stagpanther
New member
While looking through my spare barrels rack I came across a Lilja 9 twist 22lr match chambered barrel I ordered years ago when I had embarked on a fantasy of loading my own high BC solid bullets and shooting long range.
That fantasy went down in flames as an abject failure; whenever I got into higher pressure territories the cases would often blow out--mostly because the firing pin was impacting right next to the relief slot cut out for the extractor, and the match chamber's tighter dimensions allowed pressure peaks to easily exceed what otherwise would be OK in a conventional chamber. Even when doing lower pressure loads, the results were hardly competitive with patterns I get from my 12 gauge shotgun.
The barrel was not cheap, and I decided to give it one last attempt before mounting it on my wall of shame (which has lots of trophies on it). I decided to load up CU's smallest 32 grain solids which they say should work well in conventional 16 and 14 twist (I previously had tried all of the projectile weights) and not get greedy, just try an average load.
Same result, a very wide pattern (shooting at 153 yds). Some of the dispersion was due to shooting in windy conditions as it was blowing 15 mph in a crossing tailwind, but I'm talking like dispersion of 12."
That was it, it was time to yank the barrel and scuttle it once and for all.
I just so happened to have a spare box of Tenex in my range bag and decided to see how badly it shot compared to the solids. I shot two 5 shot groups side-by-side though I couldn't see where the shots were landing through the scope. When I walked to the target I couldn't believe what I saw--the first group was under MOA and the second was right at MOA.
What the heck? how is it possible this stuff shoots so much better than the solids--which is what the barrel is for at faster twist? And shouldn't the faster twist result in reduced performance of conventional close-to subsonic lead bullets? My other CZ jaguar is extremely accurate (by my standards, anyway) but only when I shoot in near-calm conditions, I would never waste premium ammo long-distance shooting in any kind of winds over 7 mph or so.
Is it possible the faster twist actually helps improve performance and maybe even wind-bucking a bit of conventional lead 22lr ammo? I did a bit of googling for net wisdom and I'm not the only one who has encountered this counter-intuitive phenomenon.
I found this on Sniper's Hide and it might give a second lease on life for my barrel--or at least a new fantasy for me to indulge in.
I had the Lilja barrel re-crowned (I dinged the muzzle) and it measures about 21.5".
That fantasy went down in flames as an abject failure; whenever I got into higher pressure territories the cases would often blow out--mostly because the firing pin was impacting right next to the relief slot cut out for the extractor, and the match chamber's tighter dimensions allowed pressure peaks to easily exceed what otherwise would be OK in a conventional chamber. Even when doing lower pressure loads, the results were hardly competitive with patterns I get from my 12 gauge shotgun.
The barrel was not cheap, and I decided to give it one last attempt before mounting it on my wall of shame (which has lots of trophies on it). I decided to load up CU's smallest 32 grain solids which they say should work well in conventional 16 and 14 twist (I previously had tried all of the projectile weights) and not get greedy, just try an average load.
Same result, a very wide pattern (shooting at 153 yds). Some of the dispersion was due to shooting in windy conditions as it was blowing 15 mph in a crossing tailwind, but I'm talking like dispersion of 12."
That was it, it was time to yank the barrel and scuttle it once and for all.
I just so happened to have a spare box of Tenex in my range bag and decided to see how badly it shot compared to the solids. I shot two 5 shot groups side-by-side though I couldn't see where the shots were landing through the scope. When I walked to the target I couldn't believe what I saw--the first group was under MOA and the second was right at MOA.
What the heck? how is it possible this stuff shoots so much better than the solids--which is what the barrel is for at faster twist? And shouldn't the faster twist result in reduced performance of conventional close-to subsonic lead bullets? My other CZ jaguar is extremely accurate (by my standards, anyway) but only when I shoot in near-calm conditions, I would never waste premium ammo long-distance shooting in any kind of winds over 7 mph or so.
Is it possible the faster twist actually helps improve performance and maybe even wind-bucking a bit of conventional lead 22lr ammo? I did a bit of googling for net wisdom and I'm not the only one who has encountered this counter-intuitive phenomenon.
I found this on Sniper's Hide and it might give a second lease on life for my barrel--or at least a new fantasy for me to indulge in.
here's Mike Bush of Vudoo Gun Works on fast twist and barrel length (Post #27):
"It wasn't long ago that no one really cared about the BC of the 40 grain projectile used by Lapua, Eley, etc., but now, Lapua publishes their BC (not sure if Eley does). This is because the community started stretching the legs of the 22LR and Lapua was the first to respond by teaming up with us prior to intro'ing the V-22 to market. They developed two custom drag curves and made it available in the Lapua and Applied Ballistics apps so we could calculate firing solutions the same way we do for centerfire. Looking at the BC and doing the math to determine how much of it we're using by way of the twist rate, it became clear that out of the available .172, only .120-ish was being used with a 16 twist barrel. Working the math backwards, the solution for using all the available BC in the 40 grain bullet was considerably faster, I was astounded and questioned whether I did it correctly....so, I did it again and came up with the same answer. So, we made a few barrels. Two barrels were fit to two different actions but not at the same time. The first barrel was 18" and ultimately, it shot like crap, which was discouraging. Digging a little deeper and creating a few models to look at angular velocity vs muzzle velocity, etc., the conclusion was the barrel needed to be longer at this particular twist rate. I chambered up a barrel finished at 22" and tested initially at 50 yards. The improvement over the 18" barrel was vast....I remember looking at the first five shot group and saying out loud, "son-of-a-bitch!" After a few more groups, I handed the rifle off to Bob (whom is a sponsored shooter and does the testing based on our specific protocol) to shoot the strings of 500 round tests. The first 500 rounds is broken down into 100, five shot groups at 50 yards. Just over 90% of the groups were beautifully round and measured just over the diameter of the bullet. Amazing....but it got better. The groups at 100 were easily half the size of average groups from a 16 twist barrel (16 twist barrel was 18"). I continued to shoot this rifle for over a year and performed a silent test in September at the NRA World Championships (teamed with Lapua for the third consecutive year). We had numerous targets, all steel plates at varying distances. I took numerous prototype rifles for the masses to shoot so I could observe third party testing without the shooters knowing what was new/different and I called wind on every target for three days in a row. The groups from the fast twist barrel at distance were amazingly small and I had to call wind differently compared to the slower twist barrels. A week later, I handed the rifle off to Daniel Horner for a longer term test, but I had enough data to make more barrels ranging from my single digit favorite up to 15 twist. Bottom line is, the fast twist barrel is an absolute superstar at 22"."
I had the Lilja barrel re-crowned (I dinged the muzzle) and it measures about 21.5".
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