress is put into the barrel by cut rifling so no stress relieving is needed.
Many people think that the superior finish in a button rifled barrel must mean it will shoot better. In the first place, the surface finish that counts is the longitudinal surface finish, down the length of the grooves. The tool marks in cut rifled barrels go in just this direction, so causing mini-lands which are quite uniform down the length of the barrel. The transverse "roughness" caused by the lands are never viewed as an impediment to accuracy, so the mini-lands left by the tool marks in cut rifled barrels will also not affect accuracy. In the second place, the final finish in the barrel is determined by the lapping. If the cut rifling barrel maker has paid attention and kept his cutter sharp to minimise tool marks, then after lapping only a very experienced eye will be able to tell the difference between the cut rifled and the button rifled barrel.
I believe that you are more likely to get a top of the line tack driver by cut rifling a barrel than by any other method. Bench rest shooters in the States have rediscovered the cut rifled barrel and cut rifled barrel makers, who have been quietly persisting over the years with this demanding technique, find shooters at the very highest levels of accuracy banging on the doors of their barrel shops.
The is a good article I read the other day. It unbiased from a company that makes barrels both ways.
WHICH METHOD MAKES THE BEST RIFLE BARRELS?
Here that at Border Barrels we used to exclusively cut rifled until the demand for our barrels outstripped capacity. The principle problem was (and is) the availability of cut rifling machines - you don't exactly trip over them at machinery auctions. Also, a high level of skill is required to maintain the tooling. Like all old technologies, cut rifling is slow and requires a high level of skill to make and maintain the tooling. This makes it expensive. The other side of the coin is that the tooling is readily made with simple machine tools and is very flexible - by which I mean that a large range of twists and bore dimensions and numbers of grooves are readily achieved using the same cutter and rifling head. This makes cut rifling an efficient way to go if you are making custom barrels in one's and two's to a customers specific requirements and you can charge a hefty sum for your efforts. But cut rifling machines are expensive to buy and expensive to operate. Some people have made their own rifling machines using CNC technology to overcome the difficulties in rifling machine design. Bartlein barrels in the United States use a home-built CNC machine. And in the UK, Holland & Holland have a CNC rifling machine.
Having started out as a custom barrel maker making custom barrels in one's and two's, we found that more and more of our work was in longer and longer runs of barrels of the same type and when it takes an hour or more to rifle a barrel, it sure leads to long days.
So we invested in plant for button rifling. The button rifling machine is relatively simple and cheap to build, (compared to a cut rifling machine), and the buttons are also available and very cheap - in terms of tooling cost per barrel. Also, no real skill is required to pull a button down a barrel. Boots was right! What all this is leading up to is that we have experience in making barrels using the two methods most commonly used in making top quality target rifle barrels and we can be pretty objective about the pro's and con's of cut rifling and button rifling. Hammer forged barrels do not have a very visible presence in the accurate gun world, so I will confine this discussion as to the relative merits of cut versus button rifled barrels.
If it is so easy to rifle barrels using a button, why do some barrel makers persist in the difficult, time consuming art of cut rifling? As outlined above it is critical in an accurate barrel that bore and groove dimensions be uniform end to end. When buttoning a barrel then it is critical that the steel be very homogeneous and of uniform hardness along the bar. If not then the button will engrave deeper into the soft parts than the hard parts so giving varying dimensions down the barrel. The button rifled barrel maker is very much in the hands of his steel mill to supply him with uniform, homogeneous steel.
The depth of engraving of the button depends also on the thickness of the bar at the point where the button is. If the bar is thin then the metal can then just expand elastically allowing the button the pass without doing much engraving. If the bar is thick there is more resistance to the button and so it will engrave deeper. To hope to get uniform bore dimensions it is critical to pull the button through a blank which has the form of a parallel cylinder. A button rifled barrel must be rifled and then stress relieved before it is profiled. There is always the problem that any residual stresses are going to make the barrel move when profiling, so leaving you with a barrel that is bent or bell-mouthed.
The tendency of the bore dimensions of non-stress relieved buttoned barrels to expand on profiling the outside had been used by some manufactures to advantage. Barrels having bore dimensions that vary over the length can be made to shoot well if the muzzle end is the tightest part of the barrel. The bullet will then make a clean exit without gas leaking around the sides to destabilise it. When mass producing barrels it is then possible to allow a fair degree of variation in the bore and groove dimensions down the barrel, provided some choking at the muzzle is included in the manufacturing process. If the buttoned barrel blank is profiled so that the last inch or so at the muzzle end is left at a larger diameter than the rest of the barrel, the expansion of the bore dimensions will be least at the muzzle so leaving a slight choke. That is why the barrels on almost all .22 target rifles look the way they do.
