Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Ever had a custom barrel that just plain doesn’t make the cut?

Put the pipe down, it is not a photo.

Rickety,

You be sure to "justify" your stolen picture,in the manner which soothes you most...you "lucky" kchunt. Hint. Congratulations?!?

Not that a Texan could offer a picture she took herself. Hint.

Fhuqking LAUGHING!..............

I have bought several thousand barrel blanks over the years, probably over 10,000 and I've certainly got a few bad ones.
One time, I pulled a blank from a 500 piece batch and it had no rifling in it.

Tony

Just buy Lothar Walther....

Big Stick is right. A bore scope won't tell you if you got a great barrel or a tomato stake in most cases. I have a barrel right now by a well known cut rifled barrel maker that doesn't look fantastic and does foul a bit, but shoots lights out with about anything you throw at it. I've had other custom barrels that have an absolutely perfect looking finish and don't foul hardly at all that don't shoot near as good. I also have factory barrels that look terrible, yet shoot very well. A bore scope is mostly useful for telling you if you got the barrel clean or not. That said Inrarely clean barrels anymore as I DBC everything and have found that even in my prarie dog guns they will go a very long time with no drop off in accuracy.

On new Barrels, the bore scope will tell you:

A. if there is an inclusion from the foundry, not the barrel makers fault, but should have been caught before it left the factory. I have only seen one.
B. On cut rifle barrels, the bore scope will tell you how rough the cut has been in the groove, and there is a lot of difference between barrel makers. I suspect that a barrel maker may have a dozen machines and one or two are putting out less than desirable barrels, and this issue is complicated.

C. If the barrel slips in the jig during the rifle cutting process, there will be rifling that will look like a Marlin Micro groove barrel, I have only seen one time.

D. No one ever mentions lube in the barrel while the barrel is being rifled on button rifle barrels. Too much lube, the button can skip, too little and the button will dig in. A friend designed and got a patent on a button that actually stopped this and invented a computer with a long stylus that measured twist rate every 0.200 of an inch, plotted the twist rate on a graph. When the rifling speeds up and slows down, the harmonics of the barrel will change. On cut rifle barrels, you may see where a cutter is dull or if it digs in deeper in some spots.

E. on a custom barrel and factory barrel, if the throat/chamber has been cut crooked, meaning that the barrel was not indicated in well, you will see the taper or leade angle on the cut deeper on one side vs the other side. This will guarantee you that the bullet will get started crooked in the lands. Barrels are very difficult to tune a load for if chambered crooked.

F. if the leade angle and throat is rough or beat up from an improperly fitted pilot bushing, this will be very obvious. If the bullet is roughed up from bad machining, then copper fouling May follow. The gunsmith should examine the chamber prior to removing the barrel from the lathe, MANY of them do not. you may learn that your gunsmith does not fit the proper bushing for that barrel Inisde dimension. If this is the case, a loose bushing will enable the reamer to rattle around while cutting the chamber, and an over size bushing will Gouge some metal out so the bushing or pilot will fit. All bets are off on a reamer with a solid pilot, you just take your chances.

G. Chamber inspection with the bore scope is a given.

I prefer Brux, Krieger, Rock Creek, Muller on cut barrels, and with button barrels, Hart, shilen, Benchmark, and Lilja. I apologize if I left out your favorite. I am not a gunsmith, and I only buy barrel blanks for myself. I consider service after the sale a major part of my purchase on a barrel blank, and all of the above have given excellent service if/when a problem was found(rare to say the least). Some barrel makers have real schitty customer service after the sale, and this is an understatement.

The vast majority of guys never get a custom barrel, and they shoot factory rifles. I have seen some terrible looking barrels shoot very well. The rougher the internal finish, the more frequent the cleaning, simple. I had an extremely nice Savage 116 given to me in 7 Mag. This barrel would shoot 1/4" groups, but at 9 rounds down the bore the groups opened to 3/4", than at 20 rounds, the groups opened to 1.5". I had Sharpshooter pillar bed it, and put on a muzzle break. I shot golf balls off of golf T's at 300 yards with this Savage with 140g Nosler ballistic tips using a Leupold 36x. I kept the fouling to a minimum in this Savage barrel. This gun now belongs to a guy that uses it as his dedicated Turtle rifle, he lives on a river.

