I'm Travis Bader and this is The
Silvercore Podcast.
Join me as I discuss matters related to
hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits
with the people in businesses that comprise
of the community.
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As well as how you can join The Silvercore
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properly covered during your outdoor adventures
To quote the late, great Colonel Townsend Whelen,
"only accurate rifles are interesting", in
that vein, I'm once again joined by Ryan Stacey.
The sixth time national service rifle
champion, and director of directions for
international barrels.
International barrels mix high-end precision
rifle barrels and we're going to talk about the
facts and myths of making your rifle into tack
driver, whether that's for hunting purposes or
long range competitions.
This is going to be a fun podcast because we have
a number of questions that you, the listener
have asked, and we're going to go through
them and answer as many as time will allow.
For anyone listening, who isn't aware of,
how you can contact us with your questions
or podcast topic suggestions, simply email
podcast@silvercore.ca.
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media, Instagram, Facebook, we don't have
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If you want to reach international barrels
directly, they're also all over social media,
or you can get them at..
Support@IBIbarrels, info@IBIbarrels, or you
can email me directly Ryan@IBIbarrels.
Perfect.
.Com
We put out a couple of questions to
people, we're asking them about, what do
they want to know?
What do they want to know to make their firearm.
That's right.
More precise or more accurate and.
Yep.
I was thinking maybe we should start with
the difference between accuracy and precision.
I can take that one away if you want.
Sure.
All right.
Give me your ideas.
So not even my idea, we'll just go
straight to Wikipedia.
Okay, here we go.
So accuracy is a proximity of
measurement results to the true value.
So IE.
How close are we to the bull's-eye?
Sure.
Precision is the degree to which repeated
or re reproducible measurements under
unchanged conditions show the same results.
IE.
What's your grouping
Good grouping size.
Yeah.
So as marksman, you want to combine or marry both
accuracy and precision.
That's right.
Nice group size, in the bullseye.
Exactly.
So with those basic definitions out of the
way, we got a whole slew of questions.
Yeah we get a few.
Yeah.
It was good.
A couple repeats, which is good because it means
that there are some popular questions here.
Why don't we start off with what you
guys got an Instagram.
Okay.
So.
We had a guy by the name.
He goes by impactshootin.
Yeah.
That's Pete, he's in South Africa.
Hey Pete, this is for you.
He's a, he's a bad bad-ass PRS shooter
down there and hunter.
Nice.
He shoots our barrels.
Surprisingly enough.
Of course he does.
Gain twist barrels.
Is there any merit there or marketing fluff?
Okay.
So I think there is merit to gain twist barrels
in a couple of ways.
I think that gain twist barrel well.
Okay first of all, we should probably
explain what a gain twist barrel is.
That's a good place to start.
Yeah, okay.
So gain twist barrel is a barrel that starts
at a slow twist rate and speeds up as it
gets to the muzzle.
So the idea there is that you start with
slower rotation in the beginning as the
bullets entering the rifling from the throat.
And as it progresses down the barrel, the twist
rate of the barrel speeds up to give you that
stability at the end.
Now, I guess the idea is that well a couple
of things, first of all, it may impact the
amount of torque that gets put out on the
gun, because if you're taking a well, probably
a heavy projectile in particular, and you're
jamming it into a fast twist right off the get
go, it may incur a bit more recoil or a bit
more torque on the gun.
So that's one thing.
So we start with a little bit slower twist
rate in the beginning, the projectile enters
that and then as it progresses down the
barrel, it speeds up.
So it may impact the torque.
Now whether that's reality or not, I
I've never shot a gain twist barrel, to
be honest with you.
I don't know whether that's a factor.
Whether it's even measurable is another
question maybe in the really big calibres
that might be.
Didn't gain twist start with artillery?
I think it did yeah.
Way back in the day.
Like the Lee Harvey Oswald with his
carcano right?
Was it car-can-o?
Or the carc-a-no?
Carc-a-no.
Yeah, that's what I've been told that it's
properly pronounced, but I don't know.
Car-can-o, that's what I always called it.
I believe that was a game twist.
Was it?
I believe so, wasnt it?
That was a Six-five something or
other wasn't it?
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah, that's probably a whole 'nother podcast
right there because I have my own theories
on what went on with all that stuff.
So we probably don't want to devolve into
that just quite yet, but.
That would be a fun podcast.
Yeah, we should because there's stuff.
I think that people don't understand about
guns and you look at the stuff that's on
YouTube and I just shake my head half the time.
It wouldn't do this.
It would do, you know, his head would explode in
this direction and it's like, Oh my God, people,
do you know anything about internal ballistics
or, you know, physics.
Well, let's leave it to the listeners.
If you guys want to hear about that episode.
Yeah, let's do a Lee Harvey.
Yeah.
Let's, give us an email, comments, but
let us know that that's where you want to go.
Okay.
So back to gain twist, so we've got somewhat
the possibility of recoil mitigation.
But the one that makes a little bit more sense
for me is projectile deformation, basically.
So if you're going to jam a projectile into
a fast twist and torque on it immediately, out
of the chamber, then I think probably the
chances of deforming the bullet a bit more.
I don't really, I'm not really sure how
that would work, but.
Is IBI set up to make a gain twist neural
do gain twist rifling?
No, so the only way you can do gain
twists rifling, so far, is through cut
rifling and computer controlled, cut riflers.
With a button rifling or any of the other
varieties, well, you can probably do it with
a hammer forge, but it might be, let's see on
a mandrel, you might not be able to do it on
a hammer forge either.
So cut rifling can cut any twists, like the
guys at Bartlein, you can order a one in 7.93264.
Hmm.
Twist barrel and they can do it needs,
they programming in a way you go.
Right.
With button rifling because you're pulling
a button through a barrel you can't, yet.
And it uses that button too.
Yeah.
So the button pulls through at one rate of
speed, the twist rate is cut into the button.
Right.
As well as you are also turning the barrel at the
same time, at the same twist rate as the button.
I guess another type of rifling would be ECR.
Have you ever seen that done?
I haven't.
No.
I was at a factory in the States at Springfield,
Massachusetts.
Smith & Wesson factory, their doin'
pistol barrels.
Mhmm.
And they had, I forget how many it was, I don't
know maybe 80 barrels sitting in this bath.
I think it was kerosene or something.
Yeah something like that.
Yeah.
And they all had these mandrels in them and
they flipped a switch, you see a bunch of
bubbles come up, in about I don't know, 15, 20
seconds they just rifled.
Yep.
Those 80 barrels.
So for those folks that don't know
what ECR is, this electrochemical rifling.
So it's kinda, what's that type of, uh.
Kinda like EDM?
Yeah.
It's like EDM.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
That's basically what I was.
Electrostatus Discharge.
Yeah it's kind of the same idea so.
I'm not sure exactly how it works, but that
might be something that would be very interesting
with really hard steals.
For example, machine gun barrels.
Man have we gone way off track here already.
We sure did.
How are we going to get through all
of these questions?
Jeez I don't know.
We have a lot.
This is crazy.
Okay.
Well let's get right back onto
. Okay.
Let's go back to the gain twist.
Yeah.
So do you feel thumbs up, thumbs down?
What?
Yeah.
I think it has it's validity yeah.
So less deformation on the bullet.
Probably jamming it into a hard, fast lands
right off the get-go, maybe better to do it a
little more softly and then spin it harder as it
gets towards the muzzle.
So I don't think it's fluff.
Like I said, I've never shot one so I
don't know whether it's more accurate.
I highly doubt that it is because I'm not
seeing any accuracy difference between cut
rifled, hammer forged or buttoned overall.
As long as you pay attention to the other
parts of the process to make the barrel.
The stress relief process.
Stress relieving is a huge thing.
And then you know, having a hone is a huge thing.
You can't get the same results just by
an lapping that you can with at hone.
Well, we're going to talk about lapping as
well later, but let's, do you want to jump in
top the next question?
Okay, let's do it.
We've got one.
Sorry, Pete, I blew that one.
CRLewisContracting, 22, way to plug your
own business here, I love that spirit.
That's really smart actually.
Nice.
.22 long rifle.
Your specifications say that within
0.0001" to 0.0002".
One 10,000th of an inch.
Which is extremely consistent.
Yep.
Many people talk about 22 long rifle barrels
needing a choke.
Yep.
With this consistency, are your barrels
not choked?
And is it really required?
That's that's actually a great question.
Good job CRLouisContracting.
So yes, back in the day, when they were strictly
hand lapping barrels, you can choke the barrel a
bit by holding the lap a little bit short or doing
more strokes through the barrel so that you get a
bit of a pinching effect.
Now with 22 barrels, you're shooting
lead projectiles.
So as that sucker goes down in the barrel,
it's going to resize basically to any tight
spot in the barrel.
And if it's tight in the beginning and
then loose towards the muzzle, it's going to
be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway it's.
Right.
In micro terms.
Right.
It's going to rattle down there.
So the idea was that you would choke the muzzle
and you would make sure that the muscle was
the tightest part of the bore so that, when
that sucker leaves it's doing its thing right?
So with the hone, you don't really need that
anymore because the bore is very consistent.
The Sun and Guys are the guys that make
the hone for us.
They say that you can get down to a millionth
of an inch somehow.
I don't know how you would.
Wow.
Even measure that.
And honestly, I don't think it really matters
10,000ths or 2/10ths.
That's crazy.
Is pretty crazy, but it's measurable so
you can measure it.
So as long as we have that consistency all
the way through the baer, then we're finding
that you don't really need to have a choked.
And we monkeyed around with hand lapping and
holding the laps short so that you get a bit
of a pinch on the end.
And again, it's like maybe a 10 thou or maybe
2/10ths at the end.
So it doesn't really make too much difference.
Actually you know, there's another thing
that people ask about 22s all the time and it's
Hey, muzzle threads, I want to, I want to either
put a can on the end.
I want to put a fake can.
Sure.
I get that a lot in Canada.
I want to put muzzle break, I'm not sure why
you would put the muzzle break on the 22 other
than it looks cool.
Right.
The LCF.
Yeah, the LCF.
So that's fine.
You can do it, but I will tell you that the
closer you spin your profile to the bore of
the axis of the bore.
So the tighter you get, so the thinner, the
barrel you get, the more chance you have
of growing the bore.
So the bore will actually expand a little bit.
If you spend close to it.
Right.
Now, you can defeat most of that via
excellent stress relieving processes.
But it's not necessarily the best thing to do
on a barrel when you're spinning half 28 threads
on a 22 barrel, that doesn't leave you a
lot of meat to keep things nice and tight
at the muzzle, which is the most important
part of the 22 barrels.
So people ask why we don't really recommend
threads, like you can run them if you want.
In our testing, we haven't really seen too
much difference with threads and without.
But at the same time, if you're looking for
the utmost inaccuracy, I would probably
avoid trying to cut muzzle threads on
a 22 long rifle.
So just the process of cutting those threads
on a slimmer profile barrel will cause it to,
I guess, stress-relieve.
Yep.
And expand just a minuscule amount.
I don't know if it's stress relieving and I'm
not a machine is so I'm not a hundred percent
sure what the factor is that causes it to grow.
It may just be that you're removing
materials there.
Right.
And the reality is, is we're talking about
a few 10 thousands of an inch in growth.
