Fluted Stainless Barrels

[82ndtrooper]

I was asked the other day what that was on my Wilson AR barrel for a recent AR build. What the individual was referring to was the "fluted" barrel.

The only two benefits that I could come up with are reduction in weight and faster cooling of the barrel. Are there any other benefits to fluting the barrel other than the two benefits that I mentioned ? I know I've seen fluted barrels on SPR type rifles, specifically some of the G.A. Precision barrels which I believe are Oberrmeyer, or Lalja barrels.

[The Reaper]

They are stiffer than a thinner profile barrel of the same weight, but not as stiff as a normal barrel of the same diameter.

The cooling effect is very minimal.

They do serve to make money for barrel makers and gunsmiths.

TR

[longrange1947]

They do serve to make money for barrel makers and gunsmiths.

TR

And there is the primary purpose of fluting barrels. :munchin

Quick warning, there have been some makers, not big name of course, that have cut flutes too deep. I think all can see the problems this can create.

[HOLLiS]

I think part of the marketing is addressing the needs of hunters. Accuracy for hunters is not the same for 1000M competitive shooters or snipers. I have one fluted barrel, bought the rifle used at a good price. It is a hunting rifle and serves it's purpose well there. I have never really spec'ed it out for serious shooting. In hunting, there is a lot of "carrying the rifle", more than any thing else.

[82ndtrooper]

And there is the primary purpose of fluting barrels. :munchin

Quick warning, there have been some makers, not big name of course, that have cut flutes too deep. I think all can see the problems this can create.

Roger that ! I've wondered if fluting can be cut too deep, but you've given me the answer. This is a Wilson barrel, 16" fluted stainless without threading for NRA competition. I purchased this barrel from a dealer here that stipped it out of a Wilson Combat rifle. I'll be throwing it in an LMT upper with a titanium bolt and bolt carrier.

I've purchased a Noveske stainless 16" without fluting for one of my other builds. It's a 1:7 twist with the Match Mod O chamber for the Mk262 77 grain. The final build is LMT lower and upper with National Match two stage trigger and the LMT SOPMOD stock, LaRue mounts, M68, SPR E, and the magnifier mount. I used a low profile gas block and the LaRue 11" SIR system with the propietary locking system. BUIS are a Troy Ind front flip up with an A.R.M.S 40L rear sight. It co-witneses the Aimpoint and the Eotech exactly on par with the reticle. I went with the KX3 hider, but then purchased the Phantom hider after deciding that the KX3 was a bit overkill and I wanted to mount a suppressor on this build also. I'm not mounting any white light as I'm not an operator and do not need to light up the outdoor range during the day. (sarcasm) I also took TR's advice and used the PRI Gasbuster charging handle.

Since I've had a bum right eye I haven't had the opportunity to fire this build as of yet. it's warm, in the 70's here this weekend and I was hoping to get out but this eye required yet another injection yesterday. I'll give a range report on the latest build when I do.

[Buffalobob]

The reputable barrel makers such as Lilja, Krieger, Rock, etc will not cut the flutes too deep.

When you build a hunting rifle and hang a 30 -34 inch barrel off of the action you have to make some compromises between wieght and stiffness. Fluting may be one compromise. The other routes are to use a very stiff action or to go to a barrel block. Such a rifle will normally be guaranteed by the gunsmith to shoot under 0.5 MOA and in reality will shoot something like 0.25-0.3 MOA .

[The Reaper]

The reputable barrel makers such as Lilja, Krieger, Rock, etc will not cut the flutes too deep.

When you build a hunting rifle and hang a 30 -34 inch barrel off of the action you have to make some compromises between wieght and stiffness. Fluting may be one compromise. The other routes are to use a very stiff action or to go to a barrel block. Such a rifle will normally be guaranteed by the gunsmith to shoot under 0.5 MOA and in reality will shoot something like 0.25-0.3 MOA .


A 30-34 inch barrel?

Are we talking .50 BMG or black powder here?

TR

[longrange1947]

The reputable barrel makers such as Lilja, Krieger, Rock, etc will not cut the flutes too deep.

