I am looking at chopping my CZ 452 rifle barrel from 16" to 12" and wondered if anyone out there has carried out a similar exercise to their rifle and if so did you notice any down side to doing so?

Any experiences of this greatfully recieved.

maximum velocity with a 22 short is obtained witha 8" barrel. 22lr max vel. needs a 16" barrel. the BATFE will want to talk with you about a 12" rifle. there have been tests on this in the past starting with a 30" barrel and cutting one inch off at a time. i will see if i can find that article. seems like pb sharpe did one.

His location says England.

From what you say then sub sonic ammo which is what I use all the time would probably be ok in a 12 inch barrel.

I found this article on one of our UK sites by a guy that has a very good reputation over here.

He says 14 inch is fine and I suspect a little shorter wouldn't make a great deal of difference

http://www.shootingtimes.co.uk...LR_rifle_review.html

I am shooting a T/C Contender Handgun with a 14" Barrel in .22 LR. This is the most accurate .22 LR I have ever had bare none.

The strange part is when shooting Remington Bulk Hollow Points this 14" Barrel actually produces higher velocity than any of the 20" or 24" .22 LR Barrels I have ever chronographed this ammo in.

Larry

If I am not mistaken, cutting the barrel from 16" will make it an illegal weapon under BATF rules. If your weapon was an original handgun such as a Contender or Encore, you can legally have a shorter than 16" barrel. If it is a serial# that left the factory as a rifle you cant do it even though it looks exactly like the pistol frame version. Then there are the infinite descriptions of stock length , yada, yada, yada that they have. Chop at your own risk.

Estacado

Estacado

I live in the UK where legal minimum is 12 inches.

SD handgunner

Your findings do not surprise me.

I would have no hesitation chopping to 14 inches as I had an Anschutz carbine a few years ago and performance was not affected one bit with a 14 inch barrel. I am deliberating over to go another 2 inches to what is the legal minimum here.

I have found out that the Anschutz has a smooth bore .75 inches from the muzzle so effectively only has 13.25 inches of rifling and this was one of the most accurate .22's I have had. So going off that I would be safe to go down to 13.25 without a lack of performance (that's my theory anyway).

Thanks

And in NZ, the barrel can be any length so long as the total length of the stocked rifle is 762mm - 30 inches - or greater - 14" barreled .303 rifles were sold to those who wanted them for a pig hunting rifle or just a handy bush rifle - firing one at night tended to light up the countryside. Below that it is classed as a pistol and you must be licensed to own a pistol.

As to the cutting the barrel question, I have just been reading an article in Precision Shooting- Special 2 Vol 2 1994 - where a .22 was cut to 14", Federal 711 velocities were,
27" barrel - 1093, 26" - 1114, 25" - 1127, 24" -1140, 23" - 1133, 22" - 1130, 21" - 1128, 20" -1125, 19" - 1131, 18" - 1142, 17" - 1143, 16" -1145, 15" - 1144, 14" - 1139.

About 5 years ago I had a custon pistol built to use in testing for 22 benchrest. It is a 40x sized xp-100 bushed to make bbl changing easy. The bbl was an .870 dia. Anchutz with a coned breach which finally ended at 8". My goal was to find out about max spread and deviation, and if you would still need a tuner on a short bbl.I was shooting wolf match extra. When I got down below 15" the deviation dropped to a max of 7fps. A tuner below 14" showed no improvement. I believ that the perfect length is somewhere between 11 and 13" it is here that max dev was the lowest. Acurracy never realy improved below 12". I lost intest after about 3 months and now the gun just sits in the safe