But when you need that muzzle to be the tightest
thing possible, a few 10,000's of an inch is
probably not a great idea to try and take away from
the accuracy end of it.
So I saw there was a question on the
schnooble there somewhere on one of these so.
Yeah, we'll get to that one, but
that'll probably.
It kind of leads into that so that's why we
have that knob, lovingly called the Schnooble.
You call it a Schnooble?
Well.
I always call it a Schnovel.
Yeah, Schnoble is actually the proper term,
but the way this all came up was when we first
started doing it, we were doing a barrel for Doug
Blessin, who's a Canadian Paralympic shooter.
And he had a Walther rifle and it had a
knob on the end of it.
And so we're like, okay, well we gotta
make it the same as his existing Walther barrel.
And I can't remember how it came up, but somebody
goes, what's his knob on the end of it called and
I'm like, I don't know.
And so I remembered back to my film days
and I remember we were talking once about the
knob on the end of a nice wooden stock that
had inlaid bone and all that kind of stuff.
Right.
And they had called it well now I know they
called it the Schnabel, but that had been like
probably, you know, seven or eight, nine years ago.
And I couldn't remember what the
heck it was called.
And I said, I think it's called a Schnooble.
And Tim, the barrel maker looks at me
and he goes the what?
And I said, the Schnoodle.
And he's like, how do you spell that?
And I'm like, I don't know, just like sch
and a bunch of O's and Schnooble so, so the
next time it came up, it was spelled with
three O's and you know, so it just turned into
this weird Schnooble.
Is it common to have a Schnooble Schnabel on
the end of a barrel?
Not really, nope.
The Olympic shooters have them on there
for two reasons.
Number one, to make the barrel easily
the right size to put their open sites on.
And number two, you go back to the half
28 threads to make sure that the muzzle
is the tightest.
So they'll have that extra large knob on the
end to make sure that they don't spin anywhere
near close to the bore so that you don't get
any bore growth so.
I remember about, I don't know, 20 years ago, a guy
came into the shop and he had a firearm and he
wanted it super light.
He's like, can you drill out the bolt handle?
Can you flute the barrel?
Drill the bolt handle?
Oh yeah, everything.
He wanted it, he's like, I want this same light
and all right, sure.
Not a problem, see what I can do right.
And I throw it into the milling machine, dial
it all in, got it in a spin index there, and I'm
doing the fluting on it.
And I, fellow says, Hey, when you, when you're
floating a barrel, just don't go full depth on
your first and final cut on each flute
because you're relieving too much stress, the
thing can come around.
So I'm just, I spin around and I do a little
bit, do a little bit, and it's like tightening the
nuts on a tire, right?
Yep.
You'd go opposite and go around.
Anyways on one of my final cuts,
something slipped and everything was looking
great at full depth.
And I start running, I engage and the barrel
wasn't indexed properly and it starts running
down and I got short section, which is going
to be wider than the rest of the fluting.
I was able to fix the rest of the fluting
and all look good.
But I had this one short, ugly section.
I'm like, what do I do with this?
Right.
Do I just give it to the guy and say, Hey,
sorry, messed up right?
It's custom.
That's right, it's custom.
So I thought, well mhe wants it, he
wants it light.
So put it in the lathe, dial it all in.
And I just took it off the front and
thing looked as if it should have been.
Yeah.
I'd never seen a barrel that had a big
lumpy, schnoble on the end of it before.
There you go.
And I thought, well I'll give it over,
I'll see what he says and if he doesn't
like it, I'll just get him a new one, right?
Yep.
He loved it.
So he took it out to the range and he it
and I'm like, thank God he loves this thing.
I'm never going to, I was able to fix this
one and about a week later a guy comes in,
he says, Oh, I saw this guy at the range and he
had this really sweet set up on his barrel.
Can you do the same thing for me?
Yeah, of course.
Nope.
Yeah.
The mistake turns into something, yeah.
That's right.
Nope.
That's the well, the schnooble was kind
of along those lines.
Okay.
Yeah.
It was like just a silly play on words that
just kind of stuck so.
I love it.
I said it to our German distributor and
she's like, what's a Schnooble and I go,
well it's actually supposed to be Schnabel
and she's like, ah, Okay, that makes sense.
But what's a Schnooble and I'm like, I
just didn't know how to spell it.
All right.
I think that answers it.
No, your barrels aren't choked and
it's not required.
Yeah.
We don't really need it once we run the
hone and we handle lap on top of the home.
Right.
So they're super, super consistent to the point
where we don't, if we get a gunsmith that,
like a top end gunsmith somewhere, for some
example, phones up and say, Hey, I need
this type of barrel.
I just pull one off the shelf.
There's no.
Right.
There's no picking or anything like that,
they're all the same.
Very cool.
Very consistent.
Yeah.
All right, next one.
You have a rattlingrancher.
Rattlingrancher.
Rattlingrancher, barrel length, short
or long for accuracy, which is better?
These are all rabbit hole questions.
I know.
Here we go.
Wait, wait for this one.
Okay, so for accuracy, it really depends
in my opinion, on what you're doing.
What you're trying to achieve.
So obviously shorter barrels are
stiffer, stiffer leads to accuracy.
So in hunting rifles, I get guys asking
for super light, thin barrels all the time.
I would prefer, and these are all guys
that, you know, 300 metres is like, Whoa,
that was a long shot.
Right.
I would prefer that they go to a shorter barrel
to cut the weight then to a thinner barrel.
Right.
Because you get the stiffness, you get the
accuracy and you're not really losing too much
in velocity if you went from say a 24 inch barrel
to a 20 inch barrel or more, or even shorter.
I mean, we've got this weird trend right now,
the guys are doing 12 and 1/2 inch, 308's.
Right.
And putting, the guys at Reliable, put them
on their like Savage axis and all this
kind of stuff and.
Big fat barrels, but short.
Well I mean, some of them are fat, but I
mean, they're short, but they're still profiled.
They still got a profile on them, but
they're light anyways.
And they shoot great out to about 200
metres, I think.
Right.
So the question is short or long for accuracy.
So I think for for accuracy, it
doesn't matter.
For precision, probably shorter and
fatter is better.
Although if you look at the target rifle
guys and F class guys, for example, their
barrels are all pretty much on the F class
side they're anywhere up to about 30 inches.
Right.
And on the FTR side, they can be anywhere up to
32, 31 somewhere in there or the F open I mean.
So those guys are trying to extract accuracy, but
they're also trying to keep the velocity where
it cuts through the wind, because they're
trying to, they're trying to smack a target
that's anywhere between 600 and a thousand
yards or metres away.
So having extra velocity, helping you
cut through the wind is going to be the thing.
So on the question there, rattlingrancher,
I would say it really depends on what you're
trying to achieve with your barrel,
or with your rifle.
If you're shooting long range, added velocity is
probably a good thing.
If you're shooting short range, 300 metres, maybe
400 metres, probably shorter and stiffer
might be the way to go.
Mhmm.
But for me, I think in the PRS game you
know, 24, 26 is fine.
You don't really need anything that's super,
super long for that game.
Because the reality is, is you're not trying
to hit a half MOA at a thousand metres
you're trying to hit six, five or six MOA.
Right.
And all you gotta do is make a hit on it,
doesn't even have to be in the middle so.
So there's your answer.
Depends.
That was sort of all over the place wasn't it?
It depends.
What if you had the shorter barrel, but
a faster powder burn.
Well, I mean, there's always ways that you
can modify things right?
Right.
So if you're trying to get more velocity,
you can always change your powder, but the
action has to be able to handle it and the
casing has to be able to handle it as well.
So it's not like you can super hot rod your 308 in
a 12 and 1/2 inch barrel to get it going 3000 feet
per second, it's probably not going to happen.
You'd probably blow your gun up, but I
mean, there's so many new powders out there.
You should definitely experiment to see what
you can get out of it.
Because of a powder that works good in an a 24 or
a 32 inch barrel may or may not work really well
in a super short barrel.
So you may want to play with some, maybe
some little hotter, a little faster powder,
see where it goes.
Do we want to digress for a second and talk about.
Again.
Why.
Talk about why.
Sure.
A different powders like produce
different results?
Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I'm an expert on
that kind of thing.
I can give you my opinion, but.
Sure.
Yeah, so obviously different powders have
different burn rates.
So as you go to a shorter barrel, you want to try
and make sure that the powder is completely
burned within the barrel and that you're not
ejecting unspent powder or unburnt powder out
of the muzzle, which in winter time you can
actually see that at the range sometimes.
Yeah.
You see black specks in the snow in front
of your target and that's probably unburned
powder more than likely dumping into the snow.
So the idea is to try and to get a complete burn
in the barrel, while the projectile is still in
the barrel, so that you build up as much pressure
on it as much velocity as you possibly can.
Wouldn't this basically come down
to barrel harmonics.
Oh for sure.
Definitely.
But I mean, there's a lot of velocity stuff
in there as well.
The harmonic thing is kind of a combination
between the bullet and all the loading processes
and all that stuff.
Okay.
As well.
Well, rattlingrancher.
There we go.
We did a bit of rattling on that one.
We sure did.
Then we got a Kris Feng.
Finally, I think this is a normal username.
Oh, there we go.
Yep.
Who's got two here it looks like.
So first one.
They say that you need a straight barrel
bore for accuracy.
Is this true?
How straight is the bore?
I thought after drilling, boring and rifling the
OD, or outside diameter, of the barrel would be
machine concentric to the bore between centres,
therefore the bore should really be straight.
So all barrels should be very similar in
tolerance and dimensions.
So that was one big run-on multi question.
So let's break it down into pieces for Kris.
So you need a straight barrel bore for
accuracy, is it true?
Well I have seen thin hunting barrels
that were basically bowed in the middle.
So I mean, it's very slight, but at the
same time, back in the day, they used to
have guys that would actually bend barrels.
They would come off the lathe or whatever and
these old guys in their eighties, they'd look at
it and they'd hold it up to the light and they'd
look down the bore and spin it a little bit.
Yeah.
Take it over to you know, some sort of
a bending press.
And then they'd just give it a little couple
of paps here and there, and then they'd stick
it up to the light again and have a look and see.
So they try to make them as straight
as possible, but.
So does it need to be straight?
Well, I mean.
Yeah, I mean it does need to be straight
and we try and spin concentric to the bore
with very little run-out.
But you are going to get a little bit of run out
no matter what you are.
I mean, I've seen hunting barrels that have 70
foul run out and guys are like, yeah, that's fine.
Yeah.
Whatever.
And if you're spinning it between centres,
the chamber end, this is kind of where I
was going, the chamber end and the muzzle
end are on centers, so there may be a bit of
a bow in the center.
Right.
So the reality is it doesn't really matter
what happens in the middle as much as
making sure that the ends are on center and
then you can spin it.
Right.
The Germans, they made their corner shot
type rifles too right.
Those ones that.
Yeah.
Shootin' around the corner.
Yeah.
That's right.
Those definitely had some curve to them.
A little bit of curve.
I think MythBusters actually did that one.
They saw.
Did they?
Yeah with a 22, and I can't remember, I
think it was a rifle, but they bent it and
it was past 90 degrees and it's still shot.
Wow.
Yeah, that was pretty cool episode.
I never caught that one.
I'll have to watch it.
Yeah, you gotta check it out.
Kris Feng's got a second question here.
