Originally Posted by ROE_DEER
Forget all the myth about barrel making.

Just take a hammer forged barrel out of the box, shoot and enjoy.


Well, just to play Devil's Advocate a bit... smile

Unless you are interested in benchrest accuracy... (I don't happen to be interested in .01 inch differences that make the benchrest game, but there is a reason hammer-forged barrels don't dominate benchrest competition.

Unless you want a custom twist not readily available in a hammer-forged barrel (which I did: standard twists in .35 cal are slower than what I wanted)

Unless you want a bore-size a little larger or tighter than standard (I specified a slightly tighter bore to let me better shoot .357 handgun bullets better in my .358 Norma Mag -- I like shooting big bores for practice, but cheaply! smile

Unless you find available hammer-forged barrels too heavy in contour. Hammer-forged barrels often don't take kindly to being turned down to a lighter contour for a custom rifle -- the residual stresses from the forging sometimes causing problems. In contrast, cut rifled barrels can be turned down quite drastically...

All joshing aside, I totally agree that there is a lot of "mythconceptions" among hunters regarding barrels, and I do agree that hammer-forged barrels are certainly accurate enough for virtually all hunting applications, but they are "one size fits all".

Part of the satisfaction of having a custom rifle is having it exactly the way you want it -- including the inside of the bore! smile Neither forged, nor button-rifled bores offer the flexibility that a cut-rifled barrel maker can offer. Sako hammer-forged barrels are readily available (at least here in Sweden!) and great value because they often shoot extremely well, but they don't offer much flexibility.

Having said all that, I must admit that most of my past and present rifles had forged barrels and shoot better than I can in any hunting condition...

Of course, if I had any common sense I'd just shoot a factory rifle with its factory barrel and never spend any money on a custom rifle anyway! smile