Benchmark Barrels
- Thread starter dciron
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I have a benchmark on the way to me right now. It will be the first I've tried.
David Emerson
Well-Known Member
Brux,krieger, bartlein. I find the cut rifled are more consistent. I have some k&p on order to try.
I live 5 minutes from Benchmark, I am also President of MRC the local rifle club. A lot the club members use their barrels. I have not heard of any complaints. I own a 300 RUM, 30" fluted bbl, Sendro taper. It is about 13 yrs old now, the throat is still in excellent condition. The barrel does not load up with copper. I have a good supply of 208 gr AMAX bullets. They shoot great at 3,236 fps.
My benchmark barrel come in the mail today. I checked the twist on it several times and in sections all the way to the muzzle. It's a 7mm 8 twist and twist rate was spot on 8. I bore scoped it as well and the lapping & finish looked very nice. As far as I could tell while tight patching, bore seemed to be consistent with out getting tighter or looser along the bore. It is a button pulled 5 groove. I didn't know whether it was going to be 5r or not but it's not 5r, just a traditional 5 groove. No complaints with that. I'm looking forward to seeing how it's going to shoot. Hopefully I will have my cases within the next month and we will see how it does.
First off Benchmark makes both cut rifled and carbon wrapped now.I have 3 they are hammers period. If you have any problems they will jump through hoops to take care of you.I had a well known smith chamber one of their barrels it did not shoot as well as I had hoped, I sent it to Benchmark they inspected the chamber and barrel, then they set it back and returned the B/A it is now what I expected, a hammer.Buy with confidence.PS if anyone would like to verify this and your in Texas hit me up I have a 500 yard private range with lots of steel.
That's awesome. You can't ask for any better than that.
dciron
Well-Known Member
That is great to hear. I hope it's a shooter. I'm still learning and I know a little about 5R but I didn't know there was another 5. Can you tell me a bit about that. I am doing a 7mm also and was thinking 8.5 twist but maybe i like the idea of a 5 so maybe I'll go with your same 8 and 5. Thanks for sharing.
This is the first 5 groove I have that has conventional rifling, I have others that are 5r. I don't think that there will be a noticeable difference between the two unless a person is going to approach and go beyond 3200fps in a fast twist with thin jacketed match bullets. The 5r lands don't engrave into the bullet jacket as aggressively as standard conventional rifling. I'm shooting a 7mm 180 eld to just below 3200 fps in a bartlein 8.7 twist 5r. I have not had a mid air bullet blow up but some people have. Some people have eld-m bullets blow up mid air because of the bullets thin jacket. It seems to be more likely to happen with fast twist, high velocity in conventional 4 groove rifling but not necessarily isolated to them. If I planned to push those bullets fast in a fast twist, I believe it would be helpful to go with a 5r. Some people blame the bullets and I won't argue that the jackets on the ELD-m are among, if not the thinnest there are. There's probably some people who have had blowups in a 5r with them also, but I'm going to guess it's less of those than with conventional 4 groove. Also, 5 lands oppose each other instead of opposite of each other's engraving into the bullets jacket. Some say this doesn't deform the bullet as much. I can't testify as to what effect that has on accuracy but I don't think it's significant. My opinion in a nutshell is: high velocity plus fast twist plus thin jacketed bullets: 5r may help avoid blow ups.
dciron
Well-Known Member
Great info, I wasn't aware of the mid air blowups, but it makes sense given the facts you shared. My plan is to run the solid copper TTSX, Hammers, etc a little lighter but higher speed.
