Sometimes I wonder if the purchase of a borescope was a blessing or a curse. I took a bbl. off of a BR rifle for a customer, after he and I both looked through the scope, and replaced it with a new Match grade SS bbl. The take off bbl. had deep, irregular etchings at various places within the first 3" of the bore, downrange of the throat. These etchings resembeled the outline of a lake as depicted on maps. I believed, at the time, that someone had left an ammonia based cleaner in the bore and, the theories about them ruining bores was true. About 6 mos. later I fitted this old, etched bbl. to my Rem. Varmint Hunter class
rifle. Well, this turned out to be the best shooting bbl. I have ever owned. It copper fouled rather badly after about ten or eleven rounds of "stout" 6PPC loads but, cleaned up with Sweets and continued to shoot "like a house on fire" for all of the 2002 IBS score season. I guess my point is, I'm not sure anyone can look through a borescope and tell how a bbl. is going to shoot. If I can find someone who can, he and I are going on the road to all the bbl. makers shops and hire on as consultants. The real test is on the range and, on the targets.

Mr. Cloward knows his shit! Listen to him and not me. Here is my (inexperienced and likely ill informed) take on Kriegers in high power. The strings of fire and the barrels tend to be longer, and the barrel profile tends to not be as fat as in some other disciplines. If the cut rifle barrel has less stressed imparted during the rifling phase of construction than a buttoned barrel, perhaps there is less of a wandering of the POI as the barrel heats. The main reason I use Krieger's is that it takes way longer to get an Obermeyer.
I have a Lilja on a 308 Ruger M-77 (old style) rifle. Yeah, the barrel cost me much more than the rifle. That is one smoooooooth barrel.

Yeah, but the problem right now is that when I shoot scoped, such as an Any/Any Prone 300/500/600 match we had recently, and a 3x600 team match the following day, I shoot ~94-95% (with a fair number of blatant screwups). Stick iron sights on the same gun w/ me behind it and I drop to low-mid 80's and no friggin idea why my shots don't go to call consistently. Obviously the *major* problem lies somewhere btwn the Peltors, but having a barrel going south ain't going to be helping matters much either. Figure I'll shoot this one some more, and in about a month or so (after I ask around a bit more and decide what profile/contour to go w/ this time around) I'll start the wheels rolling for a new barrel. Hopefully I'll be able to get it in before this one goes completely to pot, but at any rate the .308 should be up and running well before this one croaks, so I should be good to go for Prone practice at least.

Thanks,

Monte

Dunno why, but the HP scene seems really fixated on Krieger. I know they make a good barrel, but you'd think the sun rose and set w/ them. Not sure why you see that phenomenon so much in HP vs BR where it seems like anything that will shoot has a following.



The barrel on the 6.5-08 now is a Pac-Nor. Not a bad barrel (first custom one), but it's never been quite the 'hammer' I though it would (even from a bench, etc.) and has always, always copper fouled pretty bad (still shot the same fouled or not, so thats good I guess). Lilja seems to have a reputation in the HP scene for being accurate, but not lasting too long (just what I've been hearing).



I've been hearing such rave reviews of the new Broughton barrels used in 1k BR and F-class that I'm really leaning hard towards them for the 'new' barrel.



Oh, forgot to mention... spoke w/ the gunsmith (Cloward) this afternoon about what he thought of this. He also leaned towards not worrying too much about what the borescope looked like until the barrel actually started acting flaky, and seemed to think what I described was about normal for a 6.5-08 about 2/3 of the way thru its useful life (~3200rds he said).



Thanks,



Monte

I assume you "call" your shots./ When the barrel is putting wholes different from your call change the barrels out.

I personally won't compete with a rifle or barrel which doesn't put the shots where I expect. When it's all said and done attending a weekend match costs me at least 300.00. If spending another 300 will make the difference between leaving the range happy or glum, then I'll go ahead and spend it. I can live with being caught by the wind (it happens often enough that I should be used to it!)but I positively hate it when I lose points through no fault of my own. Regards, Bill.