Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Accuracy differential between 24" and 26" barrel?

To get some idea of the effect of barrel length on velocity, study the velocity curve below as it relates to velocity (right scale) and barrel length (bottom scale). Accuracy can not be predicted. The shorter the barrel is, the stiffer it is, and the more likely it is to be accurate. But you can't be sure before you cut and try, and any improvement in the accuracy of an already accurate barrel is foredoomed to be too slight to brag about.

This graph is for the 180-grain .308 Partition at about 3,035 ft/sec from a 26-inch .300 Winchester Magnum barrel.. I don't have a graph -- or the data to make one -- for the 200-grain Partition. Sorry. (It wouldn't be much different from this one, anyway.)