Fluted Barrels: Good or Bad?

The weight savings can be substantial enough to merit considerations. One of my co-workers had to have the barrel of his custom F/TR rifle fluted simply to make F/TR weight restrictions because NO ONE wants to compete in the F Open class with a 308.

You used to find fluting on "Lightweight tactical" rifles, but most factory fluting isn't deep enough to offer substantial enough weight reductions to bother with unless it just happens to be on the rifle you want. For a while there it looked like carbon fiber wrapped barrels were going to be the "next big thing" but the accuracy potential was never realized for centerfire rifles. They seem to be doing fine in the rimfire world though.

Jimro
 
Well Bart, I'd sure like to see anyone on earth, Mr. Tubb or otherwise, shoot a string of shots 15 seconds apart (as you said) in our 110 degree summer heat (or for that matter, in our 90 degree summer heat; a cool day) from said 30" skinny barrel, and see if the POI doesn't change. Even if the best built rifle in the world. You may be right, but I don't believe it. There's gonna be SOME imperfections in that steel, in even the best built guns on earth, which will eventually show themselves and bend the barrel, given sufficient heat - at SOME point of heat. I'd have to see it with my own eyes. I'd believe it in 40 or 50 or 60 degree weather maybe, where the rate of cooling that takes place in 15 seconds is exponentially larger than it would be at 80, 90, 100, or 110 F. I could be wrong, but I have a hard time believing that all those millions of shooters worldwide are wasting their money and wasting steel on medium, medium-heavy, and heavy barrels (or that the ONLY thing they get is more stability to account for human error). And I guess we need to start trying to tell the millions of AR15 shooters who believe that the SASS type HB guns are a waste of money and steel - a pencil bbl is all you need! I dunno - frankly, you're probably right, given your experience.... but I just have a hard time wrapping my head around how so many millions could be wrong. Certainly, the power of marketing makes that a *possibility* - but have you seen the same thing done in hot weather?
 
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Yes, Dremel, I've been there, done that on hot ranges in mid afternoon summertime at different places in the USA and in South Africa. So have many others.

Arsenals testing 30 caliber match ammo never observed any accuracy degradation putting 250 to 300 shots into test targets at 600 yards. Ammo was shot one round every 20 to 30 seconds. That ammo in those barrels held a 2 to 3 inch mean radius for the entire string.

A picture of a 20 shot group of .308 ammo shot in about 6 minutes from a 30 inch skinny barrel is in a fall 1991 issue of Handloader magazine. All shots well inside 3 inches; 2.7 as I remember. It was shot in that summer at a range near Tucson, AZ. I was one of a few who developed the load. A few weeks later, I fired the high score with it over 4 days of long range matches near Raton, NM. I asked several other top scoring people from around the world how it shot in their long, skinny barrels. Their replies were only windage adjustments for cross wind changes were needed. It all held good elevation in their barrels going from ambient to very hot. It held half MOA accuracy at 600 yards, three-fourths at 1000.
 
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Unlicensed Dremel said:
I just have a hard time wrapping my head around how so many millions could be wrong. Certainly, the power of marketing makes that a *possibility*
Click to expand...

Marketing is the only answer that's needed.

A prime example is archery. The difference between archery and firearms is that the best in the world of archery are using off-the-shelf products available to any shooter with no technical expertise required, for all intents and purposes.

What are the best shooters in the world (Jesse Broadwater, Dave Cousins, Reo Wilde, etc) shooting, compared to the average shooter? The average shooter wants, light, fast and short. The pros are shooting heavy, slow (relatively) and long. The pros are shooting (97%) back-tension, the average shooter pulls a trigger and 97% have never heard of back-tension.

It's ALL marketing.
 
I think those same "millions" may also think neck only resized rimless bottleneck cases better align their bullets with the bore than full length sized ones when they're fired.

It was centuries before the Vatican acknowledged Gallileo and Copernicus were right; earth isn't the center of our universe.
 
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