Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Light Weight Accurate barrel or upper

Nice shooting gun.

Thanks for posting.

It looked to me to be right.

You were 1/2 MOA high at 200yds and 1 1/2 MOA high at 100yds.

Adjust down 1/2 MOA would be spot on at 200yds and 1 MOA high at 100yds.

That's where I zero.

Am I missing something?

I’ve always been about 1.75” high at 100 to be on at 200. Just seems different but I’ll certainly take it.

I shot this with a Sionics barreled gun a few years ago and it does seem that my 55 NBT load is a little higher there too. I normally just shoot B8’s or plain silhouettes and never really got to count inches.

I built a lightweight 16" carbine maybe 12 years or so ago with a 16" black hole weaponry 3 groove 8 twist. I've shot quite a few 1/2" 3 round groups at 100 with 75g hor bthps. Although it hasn't always been consistently that good and I'm not sure why.

I loaded some 60g partitions for it a few years ago to take as a backup on my kids deer hunt. It did about 1.25 with the first load I tried so I just loaded some more and went with that. I actually ended up shooting my buck with it because I'd just put my other rifle away and was headed home but left the AR ready for coyotes. It worked well on that buck.

I have some lighter weight ballistic advantage barrels I'm going to try this spring. I've heard they can be hit or mis accuracy wise but they're often on sale lately for a good enough price that I'll try one and if it doesn't do great use in on a cheaper ar build later. I have a 16" fluted that weighs 27 ounces and a 16" Hanson that's w4 ounces with the gas block. I'm going to try those when it warms up. If they shoot ill use them to do builds for my kids.

My lightest 16" is a wilson 300 hamr that looks pretty thin walled with the pencil profile and 30 cal bore. It weighs about 19 ounces but it shoots really well. I just have a red dot with 5x mag on it and the dots around 2-3 moabut I've shot 1.5" groups with it at 100 without trying too hard for accuracy. The kids love it with the 12.7" aero S-one handguard because it's light enough for them to shoot offhand without straining to keep the front end up.

I hope to one day settle on my favorite 18" rifle gassed barrel and favorite 16" mid gas barrel. It seems like for me those are the 2 sizes I prefer most. An 18" rifle is my favorite all around but I also like light 16" guns.

Bb

I had always wondered about these barrels that will shoot a reasonable group one time, and then out of the blue the next time the bullets land in a slightly different place and the group is larger. One of the things that surprised me recently was a muzzle brake was coming loose on a barrel and with a known good scope the barrel was all over the place, mostly 6 inches high for some reason. I kept puzzling over it and shooting, until I happened to touch the brake and it unscrewed a little. Now a bit of blue lock tite and the crush washer. If you have a 5 inch 100 yard barrel with your handloads and no muzzle device, and you have tested your scope on another rifle, then you have narrowed down things a bit.

Back when I shot 3 shot groups I noticed my zero was always wondering a bit. After reading a thread by Molon on arfcom, https://www.ar15.com/forums/ar-15/-/118-279218/ I started shooting 10 shots and noticed the zero quit moving. I just don’t think 3 shots are enough represent where the center of the group is.

I now mostly shoot multiple 5 shot groups allowing the barrel to cool between each 5 shot strings. I think this is a closer tell of what the barrel will do. All of my barrels are lightweight.