When you build a hunting rifle and hang a 30 -34 inch barrel off of the action you have to make some compromises between wieght and stiffness. Fluting may be one compromise. The other routes are to use a very stiff action or to go to a barrel block. Such a rifle will normally be guaranteed by the gunsmith to shoot under 0.5 MOA and in reality will shoot something like 0.25-0.3 MOA .

As stated not big name. Wtih those barrels, what are you hunting? Why not use a hunting profile in your barrel instead of a fluted barrel? You see fluting on tactical barrels mostly due to weight reduction and so called "cooling effect". I would be hesitant to lug around a weapon with a heavy barrel fluted or not when hunting, unless you are tree stand hunting and not stalking. Even fluted, those barrels are heavy.

[Gene Econ]

When you build a hunting rifle and hang a 30 -34 inch barrel off of the action you have to make some compromises between wieght and stiffness. Such a rifle will normally be guaranteed by the gunsmith to shoot under 0.5 MOA and in reality will shoot something like 0.25-0.3 MOA .

BB:

.25 MOA is mighty good for a hunting rifle. Most good Bench Rest rigs will hold .25 MOA -- most of the time. I bet Hollis shot some sub .25 MOA groups a couple of times during his years of Bench Rest.

I guess these barrels are the barrels of choice for the Palma Team?

Gene

[Buffalobob]

Well, I have delivered my son back to school in the frozen wastelands of Potsdam NY and am in the Econolodge in Watertown. In the morning I will drop back down I-81 to Harrisburg and then to DC

I will try to put the responses to some of the comments in three separate posts because it will get long and convoluted with a considerable number of pictures.


When you grow weary of shooting deer at 50-100 yards with a rifle or even with a bow you may turn to a different style of hunting. The style I will deal with is setting up and shooting animals at ranges of 800 to 1500 yards. This requires that you find a proper place where you can find animals at that range and a proper gun that will make a first round cold bore lethal hit. Such a gun is very similar to a bench rest gun as one person has commented. Nine times out of ten such a rifle will be built by a smith with 1K benchrest experience. Some smiths specialize in long range hunting rifles and built a lot of them and use the same techniques as a benchrest smith. The kill zone on a pronghorn antelope is about 12-15 inches vertically. The ability to hit that area under field conditions at ranges of about 1000 yards requires rangefinders, wind meters, drop charts etc. Mostly though it requires a finely crafted rifle and ammo capable of shooting benchrest quality groups. As we shall see shortly, skill on the trigger is not nearly as critical as one might first believe. A properly constructed gun and ammo and proper data on the scope are the main factors. You can pretty much have a dead possum pull the trigger if the gun is set up correctly. If the gun is not constructed properly and the data is not correctly obtained and the ammo is badly made then there will be much grief.

As far as the weight of a gun goes I will only say that as an old infantry platoon leader I try not to whine and complain too much about essential weight. I have plenty of other weight hanging around over my belt that I can lose. A typical long range rifle will weigh in the 12-16 pound range and some will go over 20 pounds

[Buffalobob]

1200 yard antelope gun

About 20 years ago I took a FN Mauser action into a gunshop and had them send it to their gunsmith to have a Douglas barrel, Fajen stock and Timney trigger put on it. I had it chambered in 240 Wby. The barrel was a heavy sporter contour 26 inch length 1-10 twist with a factory spec chamber and free bore. I killed a lot of eastern whitetail deer with that and I doubt if a one of them was over 100 yards away.

About two years ago as I began considering retirement I decided to convert the gun to a longrange antelope gun. I looked around at the well known gunsmith who built 1K benchrest guns and settled on Clay Spencer of Spencer Barrels down in Virginia. The 240 Wby is ballistically similar to the 6-284 and the 6-06. Clay6 recommended minimum SAAMI chamber with no freebore and a 1-8 twist with a NBRSA HV taper. The throat was cut to seat 105-115 grain VLD bullets into the lands. The barrel would weigh about 6.75 pounds and be 30 inches long and with a brake 31.5 inches long. Because of the flexibility of the FN action it would have to be epoxy pillar bedded and have about three or four inches of barrel pad. I had scrapped the old stock and had Joel Russo of Pa. built me a laminated thumbhole stock. With a 30 inch barrel I could use slow burning powders such a RL-22 and gain back the velocity that was lost by doing away with the freebore.
Testing loads with the gun gave groups of about 0.2 to 0.3 for the Berger 115 grain match bullets just at maximum pressure. At any higher pressures the groups opened up and primers blew out. While the gun shot great but was very twitchy with the heavy barrel and lack of with on the rear bag. None the less I took it antelope hunting and killed antelope out to 686yds and 860 yards. Based upon the wound channel of the antelope I killed at 860 yards I would guess that the gun has good killing power for another 300 to 400 yards

