Mikecr
Well-Known Member
If it's clean, nothing wrong other than burnt out, Replace it. Don't waste a minute on it.
A barrel that may be shot out?
- Thread starter LISBON
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It might be worth considering for fire forming since 28N seems to be a barrel killer.
Fiftydriver
Official LRH Sponsor
As a barrel ages, it can change its personality as to what bullets it will shoot well and the velocity it can produce to some degree, however, this can be adjusted for. A barrel will get a rougher bore surface as its used. Often times, if a relatively thin jacketed bullet is being used, this rougher bore surface can generate more heat in the bullet. Which in turn can weaken the bond between the jacket and the core of the bullet. When this happens, accuracy often drops off, sometimes marginally, sometimes dramatically. The larger the round, the longer the heavier the bullet and the faster the velocity, the more you will see this. Other factors such as baring surface compression play a huge roll in this as well.
an example of this was back when i released my 7mm Allen Magnum. I was then working with Lilja barrels to make me a barrel specifically designed to shoot the then prototype 200 gr uld rbbt from Wildcat bullets. These were things that had not been done before that time, bullets this heavy in a 7mm and driven to the speeds i was hoping for which was initially 3200 fps. In reality we went well over this. As such, i asked Lilja to make me THE barrel for this application.
the result was an 8 twist, 3 groove barrel that showed up. Initial testing went very well and we even pushed 3300 fps with fine accuracy. Orders started rolling in after these results were reported and before i new it i had dozens of rifles out to customers……
then the issues started showing up with accuracy problems after 100-150 rounds or so. Inspecting these rifles showed some roughness in the bore for sure and it was clear that the 200 gr bullets were not liking these barrels. The 200 gr 7mm was built on the berger J4 jacket.
I took these returned rifles and tested them with other bullets and found that with a HARDER bullet such as the 160 gr accubond or a very hard bullet, like the barnes TTSX bullets, accuracy returned to its original 1/2 moa or better levels and velocity was still extremely impressive. So much so that about half of the customers with these early rifles simply choose to shoot the harder bullets and loved the results.
still, this was not what this chambering was designed for. I wanted extreme BC, with very high velocity for ballistic performance not seen before or rarely since.
so i decided to test several barrels to see what different twist rates and what different rifling design would do with these extreme bullets. tested barrels from Pac nor, broughton, rock creek, krieger and Lilja. Do not think bartlein was around at that time.
tested 4 groove, 5 gr, 6 gr, standard rifling, canted rifling, radiused rifling. Also kept track of the baring surface compression of each barrel type, this being the amount of the bullet baring surface that was being compressed by the lands of the rifling.
was truly a monster testing process which as a relatively new shop was pretty hard on me financially but needed to find out what was happening.
in the end, it was found that in my 7mm Allen Mag, in a cut rifled barrel, even a standard 9 twist would keep these 200 gr bullets on point out to well past 1000 yards with fine consistency. With a button pulled barrel, the rifling true pitch can often be a bit shallower then advertised so we stayed with the 8 twist on these barrels which often had a true twist rate of around 8.25" twist. However, baring surface compression was a huge issue. Anything over 20-21% baring surface compression would start to cause failures in flight after the barrels had 100 or so firings on them.
the number of rifling did not seem to matter nearly as much as the width of the lands as far as accuracy and consistency were concerned.
however its a fine line we walk to get precision and then as much barrel life as possible. this is why lilja had recommended the 3 groove barrels because they have very wide lands which should resist erosion much longer then thin lands would for longer barrel accuracy life. Walking a tight rope!!!
in the end, paid lilja to set up with a custom button to make a specially designed 4 groove barrel and those for the most part worked well. In 2013-2015, i transitioned to bartlein barrels, simply because they are the best all around barrels i have used. Accurate as any out there, good life, faster then most and a great group of guys to work with.
in your case, your accuracy issues may or may not represent a need to change the barrel. As mentioned, a good proper cleaning could make a huge difference, i have had dozens of 257 wby rifles brought to the shop with burnt out barrels and after a few days removing a few pennies worth of copper fouling the rifles shot just fine.
in your situation, that may also be the case. depending on the bullet your shooting now, you may need to change to a bit harder bullet. Many times this will give you much more usable barrel life and today there are many good options for hard bullets then there was back then.