The bore scope is best used in seeing how well your cleaning method works or does not work. I like shooting tiny groups and some hot rod cartridges, so keeping the carbon out of the barrel can be important. It seems that the Carbon is the barrel killer, and there are some ways to Smooth some of the very worst fire cracking to keep a barrel shooting it's best, but better to have a barrel blank on order when you are trying to smooth up the fire cracking..

Teslong bore scopes offer a 25% discount to vets, LEO, and first responders. Mine plugs into a lap top or other device. If memory serves me well, I think that I have $89 in my Teslong.

I’ve never had a bad Hart rifle barrel. They all shoot very consistently, and are easy to clean. I’ve tried a lot of the others. Hart is still #1 across the board IMO. Doubt you will find many others that haven’t had a similar experience.

Inclusions in the steel cannot normally be seen in a new barrel. The pressures and stress of firing chips away the appearance and the inclusions become obvious.

Defective rifling should never leave a factory, but I suppose sometimes it is missed in the pre-shipping inspection.

Perhaps the OP will elaborate on the findings. Pardon my Psychic Abilities. Hint.

Fhuqking LAUGHING!................

Depends what is meant by "custom barrel". Assuming this means aftermarket, yes, I have seen some and have had some which did not shoot as well as I would have liked. They did not, however, shoot really badly. A barrel on a benchrest rifle which averages 3/8 is worthless for the intended task but would be dandy on a prone rifle and splendid on a hunting rifle. The only place a barrel can be proved, as a rule, is on the target. There are some exceptions. If a barrel is made with discernible tight spots, or loose spots, it probably won't shoot well. I have seen this as well.
Most of the well-regarded barrel manufacturers will stand behind their products, providing there is any real problem with the barrel itself. I have found both Douglas and Shilen to be exceptional in this regard.
By the way, over the last 45 years, I can't guess at how many barrels I have fitted and chambered, but it's a bunch. I have not seen it all but I have seen a lot. GD

The number of mutt barrels has increased significantly with the glut of pre-fit barrels. One popular carbon 'wrapped' tomato stake is running close to 50 percent return rates.

If you want a bubble packed barrel, make sure to do your homework.

Good shootin' -Al

Never could figure the demand for insulated barrels.

I LOVE James' spouts,as they fhuqking HAMMER. Hint.................

'Stick, here's one that's interesting. A couple weeks back, a pre-fit barrel vendor contacted me and wanted to send a barrel in my choice of chambering gratis...provided I'd do a testimonial on it.

My counter offer was to pay for and evaluate it honestly, if a honest eval is what he's interested in.

Good shootin' -Al

I tend to speak my mind,when it comes to critiquing wares and prefer to cut checks up front. Might get around tossing a 264 Win spout on a Pre-'64 70 this afternoon,even though I hate the pieces of fhuqking schit. Hint...............(grin)

There's one here now for pillars, a touch of mill work on the bottom metal lash up and bedding. Plus, the trigger is fubar'd courtesy of some gap toothed Winchester 'expert'.

"It goes off when I take the safety off."

But the owner is a good egg that hunts hard. Will see if we can't make ice cream from poo.

I'll be curious to see how close the timing is. Lotsa irons in the fire and I fhuqking hate Winchesters. Hint................(grin)

I'd love to know who the gap toothed in question is.

Some of the ugliest barrels I've owned were the biggest cloverleaf mills I've had. On the flip side, I've had pristine and beautiful cut-rifled barrels that were "meh". How they look inside doesn't matter. Borescopes are for diagnostics and to observe changes. I've shrank groups by knowing where and how to scrub. I've never been able to predict if a barrel is a hummer by looking at it. In fact, I've had only one real hummer back in 2004 (I think) that would shoot every load I put in it in the .2s or less. It was a 6.5-284 chambering and my buddy and I used the same reamer back to back with the same barrel specs ordered on the same order. His was a fine barrel, but mine would shoot circles around his.

I'm not sure...doesn't really matter at this point.There can always be more to things than meet the eye, too.

The main thing is that it gets corrected.