This winter I decide to fix the twitchiness of the gun by adding weight to the rear of the stock. I went out to the garage and got out the skillet and sheet lead I had used many years before for casting muzzle loading balls and flopped it on a camp stove out in the yard and melted it down. The first batch I managed to spill into the yard before I remembered that you do not pour the lead from the skillet into the mold but rather ladle it in. Not having an old ladle around it occurred to me that an empty beer can would work so I emptied a beer can and finally got molten lead into some aluminum tubes. I took and drilled out the stock and forced the lead cylinders in so they would not rattle around. The extra pound of weight right in the rear of the stock changes the whole feel of the gun. While the balance point only moved three inches the weight on the rear bag is noticeably better.

The point of the story is that while a heavy benchrest barrel is great it can lead to an unbalanced gun. Fluting might have been beneficial.

Hopefully this Fall I will get a few calm days in Wyoming and will extend this gun past 1K.

Here are a few pictures of the gun and the process of adding weight to the stock. You can tell the barrel contour is extreme.

[Buffalobob]

1000 yard pig gun

Last Sunday was the first real F-Class shoot at Quantico and my son had gotten home Saturday night for Spring Break.

Not being able to find a Savage F-class gun, Dave King had been willing to sell me one of his. It is a 40X single shot with a Spencer heavy barrel with a “special match” 308 chamber. There are a couple of extra barrels in 6BR. After trying an old scope which didn’t have enough elevation for the 308 even with the 20 MOA rail, I finally gave up and mounted the NF 6.5 -22 X56 on it with some high rings. This causes a problem with not being able to get a decent cheek weld with the original 40X stock. I took the load data Dave had used and loaded up a couple of truck loads of bullets.

On Saturday, I took the gun to Quantico and got it dialed in at 800 yards, 900 yards and 1000 yards as best I could with the switching wind. When I got home I cleaned it and swabbed it out with alcohol.

Sunday, we got up early and drove down to Quantico and my son was on the first relay. This was the first time he had laid eyes on the gun and the first time in his life he would shoot at something further than 200 yards with a centerfire rifle. I dialed the scope up to the correct drop and measured the wind and it was the same as on Saturday so I left the windage as it was. I explained to him as best I could, how to get the bipod under tension and how to adjust the rear rabbit ear bag to get the crosshairs on target. With a little fiddling with the focus he settled in on something he liked. I told him that he should fire his first two sighters just to foul the barrel and then began to determine if the drop data was set correctly.

At 800 yards he had unlimited sighters and 15 rounds for score. When the time began his first two shots were 10’s. Two really good shots wasted as sighters. The third sighter was also good so he began to shoot for score and only one shot was out of the black. He could hardly believe his own shooting. 900 yards was two sighters and 15 rounds and was much the same except Daddy had to open his mouth and give him bad advice which resulted in a 6. He went back to doing what he was doing and did it very well and didn’t drop many more points. At 900 he made 5 Xs of which one was a sighter. He had lucked into a steady wind condition and the bullets just seemed to be drawn to the X. What I told him when he was through was that every shot he had fired at 800 yards and 900 yards would have killed an antelope.

After 900 yards was through, I warned him that 1000 yards would not be the same as the 308 bullet was really going slow and the wind would get it when it got close to the targets. I told him that it would be the same for everyone and to just grit his teeth and shoot and not to get discouraged from his bullets landing in funny spots that it would be the same for everyone. And that is pretty much what happened. The wind just ate up the slow moving bullets. I felt bad that I had not put on a cheekpiece on the gun because it was clear from watching him shoot at 1000 yards that he was never found a comfortable position for his head and the 20 shoots for score was really bothering him. I had a DE cheek piece sitting around waiting to go on a different gun that I should have put on it.