if you do need to replace the barrel, that carbon fiber is hard to swallow price wise for sure. This is generally why i tell customers or potential customers of my rifles that while carbon looks nice and will save some weight, you can often buy two stainless barrels for the price of one carbon wrapped barrel and barrel life with the carbon will be no different then the all steel if both are made from the same steel alloy.
i would do some testing before you committed right to a new barrel, there could be significant life left in your barrel…..
an example of this was back when i released my 7mm Allen Magnum. I was then working with Lilja barrels to make me a barrel specifically designed to shoot the then prototype 200 gr uld rbbt from Wildcat bullets. These were things that had not been done before that time, bullets this heavy in a 7mm and driven to the speeds i was hoping for which was initially 3200 fps. In reality we went well over this. As such, i asked Lilja to make me THE barrel for this application.
the result was an 8 twist, 3 groove barrel that showed up. Initial testing went very well and we even pushed 3300 fps with fine accuracy. Orders started rolling in after these results were reported and before i new it i had dozens of rifles out to customers……
then the issues started showing up with accuracy problems after 100-150 rounds or so. Inspecting these rifles showed some roughness in the bore for sure and it was clear that the 200 gr bullets were not liking these barrels. The 200 gr 7mm was built on the berger J4 jacket.
I took these returned rifles and tested them with other bullets and found that with a HARDER bullet such as the 160 gr accubond or a very hard bullet, like the barnes TTSX bullets, accuracy returned to its original 1/2 moa or better levels and velocity was still extremely impressive. So much so that about half of the customers with these early rifles simply choose to shoot the harder bullets and loved the results.
still, this was not what this chambering was designed for. I wanted extreme BC, with very high velocity for ballistic performance not seen before or rarely since.
so i decided to test several barrels to see what different twist rates and what different rifling design would do with these extreme bullets. tested barrels from Pac nor, broughton, rock creek, krieger and Lilja. Do not think bartlein was around at that time.
tested 4 groove, 5 gr, 6 gr, standard rifling, canted rifling, radiused rifling. Also kept track of the baring surface compression of each barrel type, this being the amount of the bullet baring surface that was being compressed by the lands of the rifling.
was truly a monster testing process which as a relatively new shop was pretty hard on me financially but needed to find out what was happening.
in the end, it was found that in my 7mm Allen Mag, in a cut rifled barrel, even a standard 9 twist would keep these 200 gr bullets on point out to well past 1000 yards with fine consistency. With a button pulled barrel, the rifling true pitch can often be a bit shallower then advertised so we stayed with the 8 twist on these barrels which often had a true twist rate of around 8.25" twist. However, baring surface compression was a huge issue. Anything over 20-21% baring surface compression would start to cause failures in flight after the barrels had 100 or so firings on them.
the number of rifling did not seem to matter nearly as much as the width of the lands as far as accuracy and consistency were concerned.
however its a fine line we walk to get precision and then as much barrel life as possible. this is why lilja had recommended the 3 groove barrels because they have very wide lands which should resist erosion much longer then thin lands would for longer barrel accuracy life. Walking a tight rope!!!
in the end, paid lilja to set up with a custom button to make a specially designed 4 groove barrel and those for the most part worked well. In 2013-2015, i transitioned to bartlein barrels, simply because they are the best all around barrels i have used. Accurate as any out there, good life, faster then most and a great group of guys to work with.
in your case, your accuracy issues may or may not represent a need to change the barrel. As mentioned, a good proper cleaning could make a huge difference, i have had dozens of 257 wby rifles brought to the shop with burnt out barrels and after a few days removing a few pennies worth of copper fouling the rifles shot just fine.
in your situation, that may also be the case. depending on the bullet your shooting now, you may need to change to a bit harder bullet. Many times this will give you much more usable barrel life and today there are many good options for hard bullets then there was back then.
if you do need to replace the barrel, that carbon fiber is hard to swallow price wise for sure. This is generally why i tell customers or potential customers of my rifles that while carbon looks nice and will save some weight, you can often buy two stainless barrels for the price of one carbon wrapped barrel and barrel life with the carbon will be no different then the all steel if both are made from the same steel alloy.
i would do some testing before you committed right to a new barrel, there could be significant life left in your barrel…..
Fiftydriver
Official LRH Sponsor
Is your 28 a factory rifle or full custom?
