Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Barrel length test...Doesnt seem like 20 years ago....

Doesn't seem like 20 years ago when I performed these test.....
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/17630469/1

Good stuff. Testing is better than opinions.

By chance, does it seem like time is picking up speed?

Dejavu all over again.

Charlie,

Thank you for that test and the other tests that you did and then posted the results. Very educational.

LOLOLOL. The older I get, the faster time accelerates by.

Very interesting. About 19 ft/sec/inch across a wide spectrum of cartridges, burn rates, and bullets.

I've gone to shorter barrels in the past decade mainly because they are way more handy for me. And I may be a bit vertically challenged. 22 inch is good but did put a 23" barrel on my Kimber 338 Fed. I do like the way it handles with a 23 inch tube on that rifle. I'll likely do the same with my 308 when I rebarrel.

I had the 26" barrel of my Browning A-Bolt in .375 H&H cut to 22" and it lost 140 fps from the same load = 35 fps per inch. (2700 fps to 2560 fps)

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

Looks like I'm gonna cut one back from 26" to 22" after reading the data you provided. Thanks for posting the info.

There's one area which I feel is detrimental to shortening a barrel, velocity considerations notwithstanding: the world of single shots. My rifles with 26" barrels are no longer than bolt guns with 22" barrels, and cutting them back to carbine length would wreck (somewhat) their nice balance.

I did a test with three 30-06 rifles using a Winchester case,WLRM primer,63.5grs of Reloader 26 and a 180gr Nosler Ballistic Tip.Here were the results of the different barrel lengths.
Remington 700 with a 28" PacNor barrel - 2992fps
Sako A7 24" factory barrel - 2882fps
Ruger MarkII with a 23" Rock Creek barrel - 2890fps

I never saw this at the time. Back in the 90's I worked with a gunsmith/rifle builder (Nimrod Custom Rifles). I was building a 338 Jamison, which I still have, and we were discussing this very thing. He had done these tests, not quite as scientific as Charlie's. It took a few days to chop an inch off the barrel, put it back together and then go out with variable weather conditions. In any case, what that 'smith had concluded was verified by me with the Jamison. We didn't go any shorter simply because the 'smith said that when he got under 22 inches the muzzle blast started being troublesome. Every gun I still have has 22" barrels!!

Charlie and I talked a little bit about this on the phone yesterday.

I have run similar tests, the first in the early 1990s with a 26" Shilen pre-chambered 7x57 barrel on a Brno military Mauser action I put together, eventually shortening it to 21". Loaded and chronographed ammo with bullets from 140-160 grains, if I recall correctly, and got basically the same results as Charlie did--around 20 fps per inch.

But one of the things we talked about yesterday is that SOMETIMES barrels will actually gain a little velocity after being shortened an inch or two. Phil Sharpe also noted this when running similar experiments decades ago, with one of the first electronic chronographs purchased by any "gun writer." The reason is that many barrels have slightly tighter and looser spots, and if the inch cut off was looser (which obviously was the inch behind the muzzle) then the velocity could be a little faster.

But the biggie, overall, is that shorter barrels will NOT "turn a .257 Weatherby into a .25-06," or anything similar to such statements I've read and heard over the decades.

Of course, some of this is due to many hunters firmly believe that another 100 fps will noticeably "flatten" trajectory, or increase "killing power." Both are far more dependent on the bullet used than any such small increase in muzzle velocity.

I have read this thread and the original that Charlie posted 20 years ago and agree 99%.......but there is that 1% of me that says dammit I want the fastest possible speed !!!!!!!!!!!

A friend stuck me with a Ruger American in 204 Ruger a year or so ago, I had never shot a rifle in this caliber before so I found it interesting and frustrating at the same time doing load development. The rifle shot quite well but the speed was not up to my expectations.

A couple of my prairie dog hunting buddies have 204 Rugers with longer barrels than the 22" barrel on my American, their rifles will shoot 4000fps+ with 32 grainers (shooting through my Oehler 35p) like they say in several reloading manuals. My rifle WILL NOT !!!!!!! I tried every load imaginable even overloaded tried 30grainers too, not a chance of 4000fps

As a last resort I found a pristine Ruger M77mkII Varmint Laminated with the 26" barrel, it will shoot 4000fps with 32 grainers. I know at that speed 100-150fps means very little but I just had to see that 4 on my Oehler screen.

boatanchor,

Yeah, I went through something similar with the .204 some years ago. Had a couple of early ones with 24" barrels, and the second, a Ruger Hawkeye, shot particularly well. But then I won a drawing where the prize was a Remington 700 VTR in .204, so I sold the Ruger and kept the "free" 700, after finding out it shot just as accurately.

The only problem was the VTR's barrel was only 20" long behind the ported portion of the muzzle. It would NOT get 4000 fps with 32s, no matter what powder/charge tried--but only around 3950.

But in those days the .204 was my primary prairie dog rifle, and it didn't take long to shoot the barrel out. I replaced with a new 24" stainless take-off barrel purchased from a gunsmith for around $100, which shot just as well--and with the same handloads, which got over the magic 4000....

By then I'd switched to, first, the .17 Fireball and then the .17 Hornady Hornet as my primary PD rounds, and only used the .204 at ranges past about 300 out to 500. Consequently the stainless 24" is still shooting very well!

The saying:
"Life is like a roll of toilet tissue. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes" seems to have taken on more meaning as I age...............

Well ,that must have been a real bummer.Probably kept you to shooting at rats under 100 yards.

Time flies when you are having fun!!Actually it is due to your metabolism slowing down.When you are young your metabolism is pretty fast.Summer and winter go on for ever.As you age it slows down and time seems to speed up.If this did not happen our life span would be very short.Dogs on the other hand have a fast metabolism ,but a much shorter life span.Hours ,days,months take forever for them.We feel bad when they die,but actually they have had a very full life.Time is so fast for me now that sometimes I get up before I go to bed!!

I remember reading about the shooting warehouse in Houston. 21 3/4 length is what they said was the magic number for accuracy. Never have tried that though.

That was pretty much specific for the 6ppc benchrest cartridge, other cartridges could vary greatly from that