OK: Who has comments on the types of rifling
involved in modern rifles? I have some that are
"hammer forged", "button rifled" (most) and cut rifled. Does anyone think one is superior to the other, in terms of accuracy, ease of cleaning, etc?
I suppose even barrel makers have their valued opinions...but what do you guys think?
I hold my opinion until later.
Best Regards,
Tom

quote:

Originally posted by bisonland:
OK: Who has comments on the types of rifling
involved in modern rifles? I have some that are
"hammer forged", "button rifled" (most) and cut rifled. Does anyone think one is superior to the other, in terms of accuracy, ease of cleaning, etc?
I suppose even barrel makers have their valued opinions...but what do you guys think?
I hold my opinion until later.
Best Regards,
Tom

The cut-rifled guys say cut rifling is best, the button rifling guys say...well, I think you get the idea.

Like most things it’s not so much the actual procedure used as it is the quality control and attention to detail that makes a Krieger a Krieger, and a Shilen a Shilen, etc.

I have a fair amount of expirence manucaturing hammer forged, broach cut, and button rifling barrels. A book could be written about each process. Do you have a specific question? If you are looking for general info I'd suggest doing some research first then come back to have the holes filled in.
What I can tell you right off, is attention to the roughed bore before each rifleing process can make or break the whole thing. The initial hole has to be straight, smooth & round. And each process has its own set of requirments for what staight,smooth and round mean. Hammer forging is quite tolerant of initial size but is very dependant on initial finish, if the hole is rough the tooling marks show as dark bands and can be microspic waves. Button rifleing requires accurate size but is more tolerant of initial finishing as the material is displaced and reamer markes smoothed as the button is dragged through. Too tight a hole and the button snaps off, too large a hole and the groove dia is not sized properly. Broach cut is more tolerant of initial size and finish as the first broach cleans up the gun drill and ream operations. Cut broach is generally resticted to hand guns barrles do to the length of the broaches and nmachines becomeing un wieldy after much more than 10" of barrel length.
Single point cut rifling is highly dependent on size and finish of the initial hole as that is the finished bore.

Most factory rifles are "hammer-forged," which sounds great, and is actually not too bad a way to do it. It doesn't usually result in barrels as fine as well-done cut- or button-rifled barrels, but most factory barrels these days are capable of MOA accuracy, so how bad can it be?. The main disadvantage of hammer-forging is the high cost of the equipment to do it, limiting it to the major builders.

Jaywalker

Hammerforged barrels are god for massproductions, with not to high expectations for accurasy, and concistency.
Minimum materialcosts, as they can be hammered to final inner and outercuonture.
possible to make chocked barrels
DISATVANTAGES:
problems with straightnes, and internal stress, when straightened, as most producers does, one gets locally twistrate errors.
No flexibility in production


Buttonrifeled barrels.
Medium productioncost, Low investment,poor to exelent accuracy(Rusty Marlin stated some of the problems)
Might have problems when finaly outer contured, if not properly heattreated. Might have twistrate variations along the barrel, might have excentric spots along the rifeling.
Often used in the relative soft SS.
But basically one of the 2 best teckniques

Cutrifeled barrels
Singlepoint cut (mostly US and UK) Dualpoint cut European mainland
Labue and material expencive proces, with high demands for craftmanship, relatively expencive mashinery, unless new produced numericcontrolled machines or surpluss.
Singlepoint cutting is faster, but not so flexible
Dualpoint scrapecutters, slow, but extremely flexible, both on Twist and diameter, (can be used in groowes, and on the lands, to make excakt the diameter you wants)
When performed qualifyed probably the most concistent accuracy(specialy when properly and systematicaly lapped)(lapping can be performed to make a chock, for longer lifetime and less foulingsencibility)

You can make great barrels with all the manufacturing methods mentioned. There is certainly no clear-cut winner between cut or buttoned custom barrels. If there was, all the BR shooters would be shooting one type of barrel or the other.

This article from Border Barrels might be of interest, though

- mike

I can only advice to read the previus mentioned link to border barrel.
He is a god colegue and also a tough compeditor

I generaly agree on most of what he sais, eksept on chocking barrels. It might be because he meashures to the Benchrest marked, and not so mutch to UIT competitions, where foulingtolerence, and barrellifetime is of mutch higher importance

Thanks! The Border Barrels article is enlightening.
Best Regards,
Tom

Jorgen, Rusty, et al:
It might be of interest that I have an original
Newton/Pope Barrel on one of my Newton Rifles that had never been used or shot through..until I used it. In new condition. The barrel has an unusual type of rifling designed by the famed Harry Pope for Newton. The rifling is rounded, most perhaps like a 2 groove barrel with rounded edges...it was supposed to be an "oval bore" type barrel, but the cutters were wrong...so Pope altered it some.
Anyway, it was very interesting to me to see how this odd rifled, vintage barrel (1918 probably) would shoot. It shoots very accurately in the 6.5 (.256 Newton cartridge). The best part of it is (that I like!) is the barrel cleans more easily than standard rifling types. (Which is what Newton claimed & it's true). Its simply the easiest cleaning barrel I have ever used due to its rifling form.
Best Regards,
Tom

quote:

Originally posted by bisonland:
Jorgen, Rusty, et al:
It might be of interest that I have an original
Newton/Pope Barrel on one of my Newton Rifles that had never been used or shot through..until I used it. In new condition. The barrel has an unusual type of rifling designed by the famed Harry Pope for Newton. The rifling is rounded, most perhaps like a 2 groove barrel with rounded edges...it was supposed to be an "oval bore" type barrel, but the cutters were wrong...so Pope altered it some.
Anyway, it was very interesting to me to see how this odd rifled, vintage barrel (1918 probably) would shoot. It shoots very accurately in the 6.5 (.256 Newton cartridge). The best part of it is (that I like!) is the barrel cleans more easily than standard rifling types. (Which is what Newton claimed & it's true). Its simply the easiest cleaning barrel I have ever used due to its rifling form.
Best Regards,
Tom

Without knowing exactly how this barrel looke, but from what you describe, it has a slight familiarity to polygonal rifeling, but more extrem.
My expirience from polygonal barrels, is that they, because of lack of sharp corners, is quite easy to clean, at least according to powderresidues. They often deliveres a higher preasure, because no gass is leacking past the bullet.
The polygonal shape seems to have extrem lifetime.

The disadvantage og those "float forming" rifelings, is that they dont work well with solid bullets, or bullets with deviding wall.

quote:

Originally posted by jørgen:
Hammerforged barrels are god for massproductions, with not to high expectations for accurasy, and concistency.

Jorgen, True in general perhaps but the two most accurate rifles I own - Sako TRG-22 and TRG-42 have hammer forged barrels. I've beaten full blown benchrest rifles in a couple matches with them. How common are TRG-22's in UIT matches?....................DJ

IIRC,
ALL ruger barrels are hamemr forged, and they had a bad spot in their past for junk barrels.

Shilen's rifles are all button. Been to their shop. Shilen barrels are what all others are judged against, in the US benchrest circles

Cut rifles, from a great maker, may have a smaller average group size than most other rifles, from other makers, except shilen.

So, the answer is what QUAILTY maker are you buying a barrel from, not what means of rifling

jeffe

quote:

Originally posted by Rusty Marlin:
Button rifleing requires accurate size but is more tolerant of initial finishing as the material is displaced and reamer markes smoothed as the button is dragged through.

Know a gunsmith who was having trouble chambering a buttoned barrel, bore seemed too tight, rang manafacture who was supposed to have said their tollerance was about (by memory) 3 thou. due to the metal "springing".

Would this be right?? Seems you could get a 224 barrel at about 221?

Good relies on this subject. I have only 2 rifles that have "hammerforged" barrels...both are CZ
rifles. Accurate enough for me, but their good attribute is they are the easiest barrels to clean
(except for the Newton barrel which is in a class of itself for easy cleaning!).
It may be that CZ makes smoother barrels..all I know is that they are easier to clean than my other rifles with button rifling and cut rifling.
Best Regards,
Tom

It is almost unfair to compare factory to custom barrels - after all, it would be unusual for factory barrels to recieve the attention (lapping, verification of dimensions) which custom barrels do. Additionally, whether a barrel is deemed "accurate" really depends on the application: a 1/2" hunting barrel is something to rejoice about, but would be a reject in many competitive shooting sports. Since hammer forged barrels are exclusively factory barrels, they often get a bad reputation compared to either buttoned or cut barrels.

However, I think it is fair to observe that 1) just like there are varying qualities of custom barrels, hammer forged barrels also come in varying quality, and 2) with the right care taken in production, hammer forged barrels can be surprisingly accurate.

Case in point: one of the most accurate factory rifles ever to come onto the market was the Sako A1 single shot in 6mm PPC (plus a few on the A1 predecessor action: L461). These rifles routinely shoot aggregates in the .3s (and perhaps even in the .2s). No, they would probably not be competitive in todays BR scene, but they were and are accurate rifles, no doubt about it. What is more, at least on the specimen I have, the barrel cleans up with surprisingly little effort, in particular for a CM barrel. All of these rifles have hammer forged barrels, so per se there is nothing stopping hammer forged barrels from being of high quality.

Another example is Blaser, who currently manufactures all its match barrels by hammer forging. A lot of people may not like the various design features of the Blasers, but I doubt anybody could deny them basic accuracy - certainly for a factory rifle.

All this just to remind us, that even the lowly hammer forged barrel may do very well if produced right.

- mike