He says, is there such a thing as a hummer barrel
as a hummer barrel?
Yeah, I think there probably is.
Let's tell them what a hummer barrel is for
those that don't know.
So a hummer barrel is just a barrel
that just shoots.
Yeah.
It's kind of this unicorn kind of thing that
people get they'll, you know, if you look at
the top end of shooting a bench rest, F class,
target rifle guys, they'll buy more than
one barrel at a time.
They'll get them all screwed on chambered up
and headspace properly, and then they'll shoot
them all and see which one shoots the best
and that'll be their competition barrel.
That would be kind of the hummer barrel.
And then they'll take that one off and put
it away and only shoot it in competitions.
Ahh yeah.
So what makes a hummer barrel?
I haven't got a clue.
I don't know.
I think sometimes just the stars align and
you know, pixie dust gets sprinkled on it.
Right.
A unicorn farts in its general direction and
it basically is just a barrel that all the,
everything is perfect and it shoots and
it doesn't take much to get it to shoot.
I don't know.
With our stuff, we get sent pictures of groups
and things that, I don't even know how the guys
shoot those groups.
Like I can never shoot groups like that to
groups in the ones in the low twos.
Right.
Point one, like.
That's crazy.
The guys at PGW sent me a group the other
day that we did for a 6BR Norma and it was a
0.187 five shot group.
Holy crow.
And I'm like, holy smokes, I could
never do that, but I would classify that
as a hummer barrel.
Ahh yeah.
But we probably.
And that's an IBI barrel.
That was ours.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll take credit for that one.
There you go.
We get sent stuff like that all the
time so I don't know.
Maybe it's combination of good stress-relieving,
good steel to begin with.
And then just focusing on all the processes
to make the barrel as good as possible.
Like we don't skip any steps, we don't
change anything.
Every barrel that comes through our shop gets
the same treatment.
So maybe that's the reason why we, we see
lots of hummers on the Facebook user page and
all that kind of stuff.
Precision tolerances.
Yeah.
Headspacing, I mean.
And chambering was sharp tools.
Like, you know.
That makes a huge difference.
Let's do the right thing right.
Right.
Yeah.
On the headspacing, are you getting them as
tight as you can and?
Not necessarily no, it depends on,what the guy
wants to do with it.
For the most part we try and make them fairly
tight, but we're not going to make them overly
tight so that they're only tight on closing.
Right.
But if we get somebody that says, Hey, you know,
I want you to hold it a little bit short, or,
you know, I want you to make the headspacing
as tight as possible.
Okay, sure, we can do it.
And headspacing for those who don't know is.
It's basically the relationship between
the bolt face and how far into the chamber
the cartridge goes.
Right.
And how it butts up against the shoulder
of the chamber.
You have to be able to close the bolt.
So, but it can't be loose at the same
time cause then you destroy your cases.
Perfect.
Want to jump over to Reddit?
Sure.
Okay.
user Elendal, E-L-E-N-D-A-L asks.
I'm curious.
Oh, here we go.
What's the purpose of a shnobel on a barrel?
Well, Elendal you left out about three O's
in the pronouncing of Schnooble.
I think we kind of went through it all in
the beginning there.
I think so.
It was kind of a goofy thing, but in the 22 long
rifle barrels, because you want the muzzle to
be the tightest part of the barrel and you
can cause a bore growth by spinning close to
the muzzle or by close to the bore dimension,
then we just left it a little bit big on the
muzzle end to ensure that there's no growth.
Beauty.
Now we've got a Troycifer_tron
asks any plans on a barrel in 6.5 PRC.
Well, we had a lot of plans on those about
eight months ago.
So you're about eight months behind.
We've been making 6.5 PRC barrels for ages now.
There you go.
I figured you were already on it.
Yeah, it's a pretty cool calibre too.
That and the 300 PRC are both pretty neat.
I might actually have to build a gun on that.
But yes we can, we can spin you a seven and
a half twist, which is good for all the big
bullets, but it'll still spin 130's+ no problem.
But if you go to a bigger 65 bullet,
the seven and a half twists will spin it.
No problem.
So, yup.
Okay.
65 PRC's are already in the cooker so.
Beauty.
Give us a holler.
Dane-Atello.
Dane-Atello asks, is there any accuracy
or other differences between the number of
grooves a barrel has?
Hmm.
Well, I think if you asked probably a
hundred people that question, you'd probably
get about a hundred different answers.
I agree.
Yeah.
But I haven't really seen any.
We cut most of our barrels, with 5R
as the standard.
The only one that we don't cut in 5R
yet is the 6 mills.
And I get asked the question, how come you
don't do the 6mils in 5R?
And the answer is because I'd only ever shot a four
group before and I needed to sort of base it, the
accuracy on something that I had already
kind of dealt with.
So I just went with four groove and it works good.
We'll probably going to get a 5R going
here pretty soon for some testing and
see how that works.
As far as accuracy goes, no, the answer is it's
no, basically I haven't seen any differences as
far as accuracy goes.
Where I do see a bit of a differences in cleaning.
The 5R style rifling seems to clean up a
little easier and that's just, I think because of
the shape of the lands and grooves, they're a
little bit different, they're more trapezoidal
than square on the edges so there's less places
for stuff to hide.
That makes sense.
Yep.
And I think, one thing that I've noticed is
a lot of people say, Hey, I know you guys
are little bit faster than what I'm used to.
I reached the same velocities I was
trying to get, trying to find a note at,
with less powder.
So I have a feeling that the 5R rifling
because of its design, maybe a little bit
faster as well.
Interesting.
Overall.
Interesting.
Maybe a bit yeah.
All right.
That's a Dane-Atello.
Yep.
Oh here you go.
H3llfir3pho3nix and all the E's are three's.
Yeah.
Asks, is there any truth at all to
barrel break-in?
It always struck me as an extreme fudd lore,
but if there's actual science behind it,
I'd love to hear that.
Okay.
I think there's a lot of lore around
barrel break-in.
I think a lot of it was started by barrel
manufacturers back in the day, to get you to
burn up a lot of barrel life, trying to make
the thing, you know, do all this mythical,
shoot one, clean one.
Yeah, yeah.
And shoot five, clean five and blah, blah,
and on and on before, you know it, you got a
hundred rounds through the thing and you
have never even fired one at a target yet.
Yeah.
So that takes away from your actual
barrel life use.
So I think there is some of that.
There may also have been somewhere, maybe
you need some examples where you need a bit of
a break in because the tooling used to cut the
chamber might not have been as sharp or as good
as it could have been and there might've been
some edges or something along those lines.
I've tried both ways on a multitude of
different barrels from different manufacturers.
And I personally have never seen any
difference, in the just take it out and shoot
a crowd or the shoot one clean one for a
hundred kind of thing.
And I've done it both ways.
I think the reality of that is, whatever gives
you the mental confidence to be happy with , your
barrel so that you're not thinking about that
as a possible reason why you can't shoot.
I think you should fill your boots, whatever way,
blows your hair back.
But for me, I just go by what I see and if you
look at all the pictures and stuff on the user
page that people send us, like I just had one
the other day and it was, this is the first
five shots out of this barrel, period and they
all went into like 0.5.
Right.
So, I mean, you know, with no load development,
factory ammo, if you're shooting 0.5 on
the first five shots out of the barrel.
You're doing okay.
You're doing fine.
So for, people ask all the time, this
is a question we get asked a lot and my
answer is generally don't worry about it.
Just take it out, shoot it, shoot your 30
rounds or 40 rounds or whatever you're shooting
the first day range, don't worry about it.
Then take it home and give it a good scrub out.
Use some Wipe Out, scrub it down to the
you know, to the bare metal and then carry
on after that and then.
You know, I think you nailed it.
I think you nailed it on the head there.
You hit the head, hit the nail on the head,
hammered on the head.
Hammer, hammer the nail on the.
I knew, I knew where you're goin.
You nailed it.
On the confidence thing.
Bout the confidence.
Yeah.
Totally.
Yeah.
I'm a very big believer in that.
If you believe that your gun's going to do
what it's got to do.
Exactly.
That's a huge part of the battle.
Well, not only that, I mean, if you're having
issues and you're trying to iron out those issues,
the last bloody thing is, you don't need to be
wondering if you should have cleaned it a certain
way in the beginning.
Right.
In order to extract more accuracy out of it.
So whatever works for you the best, if you
want to clean the crap out of it for the first
150 shots, fill your boots, that's good,
I'll sell you another barrel afterwards.
But for me, it's not really even a thing
I don't even bother.
Is there any more, right?
Yeah.
So next question.
Okay.
User leadpoisonedbrad asks
I hope not.
No kidding.
He says, exactly how "international" is IBI?
I see.
I expect most of your business is with Canada
and US, d'all have much business in other
markets, Europe / Asia?
So International Barrels surprisingly enough,
is quite international.
We have a huge presence in Australia and we are
gaining a lot of presence in, probably the second
biggest place after Canada, well, maybe in
Australia is Scandinavia.
Right.
So we've caught on like fire over there and
it's going gangbusters.
We have probably a couple of gunsmiths in Sweden,
we have the top guy was using our barrels.
We have a couple of big companies and one of the
top gunsmiths in Norway, that's using our stuff.
We've sent barrels to Finland.
Wow.
Denmark I've sent barrels to.
Yeah, I think, I think that's pretty much it.
So the answer is, yeah, we send
barrels all the time.
I would say Scandinavia is probably the
third biggest.
Australia, we send a lot to, we deal with
Cleaver firearms down there and they pumped
through barrels like there's no tomorrow.
And then they catch on really well.
So believe it or not at the moment,
probably our smallest market is the US.
Really?
Yeah.
Which is kind of a weird one.
So just export reg's or?
No, nope, it's not even that.
They're just set in their ways.
Yeah, there's some of that.
I mean, there are some awesome barrel
makers down in the US.
Sure.
And so, getting people to switch to an unknown,
somewhat unknown brand from shooting the
barrel from the company they've been using for
the last 30 years and getting good results
from is difficult.
Right.
In places where there are less barrel makers and
you can produce something that's awesome and get
it to them in a short period of time, that
kind of rules of ruse.
So Scandinavia and Australia are two
perfect examples of that.
That's a no brainer.
Yeah.
It's pretty much a no brainer over there,
but in the US it's, people are more,
hesitant to try.
But we're starting to make inroads
there, which is good.
And I fully understand why people don't
automatically pick up another barrel user or
another barrel company.
I was the same way, you know, I was shooting
Krieger's before and I'm like, nah, these
things shoot so awesome.
Right.
Unless our own barrel shoot is good, you
know, I don't want to, I want to make our own
barrels shoot as good as what that does.
So that was part of the process.
So the answer to that is yes, we're fairly.
You're fairly international.
Fairly international at this point.
I mean, we've sent barrels to South Africa
all over the place.
Pete down in South Africa shoots our barrels.
There's Pete again, hey Pete.
Pete.
Asia, not so much yet.
Asian countries, I find have a lot more
harsh restrictions on firearms usage.
Right.
There are places like the Philippines and
I've had some inquiries, but there's always
some interesting stuff going on in places like
that, that you really have to sort of vet
who you're sending to and quite often we'll
get requests and it just seems sketchy.
Right.
So I get requests to send stuff to
Pakistan all the time.
You're in it for the long haul.