Cut rifling a barrel puts no stress in the steel and so it is possible to profile the barrel after the drilling stage. Any moving around the barrel is going to do will be done and the barrel can be reamed and rifled after profiling. The problem of stress induced changes in bore dimensions during manufacture can be eliminated.
When making fluted barrels, the fear is always there that putting, say, six flutes on the outside of the barrel will leave the bore shaped like a hexagon instead of round. (Like it should be!) With cut rifling, the barrel can be completely profiled and fluted after the drilling stage and then reamed and rifled. All the niggling doubts as to whether fluting the barrel will ruin it can be dispelled if it is done this way - but this manufacturing route in not available to you when you button rifle a barrel.
The exact twist of a buttoned barrel is also unpredictable. The button tends to slip in the barrel so what set out to be a 12 inch twist may end up as a 12.5 inch twist. This is not a problem if the twist is uniform, but if it varies down the barrel - particularly if it slows - then like as not, it will not shoot.
Another problem, is that the button may not engrave as deep on one side as on the other so leaving a groove circle that is not concentric with the bore. The result is bullets leaving the barrel which are not balanced and so unstable. This becomes less of a problem if you have lots of shallow grooves instead of a few deep ones.
Selection is the key to success with buttoned barrels and barrel makers like Hart, Douglas and Shillen grade their barrels by using an air gauge to judge the uniformity of bore and groove dimensions in each barrel. Ultra Premium Select barrels carry a premium price tag and are used by the bench rest fraternity. The lower grades get turned into regular target barrels and sporter barrels.
None of these problems arise in traditional single point cut rifling a barrel. Groove circle and bore are always very concentric. Because very little work is being done on each passing cut the twist rate is very consistent and very uniform. As a general rule, I find that button rifled barrels are not as uniform in bore dimensions straight off the machine as a cut rifled barrel. Button rifled barrels usually need a deal more lapping than a cut rifled barrel due to this problem.
Exact dimensions are easier to achieve by cut rifling and are not dependent on the hardness or thickness or type of steel as they are in buttoning. No stress is put into the barrel by cut rifling so no stress relieving is needed.
Many people think that the superior finish in a button rifled barrel must mean it will shoot better. In the first place, the surface finish that counts is the longitudinal surface finish, down the length of the grooves. The tool marks in cut rifled barrels go in just this direction, so causing mini-lands which are quite uniform down the length of the barrel. The transverse "roughness" caused by the lands are never viewed as an impediment to accuracy, so the mini-lands left by the tool marks in cut rifled barrels will also not affect accuracy. In the second place, the final finish in the barrel is determined by the lapping. If the cut rifling barrel maker has paid attention and kept his cutter sharp to minimise tool marks, then after lapping only a very experienced eye will be able to tell the difference between the cut rifled and the button rifled barrel.
I believe that you are more likely to get a top of the line tack driver by cut rifling a barrel than by any other method. Bench rest shooters in the States have rediscovered the cut rifled barrel and cut rifled barrel makers, who have been quietly persisting over the years with this demanding technique, find shooters at the very highest levels of accuracy banging on the doors of their barrel shops.
Guy Miner
Master Loader
- Apr 6, 2006
- 17,892
- 6,636
IdahoCTD posted one heck of a reply. My experience with custom barrels is not as extensive as his. I've gone through three cut rifled Krieger barrels. All were very accurate in competition, and in the field.
I've used them out to longish ranges with excellent results. It seemed to me that the Kriegers died slowly, gradually giving up their accuracy. I noticed this at the 600 yard line where a barrel went from shooting mostly X's, to shooting many 10's, without as many X's. New barrel, and I was back in the X ring much of the time.
Currently running a Krieger on my .308 Win/Rem 700. It's performing very well.
On the other hand, I've been soundly beaten in matches by guys running any number of different barrels, and way back, I beat a lot of guys running custom barrels just with a standard Remington barrel... It's more the indian than the arrow.
Guy
I've used them out to longish ranges with excellent results. It seemed to me that the Kriegers died slowly, gradually giving up their accuracy. I noticed this at the 600 yard line where a barrel went from shooting mostly X's, to shooting many 10's, without as many X's. New barrel, and I was back in the X ring much of the time.
Currently running a Krieger on my .308 Win/Rem 700. It's performing very well.
On the other hand, I've been soundly beaten in matches by guys running any number of different barrels, and way back, I beat a lot of guys running custom barrels just with a standard Remington barrel... It's more the indian than the arrow.
