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]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

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

TR

And there is the primary purpose of fluting barrels.

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]

Originally Posted by longrange1947

And there is the primary purpose of fluting barrels.

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]

Originally Posted by 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 .

A 30-34 inch barrel?

Are we talking .50 BMG or black powder here?

TR

[longrange1947]

Originally Posted by 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 .

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]

Originally Posted by Buffalobob

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.