And yeah, I just, you know, even if it is a
valid request, I just don't know if us, as
a company really want to sort of go there.
When there's human rights abuses and all
kinds of crazy stuff going on over there.
I didn't really want to be sending
them a gun parts.
Agreed.
They can figure out their own stuff.
Yeah.
So we got the next one, user canadaboi,
B-O-I, asks what's up with "seasoning"
a barrel for rimfire?
I've heard all about fouling up a barrel, but
is there any truth to it?
Yeah, I think there totally is truth to it.
I think when you're shooting lead projectiles
through rimfire, it takes a certain amount
of shots in order to sort of lay down that layer
of lead and fouling.
And why it's different than, than copper, it
seems with a rimfire led fouling, to a certain
degree seems to make the barrel shoot bette.
Copper on the other hand, not so much, you get
lots of copper fouling in there, usually your
accuracy goes to crap.
Right.
So there's, there's definitely something
to have the barrel seasoned with ours,
I'm finding that it is probably going to take
at least 500 rounds to sort of get it there.
There may also be something to do
with the lube that's on most 22 ammo.
Right.
Whether that lays down a layer in the
barrel or not I'm not a hundred percent sure.
I will tell you this, that at the beginning
of this stupid virus thing that we got going
on, I started shooting my 22 and between then
and now I've put over 10,000 rounds through
it in a few months.
And I went to a match in Kamloops, the CRPS match,
and I figured, Oh, you know, I should, I was
cleaning out the action and the bolt and all
that stuff and I figured, yeah, maybe I'll pull the
thing through and cause you know, I probably put
like six or 7,000 rounds through it at that point.
And I figured maybe I should pull it through.
So I get up to Kamloops and I shoot on the zero
target and it's like five inches off and
I'm like, oh, damn it.
I knew I shouldn't have pulled it through.
Yep.
So it will change your accuracy, your point
of impact the more you pull it through.
I think as the day went on and I put more and
more rounds through it, it went back to where
it should have been.
But you know, when you're at a match, that's
probably not a good idea.
If you want to clean it, clean it, and then
take it to the range and re-season it and
re-zero so that you know you're not going
to get any shifts again.
Do you know what the coating is that they
put on the bullets?
It's a combination.
It really depends on the company like Lapua and
SK is like a really oily.
Right.
Lubricant.
But if you go to Eley, the top end Eley's are
actually, it's some sort of combination.
I believe it, it has beeswax in it.
That's wat I was.
Yeah.
It's a different, it's a much thicker lube on
the Eley top end, Eley ammo than the other ones.
What about, let's say Moly, molybdenum.
Molybdenum disulfide.
Yeah.
So I've never seen that on 22 ammo.
No.
But on centrefire ammo I have.
Yeah.
There's a couple of different coatings.
The Moly is one of them.
It's a bit messy, I think and it takes a
bit to get it on there.
And then the other one was a hexagonal boron.
Right.
Which I tried and yeah it's slippery, but
did it extend barrel life or anything?
I don't really think so.
Right.
You're still, it monkey's with your velocities
because you have to use more powder to get the
same velocity as you do, because you have a
slipperier projectile.
Interesting.
So you have to up your powder charge to get
the same velocity.
So in my opinion, if you're upping in your
powder charge, what you're probably saving
in barrel life from the projectile going down the
barrel, you're probably killing in throat wear.
Right.
Anyways right.
Throat erosion.
Yeah, it doesn't really make any sense
to me, which is kind of why I think both
of those have slowly faded away over the
last 10 years probably.
Right.
I know the odd guy that still uses Moly,
but it's one of those things where they've
been doing it fo 25 years and it works good.
So I'm not going to stop.
Why change it?
Yeah, why change?
So user DrinkLuckyGetLucky.
Oh boy.
Asks, how as a manufacturer do you
make sure your barrels shoot well enough
to be competitive at the highest levels.
Gotcha.
Well, that's an easy question.
Yep.
Well, I dunno easy, but there's a couple
answers there.
Pixie dust and.
Pixie dust and unicorn farts.
Uh...no.
So basically the first thing we do is
we make sure that we totally control all the
processes, when we're making the barrels.
So I've talked about mental management
before, we use that sort of process in
making the barrels.
So each step along the way, beit pulling
the button, drilling the stress relieving,
lapping, running it on the hone, any of
that kind of stuff.
We make sure that after that's done the barrel
is a hundred percent the way we want it to come
out from that process.
And we took a lot of time and effort to
make sure that when we are operating
those processes, that it gives us what we
require in end result.
So when you stack all those things together
you get the end result that you want.
In mental management, you pay attention to the
steps of whatever you're doing, and you focus on
the performance of those and then you get the end
result that you want.
Well, it's the same in barrel making.
So all of the steps that we take, we pay
a lot of attention to, and we make sure that
we're good at them.
Then in the end we take it out and we shoot it.
Yeah.
And we do a lot of testing.
And in the beginning there were times
when I took stuff out and I shot it and it
wasn't satisfactory.
So it's back to the drawing board at that
point, whether it was a slightly different
bore size or a different rifling configuration
or different diameter on the lands and grooves or
whatever the case may be.
That's what you gotta do.
So I guess I'll just be a lot of trial
and error at first.
Yeah.
In the beginning there was trial and error.
I mean, we're pretty good at it now, so we
know what combinations and what sort of
algorithm works when you put it all together.
Right.
You're going to get the end result you want.
So there's a lot less testing now, but I will
tell you that nothing leaves our shop that's
new, that doesn't get tested to the nth degree
to make sure that it does what we claim
that it'll do, and then what we need it to do.
So at the highest level, I mean, part of it also
is getting into it in the hands of people that
shoot at that level.
So, I mean, the first thing that we probably
had shot at up at a high level was an
AR15 barrels because it was me that was.
Right.
Shooting them at a national championship.
And they clearly compete with anything else
out there from any other manufacturer.
They perform.
And I've shot them all, so I will tell
you straight up that our AR15 barrels shoot
as good or better than anybody else's.
So there you are.
I love it.
Yep.
Next question user, Striker-of-Life asks,
with modern barrels is there any point
in choosing, say a varmint / bull barrel
or standard barrel for long range shooting?
Well, I mean, there's always a point, right?
Like again, it kind of comes down to what kind
of long range shooting you're doing and what
you're trying to achieve.
If you're shooting long range from a
prone position and you're shooting like
2000 metres, then it's going to be one type
of barrel clearly.
I mean, you could slap a hunting barrel
on there, but are you doing yourself
any kind of favors?
Probably not.
So you kind of just have to go off of what
you're trying to achieve.
I guess one of the ones that I get asked a lot
about is, guys that want a barrel to hunt with,
but they want something super accurate as well.
Right.
So we have a couple of profiles that I recommend
that are sort of halfway in between the reality
is, is if you want something, that's gonna
shoot a half MOA group at a thousand meters,
it's not going to be any of the hunting barrels.
It's going to weigh seven or eight pounds probably,
so be prepared for that.
but on the other hand, if you're looking
for light and you're shooting long range,
you may want something that is a bit heavier.
And light may not be the way to go, or maybe you
want something that's sorta light, but maybe
fluted to take a bit more weight off there.
So, I mean, there is actually a lot of
point in choosing the barrel in relation
to what you're doing.
Mhmm.
So you kinda just have to be real with yourself.
Like I get guys that are like, yeah, I
want this for hunting.
Okay, good.
How long, how far do you shoot?
Oh, you know, probably I shoot to 800 metres
and I'm like, yeah, but have you ever actually
shot 800 metres?
Right.
Well, no.
All my shots have been in within 200.
Okay.
Well you just want something that maybe
you can shoot to 800 metres with.
Sure.
Well, yeah, okay.
All right, okay.
Here's what you need basically.
You brought up something about fluting as well.
I did.
And fluting was an interesting one because
I remember there there's a point in
time when everyone says you got to get your
barrel fluted, cause it's going to increase
rigidity on your.
Oh god.
barrel.
And it doesn't!
No.
But I still hear people saying that.
No.
For the same way barrel, you're going to have
better rigidity, I think is a common school of
thought on that one.
I think it depends on how you flute.
And how you flute.
Yep.
Right.
Yeah.
So we pretty much only spiral flute and we
could straight flute, providing the flutes were
relatively thin, I think we'd probably be okay.
But you see on some barrels, like I think
the Remington, maybe like the SPS had these
really wide flutes.
Yeah, they're kind of flat like they
use a Woodruff cutter or something.
Yeah something, yeah.
I don't know what the deal was with that, but
anyways they got these big wide flutes on it.
So if you look at the barrel head on, you're
going to notice that the diameter of the barrel
is actually pretty much cut down by the
width of the flutes.
So if you take a spiral fluted barrel,
and you look at that, that's done with fairly
narrow flutes, the diameter of the barrel
is probably not much different than what it
is before it's fluted.
So in my opinion, you retain a lot of that
rigidity with, a little bit better with a
spiral fluted barrel, than with a straight
fluted barrel, a wide straight fluted barrel.
You could probably get the same thing with
narrow straight flutes, and I had a guy, I
think it was, was it yesterday or the day
before asking me if we're going to straight flute.
And I basically said we could, but you know,
the reality of it is, is that I would have
to add probably about 1500 sku's into my
computer system so it's.
So probably not.
It's probably not going to happen.
We've had really, really wicked results
that have been verified by companies
like PGW Defense.
And they shot barrels before they were
fluted and they spiral fluted them and then
they shot them again.
And there was no change in group size, no change
in accuracy, no shift of impact, none of
that kind of stuff so.
Are you really losing much weight
when you spiral?
You can.
Yeah.
Believe it or not on like an MTU, you're
almost losing a pound out of the barrel.
That's significant.
Which is significant yeah.
Why you would want to do that on a match
heavy, super heavy barrel anyways, why
you would want slightly lighter I'm not sure.
But I mean, there might be something to be said
for some of the F class guys that want, in FTR
in particular, where you're your gun weight
is I think 18 pounds, to have the thickest
possible barrel with the thickest diameter
that's the lightest.
So spiral fluting on something like that might
be a bit of a thing and I know that we've had
a couple already, that guys have done super
well with the spiral fluted barrel down at
US nationals last year.
Nice.
Yeah.
So that could be a thing.
User Juno7 asks, I'm trying to find a good
reload using solid copper bullets, such
as Barnes TTSX, Nosler e-tip, etc, in a Tikka
with a 1 in 11 twist.
I'm seeing lots of articles suggesting
that you don't go by the weight of the bullet,
but rather the length.
Why is that?
And is that the true way to find a good
bullet for a barrel?
Well, I think you can't pay too much attention
to that stuff in general because everything you
read on the internet is not necessarily
true and people will tell you different
things depending on who you're reading.
But there is some truth to solid copper
bullets being a little different than lead
cup and core bullets.
And the reason is because they don't weigh
as much for the same.
So if you have a copper one, you're going to
get a much longer bullet for the same weight.
So if you compare, let's take Barnes
TTSX, cause that's what I'm familiar with.
Right.
That's what I use for hunting.
I shoot the 150 TTSX.
And if you compare it side by side with a
175 Sierra Match King or one of those match
type bullets, the 155 or the 150 TTSX
is actually longer.
Right.
By quite a bit.
Right.
So you have a, obviously a longer driving band and
longer contact surface area in the barrel.
