How long do you like the barrel to be on big bore rifles? I'm planning on getting a 26'' barrel on my 600 Overkill because i want to get all the velocity i can out of the cartridge and the rifle will mainly just be used for shooting and not so much for hunting except maybe for the occasional hog hunt. If i was going to use it mainly for hunting i'd probably get a 24'' barrel.

for shooting only, length doesn't matter. Why not go
28"? The targets won't mind.

for hunting, Michael B&M fame would argue for 18" to 20".

When ordering a 500 AccRel this Fall my son and I went around and around on the barrel, with him suggesting longer than 20" and the barrelmaker agreeing. So I compromised on a 22". The rifle will be light enough that I think that I will be able to live with such a 'long' barrel. Most of my previous rifles were 24" and 25" and those ordering factory CZ will get 25".

Well, I'm going with an 18" barrel on my 600 Overkill. It's just going to be a fun gun though, so I'm not going for maximum velocity. I think my 458 Lott and 460 Weatherby both have 24" barrels and they look pretty good.

26" seems a little long to me. Big bore straight wall cartridges don't gain a lot of velocity with a longer barrel. Of course every little bit helps right?

I have 375 H&H's with 19 3/4" barrels and my 450 No2 has a 28" barrel.

Here is one thing to consider, if you are going to use the rifle with iron sights, depending on your eyes, the longer the barrel, with the rear sight a little farther down the barrel, can make a BIG difference in how clear the iron sights are.

Tony, thanks for the tip...I think I need 60" barrels! :-)

My 602 375 has a 21" barrel as does my 550 416Rigby. I find them easy to carry and manuever with and nice to have when in the truck. I ALWAYS carry my rifle ,I never have once put it in a rack on safari. Muzzle blast may be excessive but I don't target shoot with either one and when I DO shot from the bench I wear protection. The minute amount of velocity I lose makes not one iota of difference to the game I have shot with them. Dead is Dead. Why 21" , I have absolutely no idea it just sounded like a good length.

I have them from 16 to 28" on different guns. Obviously the shorter ones are easier to handle, but velocities suffer a measurable amount.

When the bore size gets up to 40 cal and above, I think barrel length boils down to personal preference. This subject has been trounced, run over, stomped on, whizzed on and shat upon so much it's almost painful to think about.

Shorter barrels cost velocity and lower velocity cost ENERGY...when it comes to hammering some toothy beasty, MORE IS BETTER.

There is a couple hundred years worth of evidence that LARGE, HEAVY BULLETS kill large mean things.

The smaller cals use velocity to help the bullets to EXPAND...meaning GET BIGGER...if you START OUT with a big bullet then you don't really need velocity to cause expansion...but you DO NEED velocity for the physics side of the equation to produce the energy that drives that big bullet into the right place and MAKES A BIG HOLE.

Think of bullet energy like torgue...you might have a screamin' high HP engine, but you need TORQUE to keep the wheels turning and to maintain that HP...that's what velocity does to bullets...it produces the energy that drives big bullets through thick skin, heavy muscle and big bones.

Energy develops at the SQUARE of the velocity which means when you loose velocity you loose energy by the square also...just check out your favorite shooter and see what loosing just 100fs does to the energy. Not many consider this minor fact when talking about chopping off the favorite "shooter".

But all that doesn't mean much because BIG GUNS, drive BIG BULLETS fast enough to kill ANYTHING that walked the earth for the past few millenia.

Just look at the results of JDJ's and other PISTOLS with 6-16 bbls and what animals even a mediocre pistolero have taken.

How many bison have been taken with ~500gr bullets at 1500fs or less and the bullets went completely through from nose to tail?

My 50-90 Sharps spits 600 gr bullets from a 30" bbl at very high velo's and energy at much lower pressures than if it were 20" long...and the extra weigh out front helps with keeping the muzzle down and soak up some of the recoil.

Pick the barrel length that suits your shooting style, weapon balance, visual balance and go have fun...ain no thang, Bro'.

Luck

Kind of depends on what you are client or guide ... If you're going in the thick stuff regularly after wounded dangerous stuff, a shorter barrel is a great advantage, and a shorter sight radius for open sights isn't going to hurt you at 15 feet. If you're a client and like the balance of a longer barrel and the extra bit of velocity, go longer.

Remington produced a formula to calculate the loss in normal barrel/bore combinations. I'll see if I can find my copy of it. I believe they used 24" as a 'standard 'barrel length and If memory serves me (which it quite often doesn't) the loss in a 375H&H was around 30fps per inch which means I loose 90fps with my 21" barrels. With a270gr bullet that equates to about 300ft lbs of energy still leaving the 375 at 4000ft lbs. To me that is negligable. To some it won't be. I have bet my life on it and would do it again.

Shorter barrels kick harder too! My rifles have 22" to 25" barrels, except for the 30-30 which is 20".

I have talked to a few different big bore builders, and anything over 22 inches for a 500Jeffery and up does not get you much--other than some balance issues.

505Ed

quote:

Originally posted by 505ED:
I have talked to a few different big bore builders, and anything over 22 inches for a 500Jeffery and up does not get you much--other than some balance issues.

505Ed

Mine has a 24" barrel and I agree with 505ED. A 22" barrel would be handier in the thick stuff. Balance and sufficient weight to reduce recoil is always an issue to consider as well with the big 50s. As far as velocity goes, my load is a 570g TSX using 103g H4895 (a fairly fast powder) so I wouldn't expect more than a 40 fps velocity loss going from 24" to 22"

It makes absolutly no difference in killing power except on paper and in some rags..A 416 at 2400 or 2600 kills the same..end of story.

The difference in 20 inches and 26" is a mere 6 inches and I can think of only a few instances in life where 6 inches makes any difference..

Some say the thick bush negates long tubes, that is bunk..I have hunted the thickest Jesse with a 26 tube..You can never tell where interveneing brush might hit your barrel, it might mess up a 18 inch barrel as well as a 28 inch, just depends on where that stick is at the time..just BS....

I like a barrel that points and feels good that is a bit heavy out front to settle it down faster for off hand and snap shooting...A bit thicker 20 inch tube will balance about like a thinner 26 inch tube and both are great for off hand shooting if balanced to suit your style..I have both, I like both.

Bottom line, nothing changes with barrel length, just us, and our likes and dislikes.