Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Which barrel maker

The #2 Lilja SS on my 300 H&H has proven to be a great shooter.

It's good to know all the nits are getting picked for this competition benchrest rifle.

seems like a lot of builders like hart barrels ....borden rifles, hill country rifles,mcwhorter rifles and they are winning matches how are the other button rifled makers better

Hart makes great barrels, never had a bad one. Mcwhorter has been using a lot more Brux these days. Hill Country uses mostly Benchmark. These days it's much more important to pick a good smith, if not doesn't matter how great the barrel is...

I’ll give Dan Muller a nod also I’m running one of his barrels in 300 win mag, it’s proving to be pretty good!

if you know your smith well,have had him do a few projects.ask him what barrel he would choose to put on his personal rifles.nothing wrong with hart barrels or lilja barrels.i have 3 smiths i have used and trusted for a long time.if button hart would not be my 1st or 2nd choice.we all have our own reasons and likes.

I've typically preferred cut but I've noticed one thing about the button barrels is that almost all the good companies that button stress relieve after the process. I've had some top button barrel makers that never stress relieve in house they just rely on the steel makers and in my experience that was hit or mis.

Back when Mike Rock was still at rock he would stress relieve my cut barrels in house after they were cut and then lap them. Once he left I couldn't get that done anymore.

Bb

Make it easy. Send it back to Melvin. He builds very accurate 257 Wby’s. He goes to Douglas and hand selects barrels. He has told me that the Douglas .257” barrels HAVE NO EQUAL. Have heard this from other sources as well. Plus it will save you dollars. Melvin welcomes home every prodigal rifle.

Incidentally the Douglas .458 barrels are impossible to beat too.

For a .257 I'd look HARD at Gary Schneider, OR Shawn B at HawkHill!

I've got a 458 Douglas.It shoots well and looks very good under a borescope-looks better than all my barrels.Kriegers are good too.I am growing fonder of Douglas barrels.WhenI first took the Douglas to the range it briefly shot phenomenally accurate then something went wrong that I could not figure out.Since it was on a custom rifle I contacted the rifle maker and he asked me to send it back to him and that something could be wrong with the firing spring/pin assembly.When I got it back it returned to shooting but only after I put many rounds through it trying to figure what the issue was.My next barrel will be a Douglas.

my vote goes for Brux barrels , i have had 2 - 257 Weartherbys 1-10 twist, 2 - 257 Roberts 1 - 71/2 twist many other bench rifles too, this week i just ordered another Brux barrel for my new project i am rebarreling my Weathrerby mark 5 with a new Brux barrel when it gets here too a 257 Weatherby mag. 7 1/2 twist ,4 contour ,28 inch barrel so i can shoot the new Berger VLD 135 gr bullet will be my out west open range deer and antelope rifle. Straight Line Machining Greg Walstrom who builds some National championship rifles will do the machinist work for me . also had him rebarrel a Savage bench rifle to a 257 Creedmoor for me with a Brux 7 contour barrel and 7 1/2 twist barrel , 7 1/2 twist seems to be the answer for the bigger bullets for me.