Now Barnes sort of puts those little can lures
around there, so they try and minimize that
extra contact, but I've always found that a 1
in 11 twist, even a 1 in 10 twist faster with
a TTSX and a 155, is probably gonna work good.
I dunno if he's talking about a 308 here, I'm
guessing with a 1 in 11 twist it's a 308
is probably would be.
So, I mean, as far as the examples of, I've
shot in Nosler e-tip's before, they shoot
pretty good, but the Barnes TTSX is kind of
my go-to for hunting.
The e-tip is actually looks like just a regular
jacketed bullet, so it doesn't have any of
those can lures so that one may not shoot as
well as the TTSX, but I would probably monkey
around with different grain weight bullets
before I sort of threw them in the garbage
saying they don't shoot.
Right.
Like for me the solid coppers generally need to
be driven a little harder than some of the other
bullets out, the lead cup and core bullets,
in order to expand.
So quite often guys will go to a, like in
a 308 for hunting guys, we'll be shooting like
180's, something like that with solid copper.
The 150 or even the 130 that Barnes makes are
probably pretty good choices for a 308 and
you can ramp up the speed a bit and then get them
to blossom when they.
Yeah.
Impact the meat they're supposed to blossom in.
Well I think you, you know, one of the things
you said was you don't always believe what
you're reading on the internet, or watching,
reading on the internet.
And I think a big part of this is go out there
and try it yourself.
Yeah, for sure.
Because it's all an experimentation process.
Yep.
What kind of, your bullet weight, your bullet
length, your powder.
Absolutely.
Your, and see what works in your firemen.
I think most people kind of want to shortcut
that and they say, Oh, I'll just buy
this and then we'll buy that one, and the
internet told me that.
Yeah, there's a lot of the reading off the
internet and how come it doesn't work in my gun.
Yeah.
Kind of thing and it's like, because it doesn't
work in everybody's gun.
Right.
Just because it's, one guy has it
workin' doesn't mean the other guy.
Then they got the analysis paralysis and.
Oh man, you know, the one I get as well, quite
often, this sort of on the topic here is, guys
that they'll buy let's use 308 for example.
There is an absolute metric shit ton
of data out on the internet right?
And most of it is pretty verified because
308 has been around for a long time.
You put 44 and a half grains of Vargit
over a 175 or a 168 and with a federal
210 match or a BR2.
Yep.
And you shoot it and it's probably going
to be three quarters or less, at a hundred.
So the one that I get quite often is, Hey,
I bought one of your barrels and the load I
want to use is well, first of all, I'm pulling
147 bullets out of some old machine gun ammo, and
I'm going to use those.
They have this black tar on them, but
it should be fine.
And, I'm going to use a Norinco brass steel,
and I'm going to use primers from Russia.
As one does.
Yep.
And I'm gonna use a powder that, I'm not sure
where it came from, but I got it at garage sale.
Yep.
So I've been shooting this in my other gun and
it shoots awesome, but I put it in your barrel and
I can't get it to shoot.
So I wanna know how to fix this, or I want to
send the barrel back because I think there's
something wrong with it.
Yeah.
And it's literally like, Why are you trying to
reinvent the wheel here?
Yeah.
I mean, experimentation is cool and fun.
And what works in one gun might well, I mean, if
you're putting that combo together, you'd probably
be lucky if you got it to shoot in any gun.
Yeah, no kidding.
But yeah, I literally had a guy somewhere in
the prairies there that was he was shooting a
Stag 10 when they were legal and and it was a
light barrel, it was a hunting oriented barrel.
And he had this crazy load and he was cramping
necks and all this and I'm like, Oh my God,
no wonder this thing doesn't shoot you're
lucky you haven't blown yourself up.
That's funny.
So my advice is just go with the standard stuff,
the proven stuff, and shoot that if you want
good results, because those are all pretty
much proven loads.
You know, thousands and millions of people
have probably gone over that and verified
that it works good.
And if you have a question, just email
me and I'll give you a load that.
Beauty.
Is probably going to be somewhere in the
zone of what you're looking for, but.
You heard it here.
Don't use the garage sale powder.
All right, let's get off of Reddit and
go over to Facebook.
Oh my God.
Let's see if there's going to be a difference
in the type of questions.
I can see right off the bat here,
I think it will be.
So Ian Thompson wants to know.
Good ol' Ian.
Why are you so GQ?
Yeah.
Well, Ian knows.
I know Ian, and he knows that I'm about
as far from GQ as you could ever want to be.
So I think that was more just a.
I think it was based off that picture
you got there.
Which one?
The black background that Graham took.
That was Graham yeah.
Yeah.
That turned out good.
Yeah, it did.
Didn't it?
Yep.
Yeah.
He's quite the artist with that camera.
Yeah, he's pretty good.
Yep.
Let's go over to Martin.
Martin, ganon, how do you pronounce that?
Gan-yon.
Martin Gagnon asks, for my hunting rig, with
weight saving in mind, should I go with a pencil
barrel or a carbon fiber wrap of the same length?
Yeah, okay.
That's a good question.
I mean, again, it kind of comes down to, is
qualifying what you want to do with it right?
The reality is that Pencil barrels are
great for weight but after a few shots, they
tend to open up and it doesn't really seem to
matter what you do with the stress-relieving.
You know, really light pencil barrels are kind
of designed for one or two shots in the
same hole, and then it starts to open up.
So if you're going to bang a string of 15
through it and wonder why it doesn't all go
through the same hole at a hundred metres,
you need to rearrange your thought process
on why you got this.
Right.
Okay.
So with carbon fiber barrels, you're going to
get a light steel liner on the inside, which
may be about the same size as just a straight
steel pencil barrel.
I know for ours, the internal liners
about 63 I think.
Which at the muzzle is about the same size
as our medium hunter.
So the medium hunters shoot really well.
So if we can increase the stiffness a bit
by adding some carbon fiber, which only really
adds a few ounces to the barrel, then you'll
probably prevent it from opening up a little
bit, by having the carbon fiber on there.
You'll prevent it from opening up over a longer
period ring of shots.
Right.
So you'll probably get, well, I mean, we've
seen guys with a carbon fiber barrel shoot, 10
shot strings all into, you know, the size of
a dime or a nickel or whatever the case may be.
Right.
You probably aren't going to get a string
of 10 shots out of a medium hunter that
all go through the same hole, although
I have seen it done.
It's, I probably wouldn't recommend buying that
style of barrel if that's what you want to do.
Maybe get something a little bit heavier,
get the carbon fiber version cause we can
add stiffness to it with minimal weight with
the carbon fiber so.
Beauty.
Martin, I would say probably the carbon
fiber would be the way to go if you're hunting
sheep or something along those lines and it's a
one or a two shot go you know, you might want to
think about maybe just the straight medium
hunter or even a fluted medium hunter, which will
bang a few more ounces off for you if you're
really trying to save.
But I think for rigidity over the same sort
of weight, you're, the carbon fiber is
going to win pretty much every time.
Okay, next one, John Gingrich.
John, good ol' John.
Asks fast twist 22 barrels.
Yeah.
It's kind of funny cause I actually had
a phone conversation with John about fast
twist 22 barrels about two days ago.
And the answer is yes, there will be
some coming shortly.
Nice.
Yeah.
So right now our 22 barrels are
all 1 in 16 twist.
We are experimenting, we will be
experimenting shortly.
The barrels should be getting pulled
this week actually, in 1 in 12 twists
and 1 in nine twist.
So the fast twist barrels are going to give us a
little more stability.
Right.
At longer ranges.
So the idea is that, probably the 16, we
know those shoot really well, out to 100, we've
seen some groups that are around the half
minute at a hundred.
And I'm sure the 12 and the nine will also shoot
really well out to a hundred, probably even
a little further than that, 150, maybe 180,
something like that.
But once you start getting past that sort
of 200 metre mark, which is really common
today with the rimfire PRS type matches where
you're trying to bang steel anywhere out
to, well I mean, back East, they shoot them
out in 500 metres.
Right.
With a 22 long rifle, so once.
500 hundred metres, 22?
I know it's crazy, right.
The furthest I've shot is 436, I think.
That's impressive.
To a piece of steal.
Yeah, that was good yep.
And that was crappy ammo too.
Mmm.
So what they're looking for is a little more
rotational stability past that sort of
200 metre mark.
So what you'll notice if you've shot rimfire
is that you start to get more fliers the
further out you go.
And that's probably a combination of a
couple of things.
22 rimfire bullets, their ballistic
coefficient is terrible so that doesn't help.
But also your well, two things can happen,
you can go through the transonic zone if you're
shooting supersonic stuff, which I've seen
personally at about the 300 metre mark.
The vast majority of your shots will go where
they're aimed, but you'll get the odd one here
and there that catches the wrong something,
and it goes two feet lower, two feet higher.
You get a weird flyer and.
Right.
It's like, I didn't call that, why's
it way over there.
So the idea with the faster twist rates
is to eliminate a lot of that transonic
zone D stability.
Now guys, that shoot.
And for people who don't know what a
transonic zone is.
Well, so it's the zone in between where the
bullet is supersonic and going to subsonic.
Right.
So it's this area where all kinds of wacky stuff
can happen to the bullet.
And when it's slowing down, it hits this zone
and then it becomes, can become unstable.
So it doesn't happen all the time, but
you get those weird fliers every now and
again, in my opinion, I think it's probably
because the supersonic stuff is going through
that transonic zone.
Now there are guys that shoot subsonic like
myself because I saw those weird wacky flyers
and I thought, Hmm, I wonder if I stayed
subsonic all the way out there, whether that would
eliminate a lot of that.
And for the most part, it did,
depending on the ammo.
But you still get the odd flyer and
when you're subsonic, you're also dealing
with more wind and.
Right.
More dope and all that kind of stuff.
So you have to deal with that.
So if we can add a little more rotational stability
to these projectiles, we may eliminate some
of those weird fliers.
Beauty.
That guys are seeing past that sort of
200 metre mark.
So we're going to be testing that
here shortly.
And I would probably imagine that we
will have barrels available, providing
the testing does what we think it will do.
Hopefully we'll do some videos on it so guys can
actually watch it, which would be kinda neat.
And it will probably have barrels available
probably January, I would think.
Nice!
Yeah.
I need some testing over the winter here.
Get a few things done.
Well that's exciting.
Yeah.
It's kind of cool because, I don't think
there's too many other companies, well I know
there's nobody else in Canada that does it.
But even in the States, I don't think the fast
twist 22 barrels are really super common yet.
Right.
So we're hoping to jump on that one.
That'd be pretty cool.
Yep.
Okay.
So we've got a number of, there's no names attached
to these questions.
Alright.
And some of them I'm looking at them.
They're already repeat, so we'll just
bang through them.
Sure.
Quickly.
Cold bore vs.
Clean bore.
Yup.
So first round shot, and any deviation that
you might find, there's people that talk about
cold bore shot and other people say nah,
nah, nah, it's because it's a clean bore shot.
Okay.
So cold bore, I think honestly is morelikely
cold shooter shot.
Right.
I don't really believe in the whole
cold bore thing.
Now clean bore is completely different
kind of topic.
The two are kind of apples and oranges.
Clean bore, yes, definitely.
Things are gonna change as you put some fouling
through the barrel.
