Who does better handlapping?

Lilja

Ford or Chevy? If have had excellent results with both in sporter and match rifles. Lilja is usually a shorter wait.

Depends what you are going to put it on. For benchrest competition, I have had the best results with Kriger by a good margin. But if you are just building a sporting rifle, you are not likely to see the "best" a barrel is capable of. So buy whatever you are happy with and can get in the best time frame.

I the closest I have is a criterion barrel, but I have to think that anything coming out of Wisconsin is far superior to the rest of the world.

I have several Lilja barrels and one Kreiger. Both are very accurate. Can’t say which is better.

quote:

Originally posted by thecanadian:
I the closest I have is a criterion barrel, but I have to think that anything coming out of Wisconsin is far superior to the rest of the world.

Lee Reloading comes out of Wisconsin. Don't know which barrel.

In match barrels I've owned Krieger, Shaw, Bartlein, Broughton, PacNor but not a Lilja.

Of the ones that I've owned, Kriegers have been impressed me the most with accuracy, consistency, cleaning, etc.

Lothar walther or Bartlein.

I've worn out a couple Kreiger barrels in NRA Highpower...they are superb and there is nobody here or in any other discipline short of bench rest that can outshoot one. But the same could be said of the many Douglas Air Gauged barrels I wore out either...

Dan Lilja makes a damn nice barrel as well. But of course he uses a button rifle process and Kreiger uses a cut rifle process. Supposedly the cut rifle process imparts less stress to the barrel than pulling a button through it. For the vast majority of shooters its like arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. From a practical accuracy standpoint its a wash.
FWIW most bench resters use button rifle barrels.

For the money on a custom gun...I'm going with Lothar Walther. I've got two Kreiger barreled custom guns now and they are dead nuts on. But I've got factory barreled guns that will outshoot them. My Sauer 202 outshoots everything in my safe except my Cooper M21. Hell, I've got a factory Ruger Gunsite rifle that shoots cloverleafs all day long with Federal GMM. But 1/4" difference at 100 yards means nothing to me as a highpower competitor or hunter. I really couldn't care less because its of no practical value to me in the field. If you have a rifle that groups 1" vs 3/4" and miss an animal it wasn't the rifle my friend..not even at 500 yards...

I considered my Kreiger barrel match rifles exceptionally good if they could put 10 rounds into 3" at 300 yards hot, cold or in between. And they could. But so could my Douglass air gauged match barrels. The only real difference was the Kreiger cleaned up much easier. But I shot into Master Class with the Douglas barrel and won several regional and state titles with a Douglas barrel 20 or so years ago.

I think barrels from most makers are capable of better accuracy than the shooter.

Dave

Okay, here are my final choices, help me pick one to shoot 1/2" for a 375 Ruger:

- Krieger
- Lilja
- Lothar W
- Douglas

I seem to remember reading much about the superiority of the handlapping of the Lilja.

I don't mind cleaning every 30 rounds if the lapping isn't as good. Accuracy is the main priority.

I sure hope Ted Gaillard is still available for gunsmithing to install a barrel on a Sako action.

For hunting barrels; Douglas, always. Nice to deal with, fast, and shoot well. Other makers are slow and harder to deal with on custom orders. Douglas has many, probably 100, barrels programmed into their lathes; their web site is so outdated as to be useless. They have far more capability than their web site shows.
They do not lap barrels; they do not need it.

I have used barrels from Shilen, Brux, Krieger, Lilja, and even Shaw (I had my doubts). I have been happy with them all but not any happier than the factory barrel on my Savage Lapua - it popped another 1.5 inch 3 shot group at 500 yards prone on Friday.

I have or have had Douglas, Shilen, Kreiger, Lilja and Lothar Walther. I never could see that one was much better than the other.

Mark

Two factors that I consider is smoothness or finish and steel hardness.Kriegers are smooth but mediocre when it comes to hardness.Lothar Walther are smooth and hard.I never had a Lilja.Recently I put a Krieger up against a Walther Lothar through my shooting sessions.Both shot under identical conditions, same loads, same chambering, same number of rounds shot until they got very hot and they do get hot-that is how they are tested.The Walther Lothar has just now stopped shooting at 100yds.I've been shooting it weekly for about a year.I've been shooting the Krieger for about 2-3 months and it seems that it can't take the same abuse.Like the Walther,it shot very accurately at 100yds but for what seemed like a much shorter period.
I don't have anything good to say about Douglas.
I've had two Gaillards(got them both at the same time or else I would not have bought the second) and they were the softest barrels I ever shot.I won't say how long they lasted because I don't want to be laughed at.
I have Pac-nors on my Searcy 500NE double and so far they are excellent.I ordered two more for my Lotts.One of which I will try in about a weeks time.If they do good I might try one in 308 Win.
One day I would really like to try a Heym barrel.I was told by my smith that they use the hardest steel, harder than the Walther Lothar.If they are smooth too they should be great.
I would like to add that from now one I will only use CM barrels no more stainless.

