ER Shaw Barrels?

Looked into them and also one of their rifles. The lead time on the gun killed it for me on that avenue. I looked at the barrel option on a Savage action as well, a gunsmith buddy told me and I quote "ER Shaw makes a helluva mater stake".
 
And a lot of people who have used them say otherwise.

You can count on them being about equal to a Factory Savage barrel.

That quality varies but usually comes in around 1 inch, fairly often 3/4.

Not a lot better but sometimes yes.

Good solid Ford or Chevy barrels for the price.

You want to win Lemans, you need a Ford GT40
 
RC20 I base that on the ruger American a cheap rifle with a hammer forged barrel that outshoots everything besides maybe a match rifle. I cant think of the others that hammer forge I think it is Sako. maybe someone else knows. hammer forging has no stress in the steel and no other method aligns the steel better so less chance of a group opening up
 
. RC20 I base that on the ruger American a cheap rifle with a hammer forged barrel that outshoots everything besides maybe a match rifle. I cant think of the others that hammer forge I think it is Sako. maybe someone else knows. hammer forging has no stress in the steel and no other method aligns the steel better so less chance of a group opening up
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Salt & Battery: I have a Ruger American rifle in .270 win, 3/4-1/2 inch groups all day long....With nearly every single hand load I have tried. I have a Ruger SR 762 AR-10...1/2-3/4" 5 shot groups with Sierra match kings 175 Grain. I have a Ruger SR 556 Varmint 20" stainless bull barrel...Also a 1/2" gun. My dad has a Ruger M77, very accurate. Then there is the Ruger precision rifle.So yes, off the shelf, Ruger's Barrels are as good as it gets in what you would call "mass produced" guns. Not that Savage or remmington or browning doesn't have barrels that will hang with Ruger, just that when you buy a Ruger, chances are high you are getting a 3/4 - 1/2 moa gun.

To do better, your going to have to go Krieger or something like that.
 
Own four Shaw barrels that are on Savage or Marlin X7 actions. One is a chrome moly and and rest are Stainless. While not a problem, the chrome moly has a tendency to copper foul more than my stainless barrels. All are contours that may be called a varmit contour....on the heavy side. They are chambered in 6.5x55, 7mm-08, 6.5CM and 6mm Rem. Each shoot well for me when it comes to accuracy with the right load/bullet used. I'm happy with mine.
 
Gunsmith posted this "So ER Shaw can and does make barrels that shoot super well, but not every barrel is outstanding. Every barrel is good, but not every one is great"

Think of the guy that doesn't get that outstanding barrel or the great barrel.

I would think a gunsmith that use those type barrels are not doing any favors for their customer when you can buy a barrel that all customer get a great barrel. But you get what you pay for.
 
old Mississippi you are right. to me hammer forged barrels can hang in there with match rifle barrels. Ruger has the excellent floating bolthead and barrel nut copied from savage but now has better barrels. The ruger American predator I just saw for $299 in 260 rem. can you imagine that price. they are shooting those along with expensive custom rifles and not seeing much difference
 
Ruger has the excellent floating bolthead and barrel nut copied from savage but now has better barrels.
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Barrel nuts, in various forms, have been in use since the 1700s.
It wasn't a new idea a century ago; and it wasn't a new idea when Savage did it it 1957.

And if you really do believe that it was an innovative, new idea that was ripped off from Savage (fifty years later! :rolleyes:), then you're still pointing your finger in the wrong direction. The first company to "go big" with a "Savage style" barrel nut in the latest generation of budget rifles was Marlin with the XL7 in 2008 (the receiver of which does not appear to be so, but actually has more in common with a Winchester Model 70, than a Savage :rolleyes:).
 
. Ruger has the excellent floating bolthead and barrel nut copied from savage but now has better barrels. The ruger American predator I just saw for $299 in 260 rem. can you imagine that price. they are shooting those along with expensive custom rifles and not seeing much difference
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I'm not sure about the years, but for a while, Ruger stopped making their barrels and got rid of the production facilities. During that time, no one I knew would buy a Ruger because the barrels were noticeably worse than Savage, Remmington, Browning, at basically the same retail prices. However a decade or so ago, Ruger began making barrels again "in house" so to speak and when they did , they decided rather than sticking with the standard button rifled barrels, they would go the hammer forged route.
Button rifled barrels can be every bit as accurate as hammer forged....It's just that with hammer forged barrels , odds are much lower that you will get a bad one. Also, they are supposedly more durable as they are work hardened but I don't have any data to back that up.
 
I would guess that was the late 70s or early 80s.

My brother got what he thinks might have been a Wilson on a 7mm.

That gun (and he) could shoot, tack driver.

I had one as well, 1.5 inch no matter what it did. Good enough for hunting.

Hammer forged are fine, more consistent , but you have to do more to them than just hammer them to get the best.

Basically its a costly investment and you need to have a large output do make it work.

I would guess Savage stays with button as they have the setup and the investment would not pencil out.

Match shooters get the cut rifled barrels, I don't know if you can make a Hammer forged that good or not. Its contrary to the reason for a Hammer forged. They are after a consitant but not necsiarly tack driving product.

Europe uses a lot of Hammer Forged, but they also do a lot more finish work inisd the barrel.

Not a clue what Ruger is going.

As for the Nut.

No matter how far back it goes, the nut was used on the Ma Duce in WWII for ease head space (not sure what the Germans used on the MG42 etc)

The man who ran the production for WWII 50 cal took that concept to Savage.

No one else was using it at the time (military aside and for them it had nothing to do accuracy, it was a quick switch hot barrel issue and the needed head space)


So for all practical purposes, Savage was the one that made it a mainstay and people are copying them now.