So as far as cold bore goes, I'm not really
much of a believer.
I know that in my case, when I've got up to the
line and I've fired the first shot of the day
and it's not gone where I wanted it to, I usually
generally can eliminate that by dry firing a
few times, and sort of getting back into the
rhythm of what firing a perfect shot feels like.
Right.
So for me, I've basically dry fired a few times
before, and generally speaking, those rounds
that you fire on the cold bore, go where
you want them to.
So in my opinion, for me, there's no such thing
as a cold bore for me, it's more of a cold me
than it is a cold bore.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Now, clean shooting.
There's definitely something
there, for sure.
I mean, if you look at the bench rest guys,
they'll clean after a 10 shot string and then fire
a couple more sighters, or fowlers through
it to get it back.
Right.
And so I think there's something to be
said there for sure.
Clean bore and foul bore are, are different.
So next question.
How often do you clean your barrel?
Well, hmm.
It depends on the barrel.
Like the rimfire barrel, like I said,
I got 10,000 rounds through it and I pull
it once and I was sorry that I pulled it so.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd probably just leave it.
As far as rimfire goes, I clean the chamber a
lot and the action to make sure that all the
gunge that comes out of there is taken out.
And with rimfire in particular, one of
the downsides we're figuring out is the lube,
especially in winter conditions, can cause
all kinds of extraction issues in the cold.
Right.
Because that lube is instantaneously
hot and then instantaneously frozen,
if it's below zero.
Right.
So that can cause all kinds of shenanigans.
As far as centerfire goes, I used to be
of the opinion that just clean it until
it stops shooting.
Well.
Sorry, clean it until stops?
Pardon me.
Or clean it when it stops?
Clean it when it stops shooting.
Right.
Just shoot it until its not shooting anymore.
Right.
So I think my.
You've changed that have ya?
I have, yeah, my realization recently
has been that, I think you should pay a little
bit more attention to it because it may
stop shooting and you may not realize
that it's shooting.
Like I've run, well I think I've the most I've
done is about six or 700 rounds without cleaning.
Right.
Still again, paying more attention to the chamber
than anything else, but not pulling the bore.
That'd be like in a 223 or?
No, that was my competition 6mil.
Okay.
Yep.
Trying to push the limits and see what I could do.
Yeah, yeah.
And so, you know, I'd take it to a competition
and it had three or 400 rounds through it.
And then maybe not have quite the results that
you were kind of hoping for and then come back
after the competition and put it on paper.
And, Oh, look at that, it's shooting like
an inch at a hundred or an inch and a
half at a hundred.
And then put a borescope in there and go, wow,
there's a lot of copper and stuff in there.
So then you strip all that out and take the
Wipe Out and put it in there and drain
it and clean it out.
Take it back to the range, and lo and behold,
it's back to shooting, you know, 0.3 or 0.4
or whatever the case.
Right.
So I think for me, now, I'm going to definitely,
probably clean and completely stripped
to copper probably a lot faster now.
Probably every four or 500 rounds I'll probably
take it down to the bare steel and then refoul
and then go again.
But you know.
Fouling a couple of rounds.
Yeah.
If you do it like a deep strip with out
and you get all the copper out, it might
take you more than that.
It could take you 20, 30 rounds to sort
of get it back on track, but it really
depends on the rifle.
It's hard to say.
Well this, is bleeds into the next question.
Now you've mentioned Wipe Out a few times.
Yeah I have.
Okay so.
It's my go to.
Best practices for cleaning.
Okay well.
And that's going to change for
whoever you talk to.
I mean, you know, you got guys that are still
using hop's number nine.
With the nitro benzene it in.
Yes, nitro benzene, and they swear by it.
And you know, in the barrel industry I get to
clean lots of stuff after testing and whatnot and
the reason I mentioned Wipe Out is simply
because I will clean or I have clean stuff
with other things in the past and hmm, still
not doing what I thought it would be doing.
And then I take the Wipe Out in there and
guess what comes out.
Right.
A metric shit ton of copper comes
out with Wipe Out.
And it was all stuff that had been cleaned out
previously before with other types of cleaner
and I can verify it all, but with a borescope.
Yep.
So I can just look in there and see what
happens after you clean with some stuff.
And then I mean, I don't own stocks in Wipe Out
or anything, but I'll tell you what it, it
cleans very, very well.
That's the ammonia based, whatever in
there that you can smell, it's really.
You can.
Attacking the copper.
Yeah.
And I think the foaming bore cleaner type
style is really good for getting into all
the nooks and crannies and whatnot as well.
And just letting it sort of sit on the
bore and really get into the copper.
So you'd use forming as opposed to the patch out?
I've used them both.
Yeah.
Usually what I'll do is I will take my barrel
and take the bolt out and lean it up against
the wall, barrel a muzzle down and just squirt
the foaming bore cleaner in there and make sure
you put a paper towel or something under the
muzzle, because you'll get a whole pile of blue
Smurf snot that comes out of there, and that's all
the copper draining out.
So I'll do that and then I will run
some wet patches.
Isn't that why they sell those oilcan.
Oh yeah.
Wish.com, right?
That's right.
Yeah, solvent trap.
Solvent trap.
Yeah, get those.
Not.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, if you want to end up in jail,
don't do that.
That's right.
Yeah, so all the blue stuff comes out.
So then I'll push a couple of wet
patches through and see how that looks.
And then usually I'll lean it up against
the wall again, and squirt the foaming
stuff in there and just let it sit.
You know and I may have to squirt the
foaming stuff in there five or six times,
just to make sure.
And you'll know because none of the blue stuff
comes out in the end when you just let it
sit in there and then some dry patches.
And then, I mean, if you want to put oil in
your barrel, I guess that's fine, but make
sure you dry patch it before you shoot.
A lot of brushing?
Nope.
No brush, no nylon?
No brush.
No copper, just patch?
No, don't need it.
The Wipe Out takes out everything
without a brush.
I mean, if you had a really stubborn copper
issue, you could probably you could probably use
a brush if you want.
Just be aware that copper brushes or brass brushes
seem to be effected by Wipe Out as well.
They will yep.
So it will eat your brush bristles.
And if it's a copper brush, it might
even leave false readings on your
patches and whatnot.
So I don't even really find any need
to brush it out.
You had one person say, he says, Oh no,
I always use nylon because it won't
won't harm the bore.
And then somebody else says, well, have you
ever looked at the eyelits on a fishing rod?
And they got the nylon going through and then
over time it eats away.
Yeah.
You know, it all does something.
Yeah.
The other one I get is a bore snakes.
Right.
This seems to be an ongoing saga
of the bore snake.
And so I try to explain it a few times and I'm
not a guy that would ever run a bore snake
through a precision gun.
No.
Would I carry one in my pocket for hunting
in case I lawn dart my rifle into the
dirt when I trip?
Sure.
Yeah.
Why not?
That would be good to get all the crap
out of the barrel.
It's fine in an emergency case, but as a regular
cleaning thing, I would never run bore
snakes through my gun simply because it's
very easy to wear the edge off of the crown.
Right.
With a bore snake.
You might think you're pulling it out straight
and you might pull it out straight sometime,
but you might not.
And all it takes to affect your accuracy at
the nth level, is just to take the edge off
of the crown somewhere.
And then things start eroding even
faster after that.
So for me, I always, like a plastic coated
steel rod and that works the best.
And are using a bore guide?
No.
No?
I don't, but I know lots of people do.
Okay.
But I don't know.
You can, if you want.
Just be careful.
Yeah, just put it in straight.
Like don't jam it in like a.
Like a flicka.
Like a monkey.
There ya go.
And with the Wipe Out as well, I'm told that
you get that on your dining room table and
it can attack the.
You're told that?
This is what I.
Who told you that?
This is what I hear.
I think somebody that lives with you might've
told you that maybe.
So word on the street is.
Figured out via experience.
Fire lapping.
Oh my God.
Fire lapping.
Okay.
So we had somebody askin about fire lapping.
Yeah, I don't, I've tried.
Maximize throat errosion?
I've tried it.
I think what fire lapping is, is simply a way to
take your throat errosion down a couple of notches.
To take the rough edges off of fire cracking,
right in the throat.
I've shot some of the little kits that you can
get that are fire lapping kits through 308's
that have had like six, 7,000 rounds through it.
Did I see any difference in accuracy?
Nope.
That doesn't mean it wouldn't work
for somebody else.
On a new gun, I would definitely not fire lap.
I would leave the, if it's a quality barrel,
I would not fire lap.
Right.
You might have a, maybe a factory barrel
that's having some real bad issues.
Anything, you know, maybe you borescope and you
know, something's funky in the throat there.
Maybe you might want to try fire lapping
something there.
Be aware that you'll probably
void your warranty.
If you fire lap it because it'd probably be
very easy to see the fire lapping on the inside.
Right.
Yeah, with a borescope.
So for me, not really thing, I shoot
6mils, so they fire crack very easily.
You'd look at a brand new barrel after two or
300 rounds and you've got fire cracking in there.
So for me, I just use a little bit of JB bore
paste, which is a very, very fine abrasive and
I just run it into the throat and like 20,
30 strokes in there, just in the throat
area, back and forth on little felt pellets.
You could do it on a patch too,
if you needed to.
And that just takes the edge off of the fire
cracking, and that's generally all you need.
Yeah.
What about a carbon ring?
A carbon ring.
Oh my favorite, carbon ring.
Maybe we tell 'em what it is and.
Yeah.
So on these new high-speed calibres,
they are, especially the 6mils and even the 65's,
to a degree, and some of the smaller ones, like
a 22 Creedmoor, you'll probably see it as well.
So when you fire, you get a bit of a carbon ring
that goes back underneath the edge of the neck
of the casing and it forms right where the
chamber basically starts, err not the chamber,
the throat starts.
So just back from your case mouth is where
you'd be looking and you get this carbon ring
that goes all the way around the case mouth.
So what happens is that carbon ring starts to
build up the more you fire and the signs
of it is that your velocity started to go
crazy because you're actually pinching the
case mouth around it.
So you're adding neck tension basically.
Right.
To the case mouth.
And so when you fire your, you don't get
the same velocity, not a consistent velocity.
So the sign of it is a decreasing accuracy and
creeping velocities.
And so the idea is that you want to get rid of
that carbon ring that forms around there so
that you're getting consistent neck tensions.
So how do you get rid of the carbon?
Well, I first realized that this was an
issue on my 6mil on my competition gun.
I shoot a six comp match, which is
basically a 243 AI.
So lots of powder, big velocities
on small bullets.
And after, I think it was probably about four
or 500 rounds, I started getting the sort of weird
creeping velocities and the expanding groups from
where it had been only a few hundred rounds ago.
So I'm like what the heck's going on
here and not being very well-schooled
in the 6mils at that point in time.
I didn't, you know, I'd been shooting through
308's basically, so it's not really a
thing in 308 right.
And so I went and looked and I'm like, Holy
crap, I have this carbon ring thing in here.
So, how do I get this out of here?
So I thought, well, I'll just clean it
and it'll be fine.
Sure.
Wrong.
Yeah.
Even Wipe Out doesn't take it out.
So I was trying to figure out how the heck to get
this stupid carbon ring out of there cause I
suspected that it was causing issues with the
accuracy and velocity.
So I tried every cleaner known to man
and even some cleaners not known to man.