Not sure what you are shooting or how much.

My experience with .308 barreled guns is they all tend to go south around the 5,200 round count plus or minus a couple hundred. We shot them hot as well. Two legs of the match are 20 rounds in two minutes total...with a reload and couple minute break for scoring in between every ten rounds. So the barrels get hot in rapid fire.

When I say go south I mean they won't hold the ten ring at 600 yards any more. You start to get fliers... The reason is the throats erode to the point that the bullet no longer enters the barrel properly aligned and very slight yaw is introduced.

Most people would never notice it at 200 or even 300 yards. But once you get to 600 it shows up. Hunting accuracy would probably remain until 10,000 rounds or so depending. So much of this is really dependant on heat and pressure and the high pressure rounds can be very hard on barrel throats.

I used, Douglas Air Gauged the most, Obermyer (When Boots built em), and Kreiger. All in all I wore out 2 Douglas barrels, 2 Kriegers and 1 Obermyer.

I had friends with guns chambered in 7mm Rem Mag and they would wear out their throats around the 2,000 round count. I've heard the 6.5 Creedmore is hard on barrels too but have no experience with it.

What I mean by hot is something in the range of 60+ rounds in 20 minutes.I am totally convinced that if you fire something like 100 rds in 10 minutes during a couple of range sessions your rifle will no longer group within a couple of inches at 100yds.That is with a new 308 barrel using starting loads.Do that a couple of more times and you will be grouping at around 5 inches at 100yds.If you get them very hot they go to shit very fast...and that is with a heavy Palma contour.

I like Lothar Walthar the best of all and that's all I use these days, have for about 30 years now, I expect 1/2 inch groups at 100 yds off a bench with a custom barrel and LW has done that for me, and others I know.

Lilja or Krieger are about equal IMO, and I liked Douglas, and Ive had good luck with both in the past..

Im a big game and varmint hunter and kinda of an accuracy freak, but not a bench rester or target shooter short of sighting in and testing handloads etc..

Real match shooters may go thru 20 barrels before settling on one, its their business and part of the expense.

I have never shot out a Lothar Walthar barrel, and I have two that must have over 3000 rounds thru them, but never let them get excessively hot, even on PD shoots, I switch guns or swab them out and let them cool..I don't abuse a barrel as a rule.

quote:

Originally posted by shootaway:
What I mean by hot is something in the range of 60+ rounds in 20 minutes.I am totally convinced that if you fire something like 100 rds in 10 minutes during a couple of range sessions your rifle will no longer group within a couple of inches at 100yds.That is with a new 308 barrel using starting loads.Do that a couple of more times and you will be grouping at around 5 inches at 100yds.If you get them very hot they go to shit very fast...and that is with a heavy Palma contour.

In a HP Match we would fire 88 rounds. 4 legs per match. Offhand slow fire 200 yards 20 rounds in 20 minutes followed by Sitting at 200 yards 2 ten shot rapid fire strings 10 shots in a minute with a few minutes in between for a reload and for the pits to score the target. 300 yards prone rapid fire--again 20 rounds in 2 minutes total. And finally 600 prone slow fire 20 shots in 20 minutes. So you end up firing 2 sighters before each leg--88 shots total. 40 of those shots are rapid fire--40 shots in 4 minutes total!

As I said before...we'd get about 5200 rounds out of our heavy match barrels before they wouldn't hold the 10 ring any more...not just me...most every serious competitor I shot with.

So the barrels get pretty hot in the middle of summer on a sunny day! And there's no question hot barrels wear faster than cool barrels. But we never saw any kind of accuracy degradation like you are describing and I've shot AR's a lot more and gotten them quite hot and you don't lose accuracy like you describe...

quote:

Originally posted by KY Nimrod:
Not sure what you are shooting or how much.

