I just put together an AR in 300 hamr. I used a super light 16" Wilson barrel that only weighs about 19 ounces.
I have a 18" barrel on mine, but I'm thinking of building a second one with a 16" barrel. Their fluted Recon and plain Ranger barrel both weigh about 25oz. I like the idea of saving some weight with the Ultralight barrel, but I wonder how well it will work with a 12oz. suppressor hanging off the end of it?
Right now, I'm leaning towards the fluted Recon for added stiffness. Thoughts?
I don't have a suppressor on mine but I just added a fairly big muzzle brake because my 11 year old wanted to see if we could reduce the recoil a bit for his hunts. I need to take it out today and see it it shifted at all with the extra 3-4 ounces hanging off the end. I really like the supper light contour. It's shot well so far and both the 125g tnt load and the 135 bonded loads shoot to the same poi. It's a thin barrel but it's also short enough that it doesn't get as whippy as a longer thin contour would.
Someone above asked if cfe black was a fine powder. It's a very fine ball powder that drops perfectly from my rcbs and my hornady powder mesurer. It's a little too fine for my cheap old Lee because it can get between things and gum up. It has shot well with each load I've tried and the velocity has been on with Wilson's data once you adjust for my 16" barrel. Their 135g load said 2400fps from an 18" and I get 2360 with very little deviation from a 16".
The only issue I had with blk was with 110g loads you start getting to the top of the case. They seat and compress ok it's just easier to spill if you're not carefull. I bought a bunch of speer 110g hc spire points on close out for half price a few years back so I may look for another powder for those to run on my progressive.
For everything else I'll likely stick with cfe blk and a cci450. The starline brass is great as always and I bought the 3 die set from Lee on clearance directly from Lee for about $20.
Bb