Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing 1)Douglas rifle barrels.. Do we like them ? 2 Cut vs. Button

As far as a dog turd is concerned I have 4 rifles with Krieger match grade barrels and my 300 win has a Douglas and it shoots as good as my best Kreiger and better the others.The only rifle that I had to send back because of a barrel that did not shoot was a Krieger.I am not saying that Douglas is better just in my experience they are not dog turds.

All those bench rest competitors must be nutz paying extra money for those other non-Douglas barrels.

Don't know about their santity,just know the results that I have seen.Chech out these groups they were shot at 300 yards with a Douglas barrel in 300 Win this is a medium weight sporter not a bench rest gun
http://longrangehunting.com/ubbthreads/s...p;page=0#108976

Here is what Gale McMillan thinks on the subject. I think he might just have a little more insight than the " I got one and it shots fine crowd".
"Posted: 01-12-2000 08:56
This is how a barrel maker would judge them.. Hart the oldest and one of the best. Buttons his barrels and uses the push method which relies on
lubrication to maintain steady twist so some times shows a little accuracy problem A second generation family business. Shilen is the second oldest
company and is also a second generation business. They are capable of producing good rifle barrels. Douglas . is just a production barrel company
and you will get a barrel that has never had a human eye look through it! Good enough for a hunting rifle---Sometimes! You never know what you will
get.. Obermyer , \Kriegerthe and K and P are a cut barrel maker, As far as I am concerned that's enough said! Schnider learned his trade in the
McMillan shop and takes an engineers approach to making barrels. The other choice is. Lilja .. The above choice is based on what I think can make a
barrel which will shoot the best!"

The original question was would a Douglas barrel work on a hunting rifle not what barrel would be best for a bench gun. Personaly I wanted Krieger,but my smith had the Douglas and guarented it to .5moa or better which it does.I think that a Douglas would work well on a hunting rifle if you do not that is fine by me.I know how barrels are made and personally prefer a cut barrel for the reasons someone stated earlier,but that does not mean that they are a must.I think that I will try a Rock barrel next.

I've never had a Douglas not shoot,but their interior finish isn't on par with the upper echelon offerings.

PacNor easily remains my favorite and I think highly of Hart.......................

"They are capable of producing good rifle barrels. Douglas . is just a production barrel company
and you will get a barrel that has never had a human eye look through it!"
**********************************************************

I know for a fact this is not correct. They (Douglas) look through every barrel to pick out the straight ones. I can carry you to the spot in the shop where this is done. This has to be one of the dumbest statements I've ever read. Makes you wonder what Gale McMillan had as an agenda when he made that statement.

One thing to remember: just because a person has been in a business for years and has a well known name is no guarantee they are entirely objective. Everybody has prejudices against something or someone. It's just human nature. I don't like Schneider barrels because I don't like Gary Schneider. He's one of the rudest people I've ever met and I'm not going to do business with rude people.
Has nothing to do with his barrels but I can buy a good barrel without dealing with him.

Admire your sand.....................

You can look through a Douglas barrel and see reamer marks but they can't be measured...only seen because they're a slightly darker color. Tim Gardner, owner of Douglas barrels, is a close friend and I've asked him a lot of questions about barrels one of which is why don't they lap barrels.

Now Tim is not exempt from having his prejudices just as I mentioned in the thread about McMillan. His reply is, "If you know how to make a barrel you don't have to lap them."

Stop and think about it for a minute. The carbide button actually moves steel to form the lands. This means that the maker has to calculate what size to ream the hole so there will be just enough metal displaced to form the lands.
This, naturally, induces much stress into a barrel so it must be stress relieved after rifling and before it is contoured.

I noticed that Gary Schneider put in his ads that he pulls the button through his barrels. I asked Tim why did Schneider pull his buttons and Tim's reply was that Schneider hadn't learned how to push the button yet.

Douglas uses a certain lubricant on his button and P.J. Hart has tried for years to find out what it is and Douglas won't tell him. Hart uses copper as a lubricant for the carbide button, unless they've changed in the past few years, and they lapped to make sure the bore was uniform AND to get all the copper out of the barrel. When a barrel is air gauged it tells that the bore size is uniform to .0001 inch from one end to the other. How on earth can a lead lap with lapping compound improve on that?