Guy
Desert Fox
Handloader
- Aug 14, 2006
- 1,965
- 3
I notice also that cut rifled barrel is on the slow side when compared with bottom rifled. My friend Frank 6.5-47 has 26 " Hart and the Krieger on my rifle has 25". Both with 8 twist. I chronograph both rifle with identical load of 40 grain H4350 and 130 grain Berger VLD. Franks rifle average 2850 fps, mine 2735 fps. Thats over 100 fps difference. Now there were other variable that explain the 100 fps difference. One obvious was the 1" difference in barrel length. Another thing, my rifle was chambered using JGS Reamer, whereas Franks was chambered using PTG. My seating depth is 2.798" with Franks 2.764". But I'm confident to conclude that the differential in velocity can be attributed to the method of rifling between the two barrel.
Another good example is my 308 with a Pac-Nor 3 grove botton rifled barrel. All the 308 shooters is the world that shoot their 308 using Varget Powder and 155 grain Scenar use as much as 46 grain of Varget to propel the 155 to over 2900 ft/sec whereas I only needed 43.5 grain to get the same velocity. Most of these shooters were using cut rifled Kriegers, Obermeyers, Brux, Bartlein and Rocks.
Another good example is my 308 with a Pac-Nor 3 grove botton rifled barrel. All the 308 shooters is the world that shoot their 308 using Varget Powder and 155 grain Scenar use as much as 46 grain of Varget to propel the 155 to over 2900 ft/sec whereas I only needed 43.5 grain to get the same velocity. Most of these shooters were using cut rifled Kriegers, Obermeyers, Brux, Bartlein and Rocks.
It's not uncommon to see 100+fps difference between 2 of the exact same barrels let alone different manufacturers and when your talking about two different reamers/chambers on top of that your results are not surprising. The sample size is too small to definitely say that cut rifled barrels are slower than button rifled barrels. I personally haven't noticed a huge difference between the 2 for velocity. I do expect to run into pressure sooner with the Obermeyer I have coming because the bore size is smaller than a normal 7mm at .274 instead of the usual .276.
257 Ackley
Handloader
- Nov 25, 2008
- 1,763
- 0
Desert Fox":1l1cde3g said:
The key to it is that you were shooting a three groove. All the barrel manufacturers I have talked to say that you slow the bullet down when you add grooves, more rifling to grab the bullet.
I was kind of in the same boat as you. I had a (New Haven) M70 Super Grade in 300 Win that I just couldn't get to shoot better than 1.5MOA. Unfortunately, I just kept throwing time and money at it, like a trigger job, glass bedding, and load work up, to try to get it to shoot better. Turns out the barrel was .311 and my gunsmith explained that I could keep throwing money at it, but with the big bore, it would never shoot up to its potential. I spoke with PAC NOR about a rebarrel job and they were very friendly/professional and the cost was more than reasonable. Unfortunately, I was so pissed with the rifle that in a fit of stupidity I sold it off on the cheap.
Fast forward to a couple days ago when my PAC NOR barrelled Nosler rifle in 300 Win put three into 0.14 inch and you can believe that I was wishing I'd have sent that dog M70 to 'em. I know that Bartlein and Kreiger make great cut rifled barrels and a lot of my friends run 'em in competition, but after the results I've experienced with PAC NOR, I wouldn't discount button rifling. JD338 has a Hart barrel in 280AI that shoots everything well--0.092" well. Finally, my pal's .308 Schneider barrel is stupid accurate as well. Marines are, well, Marines and they don't take shortcuts when it comes to shooting or accuracy. There's a reason they selected him to make their barrels for sniper rifles. I guess my point is that accuracy is as accuracy does and there are several roads to get there. Also, don't forget the importance of the guy cutting the chamber, crown, threads, and doing the installation. Take your time in your decision, as half the fun is building it in your head first.
Joe
Fast forward to a couple days ago when my PAC NOR barrelled Nosler rifle in 300 Win put three into 0.14 inch and you can believe that I was wishing I'd have sent that dog M70 to 'em. I know that Bartlein and Kreiger make great cut rifled barrels and a lot of my friends run 'em in competition, but after the results I've experienced with PAC NOR, I wouldn't discount button rifling. JD338 has a Hart barrel in 280AI that shoots everything well--0.092" well. Finally, my pal's .308 Schneider barrel is stupid accurate as well. Marines are, well, Marines and they don't take shortcuts when it comes to shooting or accuracy. There's a reason they selected him to make their barrels for sniper rifles. I guess my point is that accuracy is as accuracy does and there are several roads to get there. Also, don't forget the importance of the guy cutting the chamber, crown, threads, and doing the installation. Take your time in your decision, as half the fun is building it in your head first.
Joe