When the day was over he had ranked 13 out of 25 shooters. That was ahead of two ex-Marine snipers. Of course the ex snipers were jsut goofing off and fireforming loads and trying out wierd guns.

The moral of this story is the target gun will be his hunitng rifle when we go to Texas in May on a special long range pig and aoudad hunt. If we have calm conditions he will be good out to 1K. The second moral of the story is that a well crafted gun and well crafted ammo and good drop charts can make a beginner look like an expert.

Here are a couple of pictures of the gun and him shooting and scoring.

The scores are listed over on Snipers Hide. I didn't shoot being as I was more concerned about making sure he had what he needed (unwanted worthless advice mostly)

[Buffalobob]

Well, it is late and I still have nto gotten to the 34 inch fluted barrel gunso I will just try to do that when I get home tomorrow.

Good night everybody. (yes - I enjoy long range rifles)

[kgoerz]

And there is the primary purpose of fluting barrels

I know you don't remember this. I used the Sniper Marksmanship class for my graded IDC presentation . You, LongRange1947 were the SME from the committee to make sure the contents of the class were correct. For the entire class I said Fluted Barrel when I should of been saying Floated or Free Floating Barrel . You never busted me out in front of the IDC instructor. You patiently waited until after the class to call me a dumb ass......LOL
Since that day I never screwed up the terminology, thanks

[longrange1947]

Never bust a fellow instructor out in front of strangers. :D

[Buffalobob]

34 inch stainless steel fluted barrel

I decide that once I retired I would take back up elk hunting so naturally I would need a new elk rifle. This gun should be capable of killing an elk cleanly at 1500 yards. Factory cartridges that filled this bill were the 30-378Wby and the 338-378. A guy in Montana was building long range rifles and had just developed a 7mm wildcat cartridge by radically “improving” the 338 Lapua magnum case and necking it down. The improved case was mated to an equally radical 200 grain rebated boattail hollow pointed bullet with a ballistic coefficient that was reported to be somewhere in the high 0.8s to low 0.9s. With a 30 inch barrel velocities were being obtained of about 3300 fps. This all worked out to enough killing power to kill elk at 1500 yards. However there were two flies in the ointment. The 338 LM like the 30-378 needs a very large bolt face action and when you seat a very long bullet it needs a very long action. Secondly, barrel life was going to be short burning 100+ grains of powder in a 0.284 bore. Two benchrest actions were suitable: Nesika Bay and Bat.

As luck would have it a guy had a Nesika M single shot action and wanted to sell it so I bought that and shipped it to the gunsmith with detailed instructions on the stock and the barrel. Despite his objections, I insisted upon a 34 inch barrel instead of the normal 30 inch barrels most people use and I wanted a #7 contour which is the usual with a 30 inch barrel. Dan Lilja just happens to make a 34 inch 1-9 twist four groove barrel and so it was decided to use that. Fortunately the Nesika action is extremely strong and would have no problem holding up a 34 inch barrel but the smith believed the #7 taper would be too flexible and wanted a #8. After he talked to Dan Lilja the two of them decided that the #8 with small flutes would work just fine and that is how I came to have a fluted barrel. I was out-voted by the barrel maker and the gunsmith. The reason I chose a 34 inch length barrel was that it would allow for at least one and maybe two setbacks if the throat got cooked faster than expected from burning all of that powder. Fluting has nothing to do with cooling the barrel of such a gun. If you ever let the barrel on such an over bore gun get hot enough to need cooling you might as well just grab a pipe wrench and screw it off because you have ruined it.

So we see in the above build that a large strong benchrest action can hold a long barrel and the fluting is more to control barrel stiffness and not needed for action flex.

Of passing note here is that Dan Lilja also makes the 50 cal barrels for the Canadian Special Forces snipers and one was used by the guy in Afghanistan to make the kill at 2,430 meters. Long fluted barrels are good for something it would appear. For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, the story is posted on Dan’s website under “50 Caliber”.


