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

Dude... You're special.....

I wasn't going to jump in this fight,but...
What eschelon are you talking about?
I got a Douglas barrel that came from Hill Country that is a one holer...What echelon is better than that?
How many Douglas barrels do you have?
Oh yeah...I could give a fugg about "Your Smith"being in any hall of anything...
I guess that experience don't count when YOUR talking echelons.......
Bart

Bart you are wasting your time talking to the br Elite (you know the monkey see monkey do crowd) no different than trying to reason with the oppertunist elitist

I know...But damn...They are the ones' that should know
that nothing is absoloute in shooting...Remember the guy
that won a 1000yrd comp a couple of years ago with a Savage/Hart combo? Amazing how the ELITE are full of it...
Bart

I only wish Tikka marketed barrels...........

Hart makes a good tube.
This "My douglas barrled gun shoots .1'' groups at 1500 yards so they are the best" crap is laughable.
I have a Remington 700 PSS that shoots very tight groups, but I would consider remington a top of the line barrel maker.

The upper eschelon I am talking about is the makers of the majority of the benchrest shooters barrels. Hart, Lilja, Krieger, Broughton, Schneider, Shilen. Oberymeyer, Mike Rock, Border and a few others make good barrels as well.

Who is exactly the benchrest elite?
I dont think anyone in this thread has claimed to be a a BR'er besides Micky Coleman.
Looking at the equipment bench rest shooters use is a good way to benchmark performance however. As with any competition they use what works best.

Ain't figgered how what they use applies to a hunting rifle?

Actually very simple--------taper is the only difference in the actual barrel or maybe fluting. Now after the Smith gets finished with it could be significant for example, I have many hunting rifles that use the same chambers and necks as my BR guns the only difference being the taper and maybe a brake. Some people like it that way some don�t but the steel with the hole in it is the same just a little smaller taper. When I have reamers made I always use them for my hunting rifles as well that way I can do the same brass preparation as my competition chamberings.

A higher qualtity barrel in general will shoot better on a hunting rig and a BR rig.
Again if barrel quality doesnt matter why not use a take off or a A&B?

Why not? A good many folks do.

Some of those barrels shoot plenty well.

Of course, some shoot like [bleep], and those get replaced.

If a barrel shoots well, very well, and plenty for it's intended purpose, wtf does it matter whether it's a Savage factory barrel, or a custom barrel (like a Spencer)?

The biggest difference in accuracy isn't the barrel, but the guy behind the trigger. Fix those problems first, then worry about something else.

IMHO, fixing the problems behind the trigger solves about 99.9% of all accuracy/hunting related problems.

Of course, ymmv...

If "hunting" accuracy is the level of performance expected, why not use a Remington take-off or an A&B? I have Remington take-off barrels that shoot really good "hunting" accuracy groups and A&B barrels in 22-250, 257 Roberts, and 260 that are very accurate.

The type of accuracy required to be competitive in the BR shooting game is, IMO, exponentially greater than the type of accuracy required to shoot anything bigger than a 'chuck within "typical" hunting ranges out to 400+/- yards. It does take a higher grade of accuracy to shoot pdogs at longer ranges, but still not the level required on a BR range. Besides, most people aren't building hunting rifles around Niska Bay or Stolle actions, or at least I don't recall seeing either action on a rifle in the field.

Jeff

Exactly.

Apples to oranges.

Almost everyone hear is talking about hunting, with a few constantly bringing up BR shooting. Different critters altogether.

"I do hope the esteemed Mr. Coleman is not as thin-skinned as it appears that others so obviously are."

Grasshopper, I've been in the insurance business for 45 years. I can promise you my skin is not thin.

In benchrest shooting there are, usually, only about 20-30 people who are considered serious contenders for first place at a major match. Granted, sometimes another shooter comes from out of nowhere to win but seldom are they near the top the next year. They are like Bart Sauter referred to me once, 'comets' that flash across the sky once in a great while.

I was never a serious threat to win major shoots even though I have placed well a few times. I just don't have the drive and mindset to pay the price you must pay to stay at the top.

Smiley Hensley set a world record aggregate shooting Douglas barrels once but doesn't shoot them now. Two years ago Tony Boyer told me that he bought four Douglas barrels and two of them were great barrels. His comment was, "that's a lot better percentage than I ever got with Shilens". Why Tony is not still trying Douglas I can't tell you other than he goes from maker to maker always searching for that 'hummer' barrel. I do know that 4 years ago he had Dwight Scott chamber up 22 Shilen barrels and he only kept 2 or 3 of them. That ain't too high a percentage of 'keepers'.