I tried some miscellaneous
industrial products.
Sure.
Nope.
Where did I go?
I went on a, I think it was a US high power
board and these old high power shooters
had these recipes for, I don't even remember,
something, somebody red juice or something.
It was.
Right.
Called, I can't remember.
I made that stuff
! Yeah.
So, and it had like, 10 ingredients in
it and they're all highly toxic stuff.
Yeah.
Right.
I still got a bucket of that stuff.
Yeah, this shit is going to be awesome.
It's gonna peal this right out of here.
Nope.
Anggg, wrong.
Didn't even touch it.
So I'm like, Holy crap, this is resilient
burnt on carbon.
Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to
just take the reamer and I'll run the reamer in
and I'll just cut it out.
Okay.
Nope.
Reamer, didn't take it out either.
Really?
Yeah.
So I was like, Holy smokes, this is insane.
So, I can't remember how it came about, but
a buddy of mine,a guy shoot with, and he's
like, maybe you should just try some like floor
cleaner or something.
And I'm like floor cleaner?
And he's like, yeah, why don't you try that
CLR shit from Walmart, it's the stuff that
you can, that mold mildew and rust stuff.
And I'm like, I don't know if that works
on carbon, but you know, it's like six
bucks at Walmart.
So I'll go over there and try it.
So sure enough.
It worked.
Like 10 minutes later, I had no carbon ring.
I'm like, you've gotta be kidding.
So yeah.
So that's how we get the carbon rings out now.
CLR.
Calcium, Lime, Rust.
Yep.
This stuff that comes in the gray bottle with the
orange and green label.
Yeah.
And so the method that I use now is, I will
soak an oversized brush.
So if you're shooting a 6 mm, I'll use a six and a
half or seven mil brush, and I wrap a patch around
it, dip it in the CLR and just stuff it into the
throat and let it sit.
So let it sit for 10 to 20 minutes somewhere
in there, you can let it sit longer.
And then once you have that, then give the
brush a few twists and that will sort of
dislodge the carbon ring from the chamber wall
and then pull it out.
You'll see it on the patch and then do it
again until you get nothing coming out.
Or you can verify it with a borescope or
a camera or whatever, if you have it.
I will tell you that the carbon ring does not look
like much in there, but it has lots of effect.
So I've had guys that are like, no, I've cleaned
it, I've looked in there where the borescope,
there's no carbon ring.
I'm like, okay send it to me.
And my buddy, Alex is one of them.
Yeah.
Love you, buddy, you proved me right he's
like, yeah, it's clean.
So I got in there and I'm like, there's a
carbon ring in here.
And he's like, Oh, there is, I cleaned
it like crazy.
I'm like, dude, it doesn't come
out with cleaning.
So we stuck the CLR in there and sure
enough, big black smudge came out.
Beauty.
Even though when you look in there, it
doesn't look like there's much, but it doesn't
take much to start effecting your velocities
and whatnot so.
That's awesome to know.
So anyway, yep.
His went, his went right back to normal
once we got the carbon ring out of there
and he had a bit of a copper issue as well.
He was doing the same thing as me, he
wasn't cleaning for long periods of time.
How many rounds was he firing in order to
develop a carbon ring?
I don't think it takes much, like for me,
I'll CLR every 200.
Okay.
Yep.
Take that carbon ring out of there.
And that will probably be less as you go up in
bore diameter because you're having less
pressure in there.
Right.
So the more overboard the cartridges, like
at 22 Creedmoor or a 22 to 50, where you have a
22 calibre bullet and a huge ass 308 sized case.
Right.
That's probably going to start a carbon
ring pretty quick.
Right.
The one that we talked a little bit about it
before we started, was the 6 dasher and there
was sort of a thing, where guys were having
lots of issues with 6 dashers right around
the 500 round mark.
And I think probably a lot of that was related
to carbon rings back in the day when the 6 dasher
was new and people didn't really understand what
was going on with that casing and that carbon
rings were a thing.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
All right.
So, we'd done on carbon ring?
I think so.
Okay.
We've got, does an 11 degree target crown make
a difference over, let's say a 90 degree or other?
I think if you think it does, it does.
Yeah.
That's, that's what I found.
Yeah.
You ever chopping one down and.
Oh yeah.
Just see how it works.
Done all kinds of funky stuff to the crown.
As long as the edges are sharp, we've even
cut them on angle.
Yeah.
And as long as it's sharp, it
seems to be okay.
You'll get.
Accuracy wise.
Precision and your accuracy, your point
of impact will change.
Yeah.
But yeah.
Yeah, so the only thing that I would suggest
on a crown is to have some sort of a recess
crown just in the off chance that you ding it
somehow on something, if it's recess crown,
whether it's 11 degree or whether it's just a
like slightly set back.
If something hits the end of your muzzle, who
knows you might ding your crown, which is bad.
And if it's reset, you may not have that
issue a little bit.
Okay.
As much.
Barrel or stock.
What makes the most noticeable difference
to accuracy?
Well, again, I think on a mechanical
point, probably the barrel, for sure.
But it all comes back to how you're thinking
about, you're shooting.
So if you're shooting a stock, you might have the
best barrel in the world, but if you're shooting
a stock that's not comfortable, it doesn't
fit you properly or you just don't like it, or I
have a problem with this stock because of that.
You're probably already affecting the way your
mental state, the way you're going to shoot so.
Good point.
But mechanically, as far as gaining the
most out of accuracy, I think honestly
barrel ammunition and glass are probably the
three top ones that will get you there as
far as accuracy goes.
Yeah, make sure you're shooting good ammo.
If you'r shootin' freedom bucket and
you're probably not.
Bedding vs.
Vblocks.
That's not really a barrel thing, but some
people will bed their entire barrel length.
Yeah and I mean, I've gone to the extent
where I've bedded aluminum chassies.
Yeah?
Just to see if it made a difference.
And?
Didn't.
Yeah.
No, I saw no difference in bedding
an aluminum chassis.
Now I have seen differences in bedding
other things like wood stock's, some fiberglass
stocks as well, a little bit of betting helps.
But as far as a Vblock aluminum chassis
kind of deal, I don't think there's
any need to bed it.
But again, if it makes you feel like you're
going to be more accurate than okay, go for it.
So a free floated barrel or pressure points?
Ahh, yes, yes, yes.
Well, I think for the most part, my
experience would be that a free floated
barrels are probably a better option than some
with pressure points.
I mean, some of the older rifles back in the
day all had a pressure point right at the very
front of the fore end.
Right.
And that seemed to work okay, but I dunno.
I think if you look at the people that are
trying to exact the most amount of accuracy out
of their guns, there aren't any guns that
are like that they're all free floated.
Right.
Yeah.
I think there's something to be said on heavy
profile barrels to have an inch, inch
and a half, maybe two inches of bedding
in front of the lug.
Right.
And just touching the barrel, but after that.
Just in the chamber area?
Yep, yeah, just give it a little more support
in front of the recoil lug, especially when
you're hanging like MTUS or kind of the
trend now is to these 125 straight barrels
that are like 27 inches long, 26 inches long.
Right.
That's like nine pound barrel or more right.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
So to hang all that off your action, I think
it's probably a good idea to have a little bit of
bedding in front of the lug to help support that.
Okay.
How about torque settings?
Are they all that they're cracked up to be?
Well, that is a very interesting thing.
I think torque settings or something else
that you have to experiment a bit with,
especially with aluminum chassies I've found.
Well, you know, honestly I've never
really experimented with them, with like
stocks and stuff, but I would imagine it
probably has a similar effect, but the torque
settings can affect your accuracy, absolutely.
On a couple levels, I think number one, make
sure that the chassis actually fits your
action a hundred percent, because if it doesn't
and there's slight differences in there
even a little bit, you can torque your action
to the point where you might not even be able
to operate the bolt if you're cranking down
on it, like crazy.
Right.
I've seen that before.
I think probably the other thing is that,
what I've noticed is, okay, let me
go back a bit here.
So I started shooting aluminum chassies with
MDT and they got me into a couple of chassies.
And so I'm monkeyed around a bit with
different torque values.
And I talked to a couple of target shooter
rifle guys, target rifle shooter guys
that shoot at a very high level for Canada.
And they said, Oh yeah, you got to play with
your torque settings because those guys
were really shooting aluminum chassies way
before anybody else on the RPA's and the
actions that you could fit into get aluminum
chassies made for back in the day before MDT
and some of the other companies came around.
Right.
And they said, yeah, you don't necessarily
want to go super tight.
You almost kind of want to have it loose
in there, not loose, but just snugged in.
Right.
And that might help you with any of
the inaccuracies in the chassis.
So I thought, Hmm, well, MDT is pretty good.
I will play around with it a bit and, in their
chassies I didn't really see much of a difference
between like 60, 65 pounds down to around 35.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's a big difference.
Yeah.
But I have seen another chassies differences
where looser, down to the 35 pounds sort of
zone actually made the rifle group better.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And so I just run all my chassies around
35 now anyway, be it MDT or anybody else.
Okay.
And my stocks, snd stocks that that would
be a different thing because you're looking
at a different type of bedding in there.
So that would be something to experiment
with a bit, plus usually on a stock, you're trying
to hold your bottom metal in with the action
screws and whatnot.
What about torque settings on your scope?
On the scope?
On the rings, bases.
I mean, there's guys that go to the nth degree on
all kinds of crazy stuff.
Sure, if it makes you feel better, if
you want to lap your scope rings, okay.
Put rosin in there.
I don't know.
You know, I've seen old off the rack
Weaver rings and bases just do awesome.
Yeah.
And I've always figured the torque settings,
at least in that respect, was more of
a solution to a problem that never existed.
Yeah, that's kinda how I feel too.
Other than maybe to prevent people from
over-torquing it, people who didn't have
the feel, they didn't know, is this too tight?
Am I going to crush things?
How tight is tight, right?
Right.
Yeah.
I mean with mine, I just use a Torx screw driver.
I don't have any torque settings on mine, I
just snug 'em down until they're nice and snug and
I don't overcrank them.
Right.
Don't put Loctite on your scope rings.
That's the next question that we had here.
Is there a question?
Yeah.
Is Loctite overused?
Hey, look at that!
That's hilarious.
I think in certain ways, Loctite is overused yeah.
Scope rings for sure.
Don't Loctite, your base to your action.
If you have a 20 MOA rail, please don't
because if I'm trying to spin a new barrel on
there and I can't get your scope base off, I'm
not really too sure what I'm going to do at that
point or what you're going to do, because
I'm going to send it back to you probably.
But yeah, don't Loctite it on there.
Don't Loctite your scope rings down.
Yeah, I think Loctite is a little bit overused.
It's again, something that I've often, if
it's properly tightened up, how often do you.
I'll tell you one place I do use Loctite and it's
a little bit of a secret.
Okay.
I'll tell you a secret.
Just you and me though, right?
Just you and me.
Okay.
So you know that I shoot ARS or I used
to shoot AR's at a fairly high level.
I've heard this.
Yes.
Fairly high level.
So one of the places I use Loctite is when
I am putting an AR15 barrel into the action.
So I will put Loctite around the extension
and slide it in there and then tighten
the barrel nut down.
Interesting.
Yeah.
A lot of guys think that you have to put
lubricant in there.
Wrong.
Do not put lubricant in there.
