Barrel heating: the Tikka surprise

OP is 4 years old.
Fluting a barrel is purely decoration. Does little otherwise.
"...groups open up to 4 or 5 inches..." Barrel is too close to the stock and touches as it heats up. If your stock is wood you can relieve the barrel channel a bit to stop this. Doable with a synthetic. Just easier with wood.
 
Fluting a barrel is purely decoration. Does little otherwise.
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Wrong again, as usual.

Fluting does nothing to improve accuracy. But it does reduce weight without negatively effecting accuracy. Far from pure decorative. The old school method was to turn barrels down to a thinner profile to reduce weight. Despite Bart's theoretical assumption that a thinner barrel will shoot as well as a heavy barrel it just doesn't happen in the real world. The difference isn't usually huge, especially for 3-5 shots, but I've never owned a pencil thin barrel shoot well after 3-5 shots within a minute. Shooting slower, yes.

BUT... if a Tikka is shooting that poorly with there is something wrong with the rifle, or shooter. A lot of guys simply can't shoot a 5-6 lb rifle nearly as well as a 7-8 lb rifle.

Almost all barrels will open up groups some with multiple shots in a short time. But the OP's problem and Akholland's are extreme. Both of those should go back to the manufacturer.

Tikka makes a good rifle, and fluting does nothing to degrade accuracy. But while rare, I guess even Tikka can turn out a bad rifle.
 
Wrong again, as usual.
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I side with T O Heir: If you take material away in reality what you have done is made it a thinner barrel.

You could buy a thinner barrel in the first place.

If a thinner barrel is more prone to whip then you have a less accurate (at least going by 5 shots - you might get 3 accurate shots out of it)

The only gain is more surface you get faster cooling.

That's my opinion and I am sticking with it.

You see bench rest shooters with flouted barrels?
 
I have two rifles with fluted barrels...both stainless. They're a bit lighter than an equivalent diameter barrel, shoot well, but heat up just as much as my other barrels.

The real reason for fluted barrels is that they seem to add a few feet per second...to the shooter! ;)
 
theoretically a fluted barrel should cool quicker due to more surface touching the air

it can be as stiff as a heavier barrel to because you have structural strenght

I had a long 60cm bull barrel and it is heavy

my 74cm semi sporter I had in another rifle was ridic:D I even threaded it last year I had it because I didn't compete anymore and thought I was gonna use it for hunting
 
RC 20, I don't pretend to know all the forces at work,but,may I ask,what forces are we trying to overcome with barrel rigidity? Is it about barrel flex and harmonics?
Assuming all that is brought on by accelerating the mass of the barrel,if we can lose mass at a greater proportion than we lose rigidity,might our barrel deflect less in firing?
I do agree that moving material to make flutes makes a barrel less rigid,but not in relation to its weight.

The discussion began about barrel heat. Why are air cooled engines finned?

Heavier barrels will soak more heat,but they cool slower.

I think what is being missed is stress relief. The tikka bbl ...Is it hammer forged around a mandrel? I don't know.Is it an economical production rifle?

Every barrel making process has its pluses and minuses. The stress relief oven is not something you do to a finished bore.

Button rifled and rotoforged barrels by process have more stress than cut rifled barrels. And,yes,fluting an otherwise finished barrel introduces stress.

Done right,in the cut rifling process,contouring and fluting are done after boring and initial lapping,but before cutting the rifling and final lap. See Kreigers process. For my money,that is the fluting process that may have merit.

I'm skeptical of taking a finished barrel and milling grooves in it.Depending on the sharpness of the cutter,a percentage of its action is cutting.The rest is pounding,or deformation.We always get SOME burr. That is beaten.mallable material. Stretched skin.
Go back to Bart B's comments and blueprint the receiver/barrel fit up.If the problem is there,bingo.
Do check for bedding and pressure there. If that is the problem,fine.

But if you have a stressed barrel or an off center barrel it will not be heat stable
 
Weight reduction and aesthetics. Better cooling? Perhaps marginally but there is not a significant increase in surface area from fluting.

Bead blasting the barrel increases surface area for more efficient cooling.

As mentioned, you don't see many comp barrels fluted and then likely only to make weight.
 
No argument about the competition barrels.I'm not particularly an advocate for fluting.
There are a lot of folks who build rifles that never get carried farther than from the vehicle to the firing line.That is perfectly OK.Have fun how you like to.
Folks who have a passion for those competitions will have a set of priorities in part based on the rules,in part based on the guy that beat them,and maybe,in part,based on bang for the buck.
That's not wrong. It makes perfect sense.
I respect that group of shooters.
I suspect that the time allowed to shoot a string favors heat soaking mass over heat dissipation. Sounds true.
Even if there was time for the cooling to work,competition requires a fresh barrel periodically.Fluting,done right,may cost as much as the barrel itself.An extra $300 a barrel may not add up competitively.
I understand your point of looking at what the winners use. Valid!

I've already expressed my skepticism over folks who take a finished barrel,that willnever be sress relieves again,put it in there 4 axis CNC and spiral flute it with a carbide ballmill. IMO,that is cosmetic and probably detrimental

I only replied because there is a lot of mis information about fluting

If you made a rule change to your competition that the rifle would have to be carried for 5 0r 6 miles in a day,over 10,000 feet of up and down altitude change while wearing body armor and carrying 80 lbs of other gear,where an occasional quarter mile sprint was required,and where the length of a string of fire is unknown,but its measured in magazines
"What the winners use" might include a fluted barrel.

Or if the rifle was purpose built for a once in a lifetime sheep hunt,where the "string" was one shot from a cold barrel at 10,000 feet,It might be a fluted barrel.

My point,"What the winners use" is a good plan,to a point. Its what the followers use.There are innovators ,like David Tubbs,who do things no one else is doing.The folks who use "What the winners use" are playing catch up.

And while all aspects of rifle shooting can benefit from proving grounds such as benchrest, a pure benchrest rifle would be what the ridiculous losers carry on a high altitude elk hunt.
"The Winners" and those who aspire to be winners at the competition game may represent a large portion of the custom gunsmith's business,and therefore,focus.But they represent a very small percentage of shooters.What is the correct answer for them may not apply to a prairie dog shooter.

I can think of a couple of rifle ideas where a fluted Krieger barrel might be ideal. One might be a DMR style AR and the other might be a 338 Lapua that would be carried.
And at 65 yrs old I probably will never build them.
 
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