I drove out to Montana in September and picked up the gun, drove over to Idaho and did a little elk scouting and then dropped back to Wyoming and met up with my partners and shot five antelope with the other gun and then drove back to Idaho. To make a long story short, after about eight days of hunting, a six point bull elk appeared at 968 yards and I placed a bullet behind his shoulder and he went about ten yards and stopped so I dropped another round in the chamber and lined up on his shoulder bone instead of behind the shoulder and blew his whole shoulder ball socket right into his chest cavity. Below is a picture of his heart and lungs and you can see that the arteries and veins at the top of his heart are just shot to pieces. This is the kind of precision you get from a benchrest action and a benchrest quality chamber and a benchrest quality barrel- 2 rounds through the heart at 968 yards. Whether the flutes are good are bad I don’t know but the elk is sure dead.

[kgoerz]

Never bust a fellow instructor out in front of strangers.

Remember the Camo&Concealment class we had when I worked there. Might still be using it, good class. The PP had a bunch of slides showing wood lines, grassy areas, just basic landscapes. But there were snipers hidden in the pictures. The idea was when one of those slides popped up you had the students attempt to spot the sniper hidden in the photo.
I remember one new instructor giving that class. Every time one of those slides came up he was clueless as to their purpose. He just clicked past them telling the students he wasn't sure why there were pictures of trees in the presentation. "Sorry guys don't know why those are in here" CLICK. Me and DG were sitting in the back of the class in tears trying not to laugh.
We didn't know what to at first. We didn't want to bust him out in front of the students, so we made the students take a break. We explained to him what the slides were for. Classic

[Peregrino]

BB - You've got WAAAAYYYYY too much time/money on your hands. Nice discussion of your unique requirements. It's refreshing to find someone that obviously enjoys their "niche" and can explain the rationale behind the specialized tools (read - toys) to the rest of us. All to often I encounter individuals seeking to acquire similar toys that haven't got a clue other than "I saw it in a magazine". I do envy you the opportunity to play at your hobby though I think you're bragging - course it can't be bragging if it's true (can it? ;) ). Peregrino

[kachingchingpow]

Great post BB. I spend a lot of time in the woods chasing whitetailed deer, and turkey. On my 2000ac lease we have several peanut fields that we can get some long range shots over, but nothing like what you're doing. Not that the shots aren't there, just that I'm not good enough to take a 600+ yard shot on a whitetail and drop it in it's tracks, and they have a reputation of being able to run forever with anything but a "boiler-room" shot.

Those pictures were nice too. Sweet hardware. Makes my 7mm-08 Mountain Rifle look kinda y. My wife was complaining that my biceps were getting too big, so I decided to down-size to something light and fast :)

[Buffalobob]

A dead possum on the trigger

In the world of rifles, there are a very few truly skillful individuals. It is always good to remember the difference between a dead possum shooting a precision rifle and a truly skillful individual.

In the last 40 years there have been many advances in metallurgy. One can reads the thread down in edged weapons and get a reasonable idea of some of the advances in alloys and the uniformity and quality of those alloys. In the world of metal chipping devices such as lathes the improvements in the tolerances to which these machine will cut a piece of metal is simply phenomenal. The world of CNC machining has moved into the local gunshop. About three months ago I went to my gunsmith for a one of a kind gun and the need for special one of a kind base for the scope. I stand there as an engineer with a masters degree talking to a guy wearing overalls and looking like he is fixing to go out to the barn and hitch up a mule and plow the lower forty. After listening to me describe the problem with eye relief and the special cuts that need to be made in the base he remarked that it will cost a little extra because he will have to “spend an hour programming the computer”. He will take a piece of bar stock and make a totally one of a kind base just to fit my barrel which will be a one of a kind also. He once told me that the reason he bought the CNC machine and spent the time going to the programming classes was because he could not hire and keep employees who would meet the tolerances his customers wanted and needed.
I asked him how much deposit he wanted and he said what ever I wanted that he wouldn’t know what the price would be until he got to working on it. I wrote him a deposit check that was enough to prove that I wanted the gun built. I tell this story to illustrate that a really good gunsmith believes in old fashioned quality by using the most modern technology to achieve the ultimate craftsmanship.