If anything, you want to take up any
of that extra little slop and the Loctite
seems to work good.
Now I don't use red Loctite and I don't use
a blue Loctite, I use.
The green stuff.
I use the green stuff.
Okay.
Yeah, which you can break free pretty easily.
Yeah.
But it takes enough of the slop up because
aluminum receivers are not necessarily milled.
They're milled to mill spec.
Right.
Which isn't really all that great for accuracy.
So there you go, I just gave you AR 15
championship winning tip right there.
Beauty, now that's worth listening to, what are
we at, an hour and a half into this podcast?
Are we already?
We are.
Oh my God.
I've only got a couple more here for those who
stuck around this long.
Yeah.
There ya go.
Yeah.
Thanks.
I hope there's something good you
can take out of this.
Barrel tuners.
Do they work?
I think they do.
Okay.
Maybe we'll let the people know what
a barrel tuner is.
Yeah.
So barrel tuner is this thing that you either
screw onto the end of the barrel or clamp onto
the barrel, and it can change basically the
harmonics of the barrel.
Generally they're a two piece thing that you can
screw in or screw out.
And it just moves, I think the way it works
mainly is it moves your leverage point a
little further out or a little further back.
It may also dampen any kind of vibration a
little bit, but you can basically sort of change
that note a little bit.
So where we're sort of seeing these really take
off right now is in the 22 PRS sort of end of it.
Right.
So guys are doing a lot of testing with the tuner
because 22 ammunition at this point in time
cannot be reloaded.
So you have to go off the factory ammo and you have
to find ammo that shoots reasonably well for your
barrel, for your gun.
And so putting a tuner on there can actually
help quite a bit really fine tune that sort of,
know that you might've been almost on with
the ammunition itself, but not quite there.
It could shoot a little bit better if it was
just a slightly different frequency at the end of
the different harmonic at the end of the barrel.
Just change that sweet spot.
Yep, and basically that's what it does.
And so the guys are able to fine tune the groups
and, you know, there's lots of anecdotal target
evidence on the net.
We get guys that are testing barrels for
us that are shooting the tuna can, I think
is a red knob one that's out right now.
And yeah, it can be, it can help quite a bit,
change your group size.
Now on a centrefire gun, is it a thing?
I don't know.
You can tune your ammo on a centrefire gun.
So whether you actually need that or not is
another question.
Right.
It might work maybe for bench rest you'd
see the guys doing it.
For PRS, where you're trying to whack a four
MOA piece of steel.
Right.
I mean, you know, what's the point really I guess.
If you want to run it sure.
Do you need it?
Maybe not.
There might be one coming from IBI and
in the near future.
I like that.
Might, maybe.
Perhaps, maybe.
Shortly.
Test it out.
See how it goes.
Yeah.
You never know anything could happen.
Will the optimal load for a barrel change over
the barrels lifespan?
I don't think the optimal load would probably
change over lifespan, providing you're
not really changing anything in the barrel.
What will change is probably the
throat erosion.
So you may or may not have to monkey around
with the load a little bit to, not the load,
but the seeding depth to get it, to do what
it was doing previously.
Like if you have a barrel that shoots and it needs
to be 23 off to lands.
Sure.
If you shoot a thousand rounds through it and
your throat erroads 20 thou, you may have
to push that bullet out a bit more to get
those same results.
But you might not, I mean, there's guys like
Eric Kortina down the States and he doesn't
chase the lands at all.
He doesn't care.
Okay.
I'm not quite there yet, I'm not.
And I have to do a bit more experimenting, but
yeah, it's possible.
So, I dunno if you're looking at my sheet here,
but you're talking about things that are just
leading into the next.
What else do I got here?
Well throat erosion.
What's throat erosion and how can it be prevented?
You can't prevent it.
If you want to prevent throat erosion, shoot
a 22 long rifle.
Yeah.
All the low pressure cartridges have a lot
less throat erosion.
What is it?
Basically is, when you ignite a case or
you ignite around, you instantly create
hot fiery gas with the gunpowder exploding
inside the case and that all gets forced
out through the case mouth and that's what
pushes the projectile.
All that expanding gas pushes the projectile
down, but also right at the case mouth that
also tends to cook the steel pretty badly
right at the throat.
So we see throat erosion on high
pressure cartridges.
So like I mentioned previously, anything
that's overbore that has a big case size, but a
small bullet diameter tends to get throat
erosion super quickly.
That's one of the reasons why he can shoot a 308
for, you know, 6,000 rounds and not really
see much in the way of throat erosion, or you
can shoot you know, 6 creedmoor and have throat
erosion of like 10 thou in like 500 rounds.
Right.
So the more of that hot gas, you're trying to
force through a very small opening of the
case mouth, the more throat erosion you're
probably gonna get.
So if you're shooting a big straight wall
cartridges, like 30 Whelan or something like
that, where you have a big bullet and a big case
mouth it's not really too much different than
the size of the case, then you're probably
going to have a lot less throat erosion than you
would if you have a big case in a small bullet.
And we're getting into our final
stretch here, one of them you've already
basically answered.
Will moly coated bullets increase the barrel life?
Yeah.
And the answer is.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Who knows.
There's other issues that come along
with moly coating.
Especially out here in the West coast,
moly coating is a super hydrophilic, so
it attracts water so.
Right.
If you have a moly coated barrel, have to make sure
it's really dry when you store it, because if
it's a chromoly steel barrel, you may come back
and it'll be full rust.
Right.
So you gotta be pretty careful there.
And again, you have to increase your powder
charge with coated bullets, be it moly, or
hexagonal boron because they're so slippery
that you require more powder to actually push
it at the same velocity.
So we go back to the throat erosion question
again and you know, when you're increasing
your powder charge is probably a pretty good
chance that you're gonna cook your throat
a little bit more as the powder charge increases.
Yeah.
Talk about rusty barrels reminds me of a going
back on the Wipe Out.
Yep.
And another fellow we'll just call him
Bill S, we'll just leave it at that.
Interesting.
And he's always trying to save a buck and he says,
Oh, this got ammonia in it, I can smell it.
And it's like yeah, I think that's the active
ingredient in it, it's kind of attacking the
copper here, the fouling.
And so he thought, I know what I'll do,
rather than buying this expensive Wipe Out,
I'll just get a big jug of ammonia already,
and I'll just run some of this down my bore.
Oh boy, good idea.
Man, if you looked down this guy's
barrel afterwards.
He brought it in, he says, you told me this
should be fine, Travis!
I said, I never said that.
Whoa, hang on a second.
I said it smelled like ammonia and
I agree with you.
It looked like you're looking
down a sewer pipe.
It was so rusty.
Yeah.
Was probably a chromoly steel barrel
and it all corroded.
That's one thing about CLR that you have to be
careful with as well.
I didn't mention in the carbon ring question
there is that it needs more experimentation
with chromoly barrels.
It's fine in stainless steel, but I have
seen some corrosion if you don't wipe it
all out of there in a chromoly steel barrels.
I have seen guys that want to clean
their muzzle breaks in it, and the muzzle
breaks are chromoly and they're coded in
cerakote or something along those lines.
And they put it in there and it's black
and they pull it out and it's gray.
Right.
So you gotta be careful because I think the CLR
has some issues with the chromoly steel.
So I would just be careful as far as that
goes a corrosion and I wouldn't put 'em
straight ammonia down your barrel either.
Well, it didn't work out too well for this guy.
No, no, definitely not.
And here's the last question.
Yep.
And we can always fill in more afterwards
if you think that anything's been missed,
but man, we've got a lot of things here.
Yeah, that was a lot.
Yeah.
What gives a premium barrel, a
better lifespan?
I don't know if it does.
Right.
I think the lifespan of the barrel really
depends on how hard that you're, how hard
you're pushing it.
So if you're shooting just a soft factory
loads through it, well it depends on
a few things, right?
Like soft factory loads will probably give you
more barrel life than you running a really
hot hand loads out of the same barrel.
You'll get more barrel life out of the
factory loads for sure.
And also the calibre as well.
If you're shooting a 308, you're going to
probably going to get 5,000 rounds out of it,
of accurate barrel life.
But if you're shooting a 6 creedmoor,
you're probably going to get 2000.
Right.
2200 or whatever, right.
Now, I guess steel has a lot to do
with that as well.
It all depends on the, partly on the hardness
of your steel as well.
Right.
So the harder the steel, the more barrel life
you're probably going to get out of it as far
as like stainless goes, I think Bartlein line
just came out with some different type of steel
that said increases their barrel life a bit.
I think it's only a few Brownell hardness
points harder than their previous steel.
Okay.
So whether that's actually a change in
the steel or whether it's a change in
their stress-relieving processes, I don't know.
Because stress-relieving, it can, it can change
your hardness as well.
What about cryo-treating?
I know we were on our last question.
Yeah, no it's all good.
I'm not really too familiar with the
cryo-treating to be honest with you, I've
heard good things and I've heard bad things.
Some guys think that cryo-treating will
do the same thing as that's stress-relieving
and I have no practical experiences
to whether it does.
Fair enough.
Yeah, unfortunately.
So well, I mean, premium barrel life, it's
probably going to help in a couple of ways.
If you've got a premium barrel more than likely,
you're also getting it cut by somebody with
decent reamers and you're having somebody
do it that cares about what's going on.
Not necessarily a factory barrel, that's
pumped out by the thousands and they just.
Care about getting it done.
It might not even be a sharp reamer right.
Right.
So I think all of those factors sort of rolled
into one, providing you're not running it
super hot, is going to give you a better
accuracy for sure and yeah, probably a little
bit better barrel life.
It's hard to say.
Well, after all of these questions that we've had
from Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and emailed and
all different places they got coming in here.
Is there anything that you think we
should be talking about that was missed?
I don't know anything I missed.
That was, that was pretty.
That was exhaustive.
That was pretty hardcore.
You did good.
Did I?
Yeah, ya did.
I probably screwed a few of them up.
Probably, but.
Oh well, mental management.
Ryan, thank you very much for being on The
Silvercore Podcast.
Yeah, anytime.
Thanks.
If there's anything in here that listeners are
listening to and they have different thoughts
on, Hey, we want to hear 'em, put them up.
If they think that maybe we're off base,
let us know why and check out IBI barrels.
I mean, give them an email, give them a
phone call, go on their Instagram, Facebook.
Yep.
There's people all the time posting pictures,
asking questions, getting the answers there.
Yeah, lots of pictures on Instagram.
And if you're on Facebook and you want to check
out what the barrels are capable of, probably
the best place to go is the International
Barrels user page.
And that's pretty much, I run it, but it's all
mainly the vast majority of the posts are people
that are shooting the barrels already, it's
unbiased information that comes directly from
them, not through us.
So it's not us cherry picking a bunch of groups
or whatever, whatever people want to send.
It's just straight up results that people are
getting with the barrels so that you can sort
of see for yourself.
And there's some beautiful guns on there.
Yeah there are.
That guys post pictures of, and you know, the
paint jobs and the way they put them together.
Just make you drool.
Yeah, it does.
And the groups too, like, you know, people post
stuff and I'm like, you shot that with a pre fit.
Like how, like I can't believe that it's crazy
now what you're doing with it, you know?
So yeah, it's good.
It makes me happy every day.
Check out all this stuff.
Well, Ryan, thanks very much.