Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Hammer Forged vs Button-rifled vs cut rifled

Tough crowd.......

That's it. It's about the time/care/effort/lapping that could all be done to a HF barrel if desired.

Very informative article, if you take this man's account at face value then cut rifling is better than button.


History of hammer forge barrels:
http://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/rifling-manufacturing-hammer-forged.html

This thread sure would look different if it was posted up in the 'freak show'.
I wonder if Ruger, Remington, and Winchester all switched to Krieger, Bartlain, or Lilja barrels overnight and said nothing, how many people would 'really' see a difference? From the hunters I see sighting in their rifles at the range, I'm betting only one in five.
As to benchrest accuracy, they are just anal to everything that they do. Few people outside loonies take the time or money to even comprehend most of their practices. Rifles shoot in the .1's are great, .2's marginal, and .3's tomato stakes. Like posted earlier the nine barrels that got culled from the herd would still make guns better than the average shmo could take advantage of.

If this were posted in the freak show you would need one page to explain what rifling is first.

I cannot say they were BR accurate because I didn't use them on BR rifles. They were installed on Winchester Model 70 actions and conventionally bedded. One of the Swiss barrels is on a Springfield 03 and although this is a nice old action, it isn't going to produce BR accuracy. The other Swiss barrel is on a 1965 Model 70 and is capable of sub .5 moa groups at 300M. I have shot enough .3 moa 5 shot groups with it that they are not exceptional.
One thing I have to mention is that the Swiss barrels were made with the chamber hammer-forged with the bore. The chambers were exceptionally straight and concentric but one had a barely visible ripple in the throat. I doubt that this "ripple" was more than a couple of tenths in dimension but there was a definite distortion of the reflected light. This barrel shot considerably better after being set back and re-chambered.
The other barrel was perfect and shot well as it was. The Winchester barrel was a blank.
I have no doubt, if one could get a good hammer-forged barrel in a 6mm 14 twist, chamber it for a PPC, install it on a good BR action, and glue it into a glass stock, it would shoot as well as any other.
I have to mention as well, some of the most accurate factory rifles I have seen were Remington factory rifles with a hammer-forged barrel. A bullet-maker named Al Mirdoch had a Remington 700 Varminter of about 1977 vintage which shot incredibly well. That hammer-forged barrel fired a lot of sub.2 groups in registered competitions including one of .080. I believe he also shot a .160 something at 200yd with that rifle. An impressive feat with a rifle which was not a BR rifle in any sense (factory stock etc.)
I hear a lot about the stresses inherent in a hammered barrel but have seen no evidence of this when re-contouring hammer-forged barrels. On the contrary, they appear to be quite stress-free and do not warp at all. The same thing is true when fluting them; there is no appreciable movement.
I HAVE seen some real crappy hammer-forged barrels but I have seen cut and buttoned barrels which were equally poor. It is hard to say whether the worst warping barrels were cut or buttoned because I have worked with individual samples of each which were so bad they were practically unusable.
The thing is, one doesn't really have to worry about it because there is, to my knowledge, no one selling a hammer-forged barrel suitable (proper caliber and twist rate) for use for short range BR. Cut-rifled and button-rifled barrels are readily available and affordable so it is unlikely anyone is going to try and break into the market with a hammer-forged BR barrel. Regards, Bill

Bill;
Happy New Year to you sir, I hope this finds you and yours doing well.

I just wanted to say a quick thanks again for sharing your knowledge with us here and for letting me call you and pick your brain too.

It's been most helpful and educational every time sir and I very much appreciate it.

All the best to you and yours in 2015 Bill.

Dwayne

Hmm, I have rifles barreled with Hart, Douglas and Shilen as well as factory barrels. One of the most accurate sporting rifles Ive ever shot...a factory push feed md 70 .308.. belonged to a friend, asked me to shoot it in so he could go deer hunting, had an old scope with a plain post reticle, was like looking through a sewer pipe. I bought two boxes of factory ammo one cheap and the other premium. I shot several three shot groups with both kinds of ammo. The largest group was a bit less than .400 the smallest was .201 [100 yds]Also about a 6lb creepy trigger. While I agree that several things can and do often affect accuracy i.e., gunsmith, tooling as well as bedding etc. the single most important thing to avoid is a rifle that has a resident witch! If you are unfortunate enough to have such a rifle I suggest you cut in at least three pieces, burn it in a hot fire and drop it in the ocean in at least 500' of blue water. Oh, and I like all three brands of barrels, all are on sporting rifles ranging from 22-250AI to 9.3X62

Let's do it this way...
Blazer
Sako
Merkle
Steyr
Sauer
H&K
Tikka...
Have what variable in common?

None of those makes of barrel have been competitive on the benchrest circuit?

Whity chit!
Same argument... some say that the induced stresses are so severe in this process that they never can be entirely eliminated. As a result, the bench rest crowd won�t touch a hammer forged barrel. However, I can�t help but wonder how valid this belief actually is, and whether anyone has actually tried it. Remington barrels, which always had a reputation for accuracy, used to be hammer forged, including those used in the XP-100. I know I always had excellent results with original XP barrels.
The CHF machine cost 8-9 million dollars, pre setup. Not many custom BR shops can afford that. Doesn't mean that any button rifled barrel is superior.

I know about the set up costs, and I shoot many hammer forged barrels that are very good. But if we want to compare absolute performance potential we'd need to secure a few dozen "best quality" hammer forged barrels in appropriate contours and fit them to competitive BR rigs.

For whatever it's worth, when talking Remington barrels, their most accurate rifles use button rifled barrels from the custom shop. Those would be the 40X rifles.

a ford focus could be made to run with drag racers given enough time attention, and investment.
No button rifled barrel is ever going to come off the machine as smoothly finished or accurate or consistent as a CHF bbl.
That doesn't mean a few dozen operations, polishing, lapping exc exc ad nauseum, will make it as accurate.
But its still not going to be a consistantly manufactured.
And again...considering that CHF barrels are attached to such inaccurate turds like...SSG69, Blazer TacII, Sig 3000...

Use what you prefer & move on.....holy phuc!!

"No button rifled barrel is ever going to come off the machine as smoothly finished or accurate or consistent as a CHF bbl."

This is amazing, there are no words.....

Oh, I believe there are.

Simply not true. Of course, the manufacturing process is different, but when a button or cut rifled barrel "comes off the line" ie completely finished and ready to ship, that statement is completely false. Remington probably makes more HF barrels than anyone and they use button rifled barrels on their most accurate guns. Some of their most expensive Tactical/LE rifles use 40X barrels.

Quick response, or addressed to me?

QR.