So as far as I am concerned Savage gets full credit for using that for sporting rifles when everyone else was using the same screw on to a witness mark the military used on their bolt actions.
 
Ruger barrel timeline, for reference:

As for the M77 versus the M77 Mk II...
Ruger used contractors for barrels during most of the years that the original, tang safety, M77 was in production. They generally stuck with Douglas barrels from '67-'73, and Wilson barrels from '73-'91, with other contractors filling in when demand was high. So, performance was all over the map. Wilson barrels, in particular, earned a reputation for printing shotgun patterns, and being insanely terrible when warm.

The M77 Mk II, however, has used Ruger's own (in-house) hammer-forged barrels since 1991. They may not be on par with high end match-winning barrels, but most have done well, and they're pretty consistent across-the-board.

Wilson barrels can be found on tang safety 77s with prefixes 79, 770, 771, 772, and 773. (773 also including the transition to hammer forged, but there weren't many.)
Douglas barrels can be found on tang safety 77s with no prefix (just the serial number, up to 4 digits), or prefixes 70 through 77 (skipping 76).

Tang safety 77s with prefix 78 were special runs, generally reserved for varmint, target, or special edition builds. Because some of these actions were used to build rifles from the early '80s into the mid-nineties, they can have any of the barrels installed on them. ...And Ruger almost never gives out ship dates for 78-prefix rifles, so trying to identify the barrel won't happen.

Mk IIs with the 780 prefix included transition time from Wilson to Ruger barrels. They should be avoided, unless you just want the action.
The rest of the Mk IIs have the best barrels Ruger has put on their rifles - with quality improving as time passed.
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Summary (for 77s):
Douglas from '67-'73
Wilson from '73-'91
Ruger hammer-forged from '91-Current
Other contracts filled in where needed, if Wilson or Douglas couldn't meet demand.
 
. Summary (for 77s):
Douglas from '67-'73
Wilson from '73-'91
Ruger hammer-forged from '91-Current
Other contracts filled in where needed, if Wilson or Douglas couldn't meet demand.
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Great summary Frankinmauser,
The question I have though is that: I don't think they farm their barrels out at all anymore right? They have that new facility in North Carolina and also their New England facility. So they are hammer forging everything, and when I talked to them on the phone a while back about one of my AR's they said they are making their AR barrels, 10/22 , and some others in NC with the more high end bolt action rifles and the American line up north.
 
The barrel nut is not a positive feature from a consumer standpoint. It is a cost and time saver from a manufacturing standpoint.
 
Frankenmauser,
Mine was the Ruger M77 RC was talking about. By serial it was a 1974 tang safety production which is when I bought it. Per date it would have a Wilson but it shot extremely accurate with a hand load I developed on the first try. I hunted with that rifle for 42 yrs and just recently sold it. It had a semi bull barrel profile and wouldn't fit a replacement Ruger stock I had to buy when I broke it at the wrist when I flipped a 4 wheeler. The replacement stock was from the same era, a take off a gunsmith had, he had 50 or more. I had to open up the barrel channel to take the barrel. The gun was factory as I bought new and never gave it much thought until the last few years.
 
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Reynolds 357 how do you figure the barrel nut is not good for the consumer? it allows for almost match grade accuracy and save the buyer a lot of money in building costs for savage
 
Mississippi;
I'm not sure what they're doing now.
I know that they make the majority of their own barrels. However, there was a discussion here last year, in which a few people claimed that the Ruger American was getting contract barrels.

I don't necessarily believe it, but you never know...
 
Well, I just went to E.R. Shaw's retail store yesterday to pick up a barrel for a Savage. Got a 24" polished, blued, with radius crown in 250 Savage. Was on their "special" listing on the website. Normally $225, picked it up for $120.

Planning a custom build with it for a hunting rifle.

While there I checked out a couple of their Mark VII rifles. One was polished stainless, fluted, laminate stock, muzzle brake. Flutes are hand painted. Polish was nicely done. Fit and finish were really nice. Rifles has good "feel" to them. On the polished stainless, you could not see where the line was for the screw on muzzle brake. Believe me, we looked!!

Based on Savage action, trued up, Savage bolt body, with the rest of the parts made in house. They don't use the Savage nut system. (makes it more pleasing to look at, but I imagine more time consuming to set headspace.)

Will fill you in more on the build. Looking for a Savage/Stevens in 308 as a donar action now...
 
The barrel nut is not a positive feature from a consumer standpoint. It is a cost and time saver from a manufacturing standpoint.
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I will strongly disagree on two counts.

1. It kept the price down and Savage had that market for a long time until others work up and realized what they were leaving on the table.
Its still not only serving well, both it and the acu trigger are being copied.

2. It makes for a very easy to customize system. If you look at the huge quantity of Savage pre made barrels that gives you some idea of how popular it is to do that.
Many do it themselves and a lot of satisfaction in that as well as not having to take, discuss and work out with a gun smith to do it.
 
Salt and battery, the nut does not "provide near match grade accuracy." The nut allows Savage to never put a barrel back into the lathe to adjust head space. The nut does not improve accuracy. The nut makes the rifle easy to head space. Most Savage match rifles lose the nut when they get rebarreled.
 
Savage does two things which help overcome small machining errors. The barrel nut thing already discussed, and the "floating" bolt head which makes it so that blueprinting and lapping the recoil lug isn't necessary.....At least that's what Savage says.

All I know is that it makes it possible for a novice with a set of foster gauges to do a drop-in rebarrel of a Savage action.
 
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