As a fellow connoisseur of speed, I think it would be illuminating to all if you were to share just what percentage of your customers have actually burned out a barrel.
A ratio of rifles sold, to legitimately burned out barrels replaced… will likely shock most folks.
We sell no shortage of barrel eaters, and to date, we've rebarreled 2 customers guns, in nearly 14 years. Yet repeat business is very very strong and increasing. Always new guns, never rebarreling old.
Fiftydriver
Official LRH Sponsor
Over the past 20 years now of selling my fire breathing monsters that most in the early days said would burn out throats before a good load could be found……. the number of rifles returned to have the barrels replaced because of proper use and burning barrels out has been 3. Now there have been 6-7 i would say returned because customers abused the rifles by over heating and continuing to shoot the rifles causing severe damage quickly. With a new barrel and listening to my warnings, all of those are to my knowledge still in service today. Total number of rifles out there, not sure off the top of my head, thousand plus easily. I am a pretty small shop for volume but 3 rifles out of over 1000 shipped is pretty low percentage if i am doing my math correctly.
to be fair, this is largely due to the fact i discuss in great detail with new or potential customers what it is they want to do with this new rifle they are interested in. About 50% of the time i would say i talk them out of one of my wildcats and into something more appropriate for what they want to do. for example, if you want to reach out to 600 yards whitetail hunting, i would recommend a completely different chambering then someone wanting to do high volume prairie dog hunting all summer long, as i would recommend something totally different for someone coming to me wanting a rifle with the ability to harvest a mature bull elk at 1500 yards…..
i feel alot of issues with rifles these days are due to improper use of said rifle as much as anything. Some need one rifle to do everything and as such, compromises must be made in many areas but if used properly as instructed, my super magnums will generally offer well over a decades use for big game hunting or even much longer for even the most serious big game hunter.
my first personal rifle in my 7mm Allen Mag i used for load development and ballistic testing which is never easy on a barrel. This rifle used a #4 fluted 27" lilja ss barrel. Used that rifle over 8 seasons to harvest 34 head of big game all with one shot kills from 340 to 980 yards out of the 7.7 lb rifle. At the end of those 8 years i had a guy ask if i would sell him that well warn rifle as he could not afford one of my full custom rifles which i had started building at that time. Told him no but i would fit a new barrel and sell the rifle to him at a VERY good price as i knew his financial situation. We did that and he used that rifle for many years with excellent results. I believe he still owns that rifle or one of his sons have it and still using it.
burnt barrel are not nearly as common as many think. Severely fouled barrels, yes, strange carbon ring build up that are difficult to remove at times, yes, thin match bullets having issues in older warn barrels yep, but most of these can be corrected with proper and sometimes specialized cleaning or a change in bullet choice.
Fiftydriver
Official LRH Sponsor
That is a little strange with a full custom to see that. Factory rifles pretty common because their machining is quite low quality and minute changes in velocity can cause significant changes in barrel harmonics but usually not a common issue with a full custom build.
There it is.
I suspected this would be the case, and I thank you for sharing @Fiftydriver. People think that all these posts and recommendations on this forum are being written by super experienced people that must shoot a ton. When the truth is that 99% of the people on this forum won't send more than 500 purposeful precision centerfire rounds down range in a years time. It's probably fewer than that actually. Likely, much fewer.
Conversely... I have 6 of my own precision bolt rifles due for a re-barrel at the moment. A true blessing indeed to find my path in life and be able to pursue it to this degree. Yet that's not what this is about.
The main point is that the concern of barrel wear, should be FAR more subdued in these discussions than it is. Everyone and their dog wants to talk about "yeah but barrel life bro..." when next to no one is getting their barrels replaced. They are buying rifles chambered in cartridges with a 800-1200rnd functional life, and they aren't wearing them out in a decade. Let that sink in. I've talked to several smiths that are putting on between 300-750 barrels per year, and they are doing maybe a handful of rebarrels each year. 5-15... max. To make that number seem even worse, often times, at least 50% of those rebarrels will be for the SAME GUY.
