I am by far not a full-time shooter,but can't understand the fact that people who have been shooting for many years do so with their eyes closed and can't determine which barrels are better.

Lilja!!

I'll second Celt 100%. Presently, I own 2 Lothar Walther barrels. One, heavy, fluted, on my Blaser R93 in .222 Rem.:

, the other one on a Win 70 in .338 WM :

Apart from being most accurate, they share the same cleaning facility. Copper fouling disappears with a simple brushing with regular carbon solvent.

Well I was going to purchase a Kreiger barrel but they told me that they don't offer or release a SS barrel in a hunting contour dimension.
So now I'm trying find other makers of cut rifled SS barrel, any suggestion?

Dan at Cutrifle.com builds great barrels. We have 4 from .458 down to 30'06 all shoot under an inch.

Walthar Lothar is the best I have bought.

Shilen is very good. I just got another.

I will never buy another Adams and Bennet [Midway], some are so rough in that it takes 4 shots for copper fouling.

Shootaway,
The thing is, there is more to an accurate rifle than the barrel although the barrel is certainly a major factor. To get a realistic comparison of barrels one would need to use many barrels from each maker since individual barrels, even from the best makers, vary in potential. These barrels would have to be fitted to a good return to battery unlimited rifle, each one chambered precisely the same and for the same cartridge. Testing would have to take place in a tunnel and a sufficient number of groups fired to establish the potential of each barrel. In order for the tests to be valid, a sampling of various bullet types would have to be used since each barrel might show a preference.
The point is, all the good barrels are so good it is hard to say one is definitely better.
Presently, the BR shooters are favoring;
Hart (a perennial favorite)
Shilen
Krieger
Lilga
Pac-Nor
Schnieder
Add to this the occasional Douglas, K&P, Badger etc. etc.
The Lothar Walther barrel, while they are fine barrels, have not been well received by the BR crowd. If they lived up to the brochure, no one would use anything else! Regards, Bill.

IMHO, the big thing with Lothar Walthar is for $140 wholesale, I have a factory hand lapped barrel that is more than twice as accurate as my other 50 rifles.

I probably could have paid $240 and got a hand lapped Shilen and had the same experince. The point is, as someone climbs the price ladder, WL is the first great barrel one reaches.

I saw that lilja borescope video and can't beleieve that is really a remington barrel shown.Is it possible that is a barrel thrown away by remington?The barrel seems permanently damaged.Will it get smoother after a while,and look more like the lilja?Why doesn't lilja use a 7mm on the barrel used to compare to the remington?

After having used them all for many years, I have no doubt in my mind that Lothar Walther is the best barrel that has ever been produced....

Where do you order a LW barrel? Do they do action work like Pac-Nor?

Pasted from jeffeosso's tag line:
Why do Scot's wear Kilts? Because it's far easier to run with your Kilt Up, than with your pants down...

That's funny.....I was told it was because sheep could hear a zipper a mile away!!

[ 01-22-2003, 12:19: Message edited by: Nebraska ]

I have got .224, .257, and 270 Lothar Walthar barrels at Brownell's.
They never carried the full line, and have even less now.

Try this:

Lothar Walthar Precision Tools
3425 Hutchinson Rd
Cumming, GA 30040

Phone 770-889-9998
e-mail lotharwalthar@mindspring.com

I've never used one of their barrels and I don't know if they do action work, but this is how to get in touch with their U.S. agent.

Walther does not do any action work or gunsmithing. They leave that to the smiths they sell barrels to.

They are great people to work with, friendly and will tell you anything you want to know about their barrels.

Celt

Thanks guys!

Celt...would you mind sending me your contact info?

For those of you that mentioned Greg Richards in New Mexico, I had him put together a rifle for me a couple of years ago using one of his barrels. I have not shot it for awhile (I have too many rifles) and after reading this thread I decided to take it to the range today to get it dialed in for an upcoming pig hunt.

The rifle is a stainless Winchester M70 action (with claw extractor) chambered in 300 Win Mag. It has a McMillan stock, Jewell trigger and is topped with a Leica 3.5-10x scope. I told Greg I wanted it to mainly shoot 200 grain Nosler Partitions and Swift A-Frames. Greg said to use 80 grains of H-1000 with a 200 grain bullet and go hunting.

This rifle has always shot incredibly well, and again, I have not shot this rifle for over a year at least. Last night I loaded up some 200 grain Swift A-Frames with 80 grains of H-1000, Federal cases, CCI large rifle magnum primers, at 3.340" OAL.

Got it to the range this morning and out of a cold, cleaned, lightly oiled barrel, I shot 3 rounds at 100 yards that were all touching and landed 2" high of the bullseye at 100 yrds. In fact, at first glance, it looks like two bullet holes touching and when you look closer you can see that it is three.

I continued on (without really letting the barrel cool down) and shot the next two rounds at my 200 yard target. Those two shots with just about touching each other as well in addition to touching the upper left hand corner of the bullseye at 200 yards.

These rounds (200 grain Swift A-Frame) all chronographed right about 2,850 fps, which is not screaming fast, but with that accuracy, who cares?

Also, this rifle is a dream to clean. Heck, you can run a brush down it a few times and it is absolutely clean, no copper at all.

It is too bad Greg is not making those barrels any longer, I sure got a good one.

If anyone is interested and can tell me how to post some photos (or will post them for me), I will take a picture of the rifle and the two targets.

By the way, I am currently having a 7x57 mauser built on a Pre-64 M70 action with a Lothar Walter barrel (bought from Brownells). My gunsmith said it is one of the best barrels he has ever seen, and he has been in the business for a very long time. The rifle will be bedded in a Borden/Rimrock black featherweight stock for hunting and I am also having a beautiful custom English walnut stock made for show and the range.

Tim

Shootaway,

Precision Shooting magazine publishes benchrest match reports which often have lists of equipment used. Just looking over a few issues, I see Hart, Shilen, Lilja, PacNor, Schneider, and Kreiger frequently listed as well as some others.

All of the benchrest guys are shooting top of the line equipment, and shooting the tiniest groups usually depends on who reads the wind the best on a given day. It's either that or who forgot to have decaf instead of regular coffee in the morning.

Among the highpower and palma shooters, Kreiger seems to be popular as well as all of the above brands.

Tony Boyer, who is one of the top benchrest shooters around, shoot Shilens. He will get several (like 10 or more) and then pick the best shooting 1 or 2 barrels for the big matches.

I seem to recall David Tubb uses Schneider barrels.

It would be really hard to do a statistically valid test of all the barrel brands, due to the number of barrels that would have to be used, the difficulty in isolating other variables involved (bullets, powder, primers, brass), not to mention the cost.

Steve

It seems that all these barrels are very good,and that the quality of each individual barrel from any make varies along with the skill of the shooter.

Shilen