My experience with .308 barreled guns is they all tend to go south around the 5,200 round count plus or minus a couple hundred. We shot them hot as well. Two legs of the match are 20 rounds in two minutes total...with a reload and couple minute break for scoring in between every ten rounds. So the barrels get hot in rapid fire.

When I say go south I mean they won't hold the ten ring at 600 yards any more. You start to get fliers... The reason is the throats erode to the point that the bullet no longer enters the barrel properly aligned and very slight yaw is introduced.

Most people would never notice it at 200 or even 300 yards. But once you get to 600 it shows up. Hunting accuracy would probably remain until 10,000 rounds or so depending. So much of this is really dependant on heat and pressure and the high pressure rounds can be very hard on barrel throats.

I used, Douglas Air Gauged the most, Obermyer (When Boots built em), and Kreiger. All in all I wore out 2 Douglas barrels, 2 Kriegers and 1 Obermyer.

I had friends with guns chambered in 7mm Rem Mag and they would wear out their throats around the 2,000 round count. I've heard the 6.5 Creedmore is hard on barrels too but have no experience with it.

"I had friends with guns chambered in 7mm Rem Mag and they would wear out their throats around the 2,000 round count."

High master shooter Randolph Constantine puts the 300Win Mag at 500rds.This is in his book "Modern High Power Competition". The 7mmRem mag is harder on the bore.

quote:

Originally posted by ar corey:
I sure hope Ted Gaillard is still available for gunsmithing to install a barrel on a Sako action.

I'm afraid that ship has sailed. Ted hasn't made barrels for
awhile now; and his nephew Dean took over the barreling end quite some
time ago. I couldn't tell you for sure if he is still doing that work, but maybe.

Bore smoothness and ease of cleaning is a big consideration for me, although I realize it's irrational and shouldn't be that big a deal in a big game rifle. I despise cleaning barrels so much that I would likely take a 1 MOA easy cleaning barrel, over a half MOA difficult cleaning barrel (in a big game rifle's barrel). I just don't take long enough shots at big game to need 1/2 MOA. There is a 7mm-06 in my closet with a Douglas barrel that is very accurate, but rarely gets shot, because it takes forever to clean. I had a similar problem with a model 700 classic 222. It was very accurate, but hard to clean. It went down the road in favor of an equally accurate, but smooth plain jane ADL. Although I'm the first to mention this on this thread, I bet a lot of folks feel this way.

quote:

Originally posted by ar corey:
Okay, here are my final choices, help me pick one to shoot 1/2" for a 375 Ruger:

- Krieger
- Lilja
- Lothar W
- Douglas

You might go through a few barrels, no matter what brand you choose, before you meet that standard. And you better have all the I's dotted and T's crossed, in terms of the other rifle accuracy considerations, to get there. Is this going to be a typical hunting sporter with a 22-24" barrel at 8 to 9lbs bare? I don't mean to be disrespectful, but when folks start looking for match rifle accuracy for such large and powerful big game rounds, I have to just roll my eyes. I like super accuracy as much as the next guy, but it can be a tall order.

I don't consider a 1/2" group at 100 yards match grade accuracy. A good rifle smith who cuts the chamber straight is an important start. Handloading and proper action/stock fit shouldn't be a variable on this forum because everybody seems so precise.

People post pictures of their 3/8" groups many times on this forum.

Velocity is not the goal but choosing the harmonic swing of the barrel matched to the most accurate load, laddered or group fired, powder increment achieved.

ar corey,
Damn Ar you back on the bottle!

quote:

Originally posted by ColoradoMatt:

quote:

Originally posted by ar corey:
Okay, here are my final choices, help me pick one to shoot 1/2" for a 375 Ruger:

- Krieger
- Lilja
- Lothar W
- Douglas

You might go through a few barrels, no matter what brand you choose, before you meet that standard. And you better have all the I's dotted and T's crossed, in terms of the other rifle accuracy considerations, to get there. Is this going to be a typical hunting sporter with a 22-24" barrel at 8 to 9lbs bare? I don't mean to be disrespectful, but when folks start looking for match rifle accuracy for such large and powerful big game rounds, I have to just roll my eyes. I like super accuracy as much as the next guy, but it can be a tall order.

I agree; I am an accuracy fanatic for my long range guns (hey, I paid 1100 for my AMP just to get perfect neck annealing) but when it comes to my .375s and 416, 1.5 inches or less is good enough, esp with the .416.

I think I am going to choose the 340 Weatherby vs. the 375.