Barrel life is a factor, but in the ordered list of what matters... it's in about 50th place for most shooters, and maybe in 10th place for competition shooters. When dealing with finite accuracy and precision, in a ruthlessly competitive environment, it's an important factor to discuss to ensure the cartridge you're shooting will have a stable enough bore condition to start and finish a match without significant POI changes. As Kirby put it, "fire breathing dragons" just can't hang in a setting where 30rnd strings of fire and a 350rnd course of fire is the norm. Outside of certain competitive applications... it just isn't going to be a factor for most folks. (within reason) We evaluate each customer that wants a rifle from us, and discover whether they like chasing things around as a trade for wild performance... or if they'd prefer something easier to manage which is more stable.
Beyond that, the barrel life discussions are a total waste of time.
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comfisherman
Well-Known Member
Usually there is some kind of sign that the barrel is burned up. In my Batchelor days I burned up a 300 wsm barrel, the subtle signs were the 27 bottles of empty 4350 tossed in the corner. The thousands of dollars of missing money spent on bullets, just shy of three bricks of large rifle magnum primers gone. The less subtle signs were the miles on my car to and from the ranch, the increasingly large pile of cull brass and the hrs and hrs running a ohaus 1010. Oh and the fact that I'd gone through more than one tube of copper solvent.
Then the degradation in accuracy that happened very slowly then all at once.
Even at prices at the time it was almost 2x the cost of the rifle...
If it's a flawed barrel or burnt out makes no difference the tomato stake is the right answer, if it's copper fouling.... that's an easy fix.
* orkan hit the nail on the head. For all its squak about barrel life, in normal use its a 10 year deal.
Then the degradation in accuracy that happened very slowly then all at once.
Even at prices at the time it was almost 2x the cost of the rifle...
If it's a flawed barrel or burnt out makes no difference the tomato stake is the right answer, if it's copper fouling.... that's an easy fix.
* orkan hit the nail on the head. For all its squak about barrel life, in normal use its a 10 year deal.
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This... I thought I knew how to clean a gun but eventually it may need a little more than the old hoppe's kit.
I had 30-06 I thought was shot out, then I was given some KG-2 and followed the instructions. I was shocked next trip to the range.
My buddy did the JB paste and Kroil, same result. Like kids - we were tickled to death our old forever rifles came back to life!
I've resurrected half a dozen barrels in the last year with my drill.
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Mikecr
Well-Known Member
Well, there is a difference between barrel life, and accurate barrel life.
In my experience, accurate barrel life is a step change easy to predict, expect, and accept.
Since I usually take each barrel to it's cutting edge best, I can see exactly when it's time to spin one off and another on.
Many IBS competitors know this as well. Right to the relay. They know it's coming and they spot it. That's accurate barrel life.
Most have another barrel in waiting, but there are some not ready yet to bury a hummer. They'll go through what would be painful efforts to most of us(including barrel setbacks) to get another 300 competitive shots. Maybe they'll get it (no guarantee).
I do understand occasions where a gun shoots really well, but is never taken to it's cutting edge best.
Like for example, with a 1/4moa potential plenty enjoyed at 1/2moa. If that 1/4moa potential slips to 3/8moa, the shooter used to 1/2moa from it doesn't even see it. He might go another 1k rounds before it's obvious to him. That's barrel life.
I imagine this is the source of a notion that custom guns get better barrel life than factory.
I don't feel like barrel life considerations, and discussions, are a waste of time.
It could matter for some people.
In my experience, accurate barrel life is a step change easy to predict, expect, and accept.
Since I usually take each barrel to it's cutting edge best, I can see exactly when it's time to spin one off and another on.
Many IBS competitors know this as well. Right to the relay. They know it's coming and they spot it. That's accurate barrel life.
Most have another barrel in waiting, but there are some not ready yet to bury a hummer. They'll go through what would be painful efforts to most of us(including barrel setbacks) to get another 300 competitive shots. Maybe they'll get it (no guarantee).
I do understand occasions where a gun shoots really well, but is never taken to it's cutting edge best.
Like for example, with a 1/4moa potential plenty enjoyed at 1/2moa. If that 1/4moa potential slips to 3/8moa, the shooter used to 1/2moa from it doesn't even see it. He might go another 1k rounds before it's obvious to him. That's barrel life.
I imagine this is the source of a notion that custom guns get better barrel life than factory.
I don't feel like barrel life considerations, and discussions, are a waste of time.
It could matter for some people.
When our top shooters starting to see decline in their X count at 600, time to replace barrels.