I like Douglas barrels because they perform well and I get good service. Try to get Hart to replace a barrel sometimes! I had Douglas replace a barrel I thought was bad and it was replaced with no questions asked. Turns out the guy had a bad Kahles scope.

As for benchresters not using Douglas you need to understand that benchrest shooters are really lemmings that have not fallen off the cliff yet. It's a case of 'monkey see-monkey do'. Seely Masker made the comment once that if he won the Super Shoot with a small paddle wheel on the side of his rifle you would see half the guns on the line with paddle wheels at the next Super Shoot.

I have a lot of customers specify things and when I ask them why they made that choice it turns out that most of the time they base their decision on something they read and have no idea if it will help or not. We shooters are a strange bunch sometimes. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

My Douglas, #5 XXX shoots easily 1/2 inch groups on my 240 wby. I do agree with Stick that looking down the interier looks rough, but it shoots very good.

Am guessing I have 20 rifles wearing Douglas,right now.

They just require more maintenance and I'm largely done with them,due to that sole reason.

Never had a single Douglas,that compared to any of my Harts,for fending fouling and I'm wayyyyyyyyyy deeper in Douglas than Hart tubes.

My Schneider's didn't foul either......................

Thanks, Stick.
You take care and don't get turned into bear scat.

I second that! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Mickey, like we talked about, you're definitely building my next project rifle (even if you're not so fond of Winnies), and I won't make a fuss about the details, lest I end up being called a lemming or some such creature... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

I appreciate that. Just so you'll know that I'm a mere mortal, too, I have my 'areas' where I've been a lemming. When I got started in benchrest I did what I saw all the 'old hands' do. It's the smart way to start because they've tried and discarded a lot of things that just don't work and that keeps us from having to blaze our own trail through some bad territory but after awhile you have to learn how to separate fly specks from black pepper yourself.

For instance, if you clean a Douglas barrel a couple of times and look through a borescope and check it out you'll find that they make beautiful barrels.

When you get ready for the rifle I'll build it like you want. You're the wagonmaster and I'm just another 'mule'. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Yes, that was the original question. I also posed the question why buy a Douglas when you can have a better barrel for a neglible cost increase?
If its just a hunting gun and quality doesnt matter why not barrel it with a Rem or Win take off or how about a Adams and Bennet?
The truth is it does matter and chances are your going to keep the gun for a long time so why not spend $100 more bucks give or take and get top of the line quality?

Mickey, respectfully I do not think Douglas has a leg up on anyone in regards to the way they make barrels. Tooling marks and barrels that need frequant cleaning are not exceptable IMO on a custom rifle.
As for your comment on Benchresters. The lemming thing maybe true to a degree but Lilja, Krieger, Shilen, Hart, and a few others have been building winning barrels for years. They are not some fad thats taken up and quickly dropped and there longetivitiy in the game bares this out.

Assuming it is screwed on straight and chambered correctly, just dump some powder in a case, seat a bullet, and go shoot something in the blinker..........

I've not found that Douglas barrels have to be cleaned any more frequently than any other but I clean my barrels quite often anyway. The tooling marks you speak of (have you ever actually looked at them through a borescope?) are not larger than the longitudenal scratches left by lapping compound. The button leaves a 5-7 micron finish which is pretty slick. After you clean a Douglas barrel you can't see any marks at all.

[/Quote/]
I've not found that Douglas barrels have to be cleaned any more frequently than any other but I clean my barrels quite often anyway. The tooling marks you speak of (have you ever actually looked at them through a borescope?) are not larger than the longitudenal scratches left by lapping compound. The button leaves a 5-7 micron finish which is pretty slick. After you clean a Douglas barrel you can't see any marks at all.[Quote/]

I agree my Douglas barrel cleans just as easy as my Krieger hand lapped barrels

I've yet to establish a predictable relationship between smoothness/roughness and accuracy.......