Now then, an elk at 1K has a target kill zone of very nearly a 2MOA. An ultimate technology no expense spared gun and equipment costing about $10K is capable of say 0.3 -0.5 MOA. Even a dead possum should be able to kill an elk at that range with such a gun.

True skill is a different subject. I had perhaps 10 snipers in my platoon at one time or another. Of those, there were only two that were notable for their ability and of those two only one who was truly skilled. The one made perhaps 90% of the sniper kills. The rifle they used is best described as a National Match M-14 with a 3X-9X scope. The rifle used Lake City Match 308 and was set up to shoot out to 900 yards. Scopes were mounted in quick release rings and bases so they could be taken off easily. After years of searching I finally managed to find the Chu Lai sniper school records only to find that the records only contain the 1600 yard shoot made by an earlier rotation sniper. There is no record of the shot my sniper made that broke that record because when the marines rotated Home and the 196th Bde moved to DaNang, the sniper school was closed and only a couple of armorers were kept to maintain the weapons of the existing snipers. Nonetheless, one can consider the ballistic trajectory of a 308 round as it clears the one mile mark and the knowledge and skill required to hit a walking NVA soldier with the fourth round and to kill him with the fifth round. When the shooting was over he turned to me with a big smile on his face and said he had just broken the record Division record. All of this is with a semiautomatic rifle, factory ammo, 3X-9X scope in a quick release base.

So, in the world of long range shooting there are dead possums like me shooting state of the art guns and then there are the truly skillful shooting what they have got. It is always good to know the difference.

[HOLLiS]

BB, great post. and a enjoyable read. Elk is a very tasty animal. I live in a area where there is very little opportunity for the "long shot". Most of it is heavily wooded. I have been meaning to get to Eastern Oregon for some 1000M shooting, but with Sharps rifles using black powder.

[Team Sergeant]

I have been meaning to get to Eastern Oregon for some 1000M shooting, but with Sharps rifles using black powder.

Now that sounds like fun.;)

[HOLLiS]

Now that sounds like fun.;)

Most affirmative Team Sergeant. I am currently looking for a 45/90 Sharps, I have a 45/70 Sharps. I also have a combustible cartridge Sharps. Black powder is a blast. I have done some competition with black powder in cowboy action shooting. The most fun was from a Colt Walker and a 10 Gauge 1 1/2 oz of black powder with 2 1/2 oz of shot. The 10 Gauge made me feel like a scrawny 10 year old with his daddy's 12 gauge. It will rattle your teeth, also other shooters enjoyed the show(lots of smoke and flame).

[Buffalobob]

Hollis

If you could smack a hog or something with one of those guns out at a range of 600 to 700 yards or even to 1K that would be a really great feat. I would enjoy reading about it and seeing some pictures.

[Gene Econ]

Hollis If you could smack a hog or something with one of those guns out at a range of 600 to 700 yards or even to 1K that would be a really great feat. I would enjoy reading about it and seeing some pictures.


BB:

Sure would. I have owned a 45-90 for 25 years now. Shilo Sharps Long Range Express with traditional target sights (aperature rear / globe front). Bought it from Shilo when they were in New York and when I could get the top of their line for under $1K and have it delivered in about three weeks. Have a couple of them in different calibers.

That shot on the hog would be interesting. My best load pushes a 500 grain bore rider at about 1200 fps using a load of 80 grains of 2F (all you can fit into a case with a wad). I have duplexed and straight BP was more consistent. The TOF to 700 yards is a little over 2 seconds so one best be real good at figuring out where the animal is going to move while the bullet is in flight, then dope about a minute plus per MPH of wind. Danger space is plus or minus about five yards for a decent hit on something the size of a hog with one of these blasters at those ranges. Of course you won't see the animal with traditional iron sights unless there is a great amount of contrast between the animal and background.

I have shot this rifle from a bench at steel located at 400 meters and have had time to lean over and look through my spotting scope to see the bullet impact.

I wouldn't hunt with it as it has a 30 inch octagon barrel and target sights. I have a 50-110 Sharps that I hunt with when ever I hunt, which isn't often. That 50-110 is a real blaster. Haven't shot either for years.

Gene