For the rest of the shooters who are really the reasons benchrest continues to thrive, they really do behave as lemmings. Whatever the winners shoot or use, that's what they're going to use. They (and I did the same) depend on the winners to try different things and kinda sift through for them. To paraphrase Sen. Hollings, 'there ain't a whole lot of innovatin' goin' on out dere!'

Barrels are about as good as they can get. Scopes are the weak link in accuracy now.

From time to time barrel makers will make the comment through one of their guys that 'Boy! We've got a great heat of steel in and it's doing fantastic!' If this statement is made at the Nationals or Super Shoot I can guarantee you they will take orders for a bunch of barrels at that shoot. I've seen it happen many times. It's a good sales technique.

One word from Tony Boyer, Dwight Scott, Mike Ratigan, Wayne Campbell or a dozen or so other good shooters about any product will produce sales. That is the 'lemming mentality'. It was not meant as a slur and, properly interpreted, would not have been read thusly. It helps for readers to know the meanings of words if we're to communicate properly.

Why are the following points so hard to understand?
A. Douglas barrels are not widely used in competitive shooting because they are not as good as some of the other makes.
B. Hunting rifles benifit from a good barrel just like a BR gun does.
c. The cost differance between a truly good barrel and a lower quality one are minimal. Around $100 or less.

BTW Mickey I dont have any ax to grind with you personaly and have never heard anything negative about your work so dont take it that way.

Perhaps I have completely missed the entire point of this thread, but what I thought was being pointed out by the Pro-high end barrel crowd was that going high end to begin with eliminates a whole bunch of risk.

Sure, the difference between a top quality barrel and a medicore barrel may be significant to some. I think that is a false economy.

Regardless of how you do it, you are going to have a minimum of $1500 into any rifle with a custom tube, Douglas or otherwise. $100 is beans when compared to the big picture.

I am sure that Douglas is great about replacing a dud barrel, but who is going to replace the cost of having it fitted and chambered? Can the smith really be held responsible for bearing the cost of putting it back on? He didn't make the bum barrel, nor would he have any way to checking to ensure it wasn't bum before he put it on. Someone has to bear the cost of putting the replacement barrel on.

By starting with the best barrel you can buy, and spending the extra few bucks to get it, you minimize the risk of a bad barrel by a huge amount. That doesn't even take into account the extra time and effort Douglas barrels take in the cleaning department (at least mine have). Nor does it factor in the fact that Douglas barrels don't last as long as some other top brands (at least mine and a handful of others I am familiar with didn't).

Bottom line is that you can buy the best barrel in the world for less than $300.00. When compared with the total cost of a build, why skimp on a few bucks?






Taking the rifle as a unit unto itself, and removing human interference, the barrel is probably the single most important factor in accuracy. A rifle is never going to shoot better than it's mechanical limitations, so it boggles my mind why one would intentionally set a lower limit for potential accuracy by going with a less than exceptional barrel.

David Tubb pretty much has the "nut behind the trigger" figured out, and I can guaran-damn-tee you that he would not be in the position that he is if he'd run sub-optimal equipment for his entire career.

Handicapping one's self with sub-optimal equipment strikes me as a perfect way to lengthen the learning curve. Start with good stuff, and it is almost silly how easy this can be.

Exactly. Truth be told, it's the rare factory rifle that won't deliver acceptable hunting accuracy. Truth be told, it's the rare shooter that's happy with factory rifle accuracy. It's just human nature to want to do 'just a little better'. There is absolutely no need for the level of accuracy needed to win benchrest in hunting situations but when the subject of barrels comes up invariable somebody is going to say, "If Douglas barrels are so great why ain't the benchrest shooters using 'em?"

The statement was made that you can buy a Hart for just under $100 more so why not spend it? That's about 30% more but if that were an argument that we carried over to all facets of our life Wal-Mart would not be in business today.
I'd be willing to bet (and I don't how any of us could prove this) out of 100 barrels from Hart, Krieger, Shilen, Douglas or Schneider we could not tell the difference in a blind test.

A statement made by Gale McMillan was used to put down Douglas barrels and was apparently accepted as 'written in stone'. How does anybody know but what G. R. Douglas and Gale McMillan got into a spat at one time and McMillan was just being hateful or was he trying to eliminate some competition for his brother who was making barrels at the time. Who knows if Gale McMillan actually said that? Who knows?

"I am sure that Douglas is great about replacing a dud barrel, but who is going to replace the cost of having it fitted and chambered?"

Charley, the barrel that Douglas replaced for me I chambered it and fitted it at no cost to the customer and, as it turned out, it was his scope and not the barrel. I still have the barrel in the shop.

CAS, I couldnt have summed it up better.
Garbage in, garbage out.