Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats No cut stainless barrel under #3, huh?

Theres factors like steel used, caliber and reamer design play alot more to do with barrel life than cut or button.

I guess I got your goat. Not my intent, just wanting to know why you would say that.
Anyway, Douglas was the only maker that would make a 28" pencil blank for my Ti 280AI.

Them there cut-rifled barrels are ALWAYS more accurate.....another drink of beer....ALWAYS!!

Happy Turkey Day!!!

A while back, I called Boots Obermeyer for one thing and ended up talking with him about a bunch of things. One of them was cold embrittlement of 416R stainless steel barrels. Apparently there were a few cases of barrels failing in extremely cold weather. The post mortem analysis led to some barrel makers decided that they would not produce thin barrels in 416R (most notably Jack Krieger). I would guess it's just risk mitigation. It wasn't even a cut rifled barrel that failed! I sympathize with them...as a barrel maker, you cannot predict in what conditions your barrels will ultimately be used in. I might tell them I live in Hawaii and have no intention of hunting in cold weather, but at some point I might sell the rifle to someone in North Dakota, and the barrel maker gets tagged with the potential failure. Krieger will sell you thin contours in 4140 or whatever CM they're using these days, so I don't think it's a profit margin thing. Obermeyer was the old grandpa of barrel makers, with pretty much everyone doing single point cut rifling tracing a direct lineage back to him; Jack Krieger, Mike Rock, Muller, Geoff Kolbe, so I trust what he says.

Regarding barrel life; cut vs buttoned. Frank White of Compass Lake Engineering provides barrels to shooters in my game, Service Rifle competition. Frank's observation is that the Cut Rifled Kriegers provide about twice the accurate life of the Buttoned barrels in this particular use. To be more specific, the Kriegers he was selling provided double the round life shooting 10 shot (maybe 20 shot) MOA out to 600 yards with 224 heavies than the Douglas buttoned barrels in his and his customer's experiences. When I first became aware of this observation he was selling Kriegers and Douglas. This statement has persisted through different brands of cut and buttoned barrels.

No problem at all sir. Like Kenneth said, open discussion, all in good fun etc. Happy Thanksgiving

Rock Creek #2, stainless.

Joel, what type of finish is on there?

Did they copy the factory contour for you?

A Rock creek #2 actually appears to be a true featherweight contour,

If they wouldn't copy at .800 and .600,

their #3 is .815 and .625........Which would not be a problem for me.

Brad,
I haven't used one of his barrels. I had him do a M70 with a Brux barrel several years ago. I think he's only set up to make 30 cal barrels and I haven't heard any reports on them. Sorry I don't have more info.

AI used to spec their barrels through Bartlein.

Chris,
The only ones I'm aware of were a batch of Sako and Tikka barrels that had some fail and that was traced to bad metallurgy from the steel mill. They happened to be stainless but it was the substandard steel, not the stainless part that was the problem. I'm not a metallurgist or a barrel maker so my expertise on it stops there.

There are tens of thousands of stainless M7 remingtons and M700 mountain rifles with pencil thin barrels running around in cold weather and they're not blowing up. There were also a bunch of stainless M70 featherweights built and they're not blowing up. Hart, douglas, pac-nor, Lilja, etc have made a bunch of skinny stainless barrels and I've yet to hear of one failure in cold weather. Anything can fail if stressed enough but from a layman's perspective the overwhelming evidence from the decades they've been on the market is that skinny stainless barrels in cold weather aren't a problem.

These makers are free to set their own rules and we're free to purchase from someone else who will make what we want. In my admittedly non-expert opinion it's a solution in search of a problem.

Kenneth,

Happy Thanksgiving! Sorry, didn't see your post yet!

It's a Cerakote finish, Graphite Black color.

I ran down and measured, it's about 0.800 6 inches in front of the receiver and 0.620 at the muzzle (24 inches). When I got it I noted it was a smidge bigger than their advertised #2, but it fit the stock well and it shoots damn lights out.

I'm confident they would make a particular contour for you if desired.

I think another cut rifled maker that will make skinny barrels is Peterson Rifle Barrels out of Arizona. No first hand experience with them.

v/r
Joel

Chrisf, what type barrels have produced the winners the last say 3 years at Perry? I know Frank is pretty good, but I know others in his class that disagree.

Forums say it probably because CR barrel makers say it...

from Bartlein FAQs;

Do cut rifled barrels last longer than button rifled barrels?

'In our opinion and many others both experienced shooters and even people who use ammunition test barrels the answer is yes'.

Winning at Perry is not the question on the table...and not the same as length of accurate life.

...however, to answer your question; the winning barrel at Perry for the last 10 years have been whatever the AMU is shooting. ...and by all accounts that would include both cut and buttoned rifling. When the Marines were fielding a competitive team that would exchange wins with the Army, they were shooting Kriegers.

Earlier you had asked if there were any studies or authoritative words on the statement on the longevity of Cut vs Buttoned. Sadly, I think we'd in the sporting world would be hard pressed to find someone that did the work that you're asking for. If you think about it, the arsenals are probably the only entities with the motivation and resources to do this kind of work. Cut and button rifling are in the domain of small, boutique production in that sense. If the work was done, it was probably comparing broach, hammer forging and other high production volume barrel manufacturing.

Yes sir

I had a SS #3 Rock Creek was one of my favorites at the time, using Bartlien 2b lately both very good barrels!

Looking at 2 Rock Creek SS barrels now. One is a Rem Mountain Rifle dupe in 25-204. Other is a #2 in 250AI.

H.S Precision has Stainless cut rifled blanks in very light contours and fluted if you want.

Apparently, There was a personal change at Rock a while back, I wonder if that was the jackwad that I had talked to,

You guys that had these stainless #2's and Mountain rifle 'dupes' made at Rock, About how long ago?

Those who had factory contours duplicated, did you need to send the barrel in?

I tried calling all 3 major players in this area yesterday, all closed for the Holiday.

With the application being a hunting rig.....why the insistence on a cut rifled barrel?