cut or button rifle barrels versus hammer forged barrels

swarovski

Well-Known Member
Hi all
Opinions on button and cut barrels being more accurate than hammer forged barrels or is there no difference.
 
Hammer forged tend to last a bit longer as they are harder, also harder to machine. But my bartlein cut barrel outshoots all of my others.
 
If you shoot thousands of rounds a year it probably is a real factor in your choice of barrel. I have used all 3 main forms of barrel and don't really see much difference. If it comes from a manufacturer who is trusted, then it will be a good barrel whatever way they make the rifling. I have a heavy, match .224 barrel by Shilen made in 1991 on my Martini Cadet. There is a replacement barrel (Sprinter made, heavy match, Cut-rifled) in the cupboard waiting for a time when the Shilen wears out. 3000+ rounds later and it is still waiting, as the Shilen still shoots better than me most days. There's heaps of posts about this on American sites. It can start a 'flame war'. Some very strong opinions out there.
 
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Lifespan of a barrel is not easy to define. What defines a barrel as being shot out?
Fact is one does not see too many hammer forged barrels in F Class or BR, at least not in the top rankings.
My take is that on an average the cut barrels will outshoot buttoned and these will outshoot hammer forged.
I have all three versions. Some hammer forged barrels I had did shoot very well but others were really lousy. All
button or cut barrels I had or have are incredibly accurate and reliably accurate.
edi
 
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Forget hammer forged for a minute, IMO there is no better or worse between button or cut rifled barrels, one time a cut barrel will outshoot a buttoned barrel and then vice versa, both can be done badly and both can be done well.
Put two good ones side by side both chambered by someone who knows what they are doing and fire several hundred rounds, i doubt very much you will get an eventual winner.

Ian.
 
Save your hard earned, by a button rifle barrel, the difference between them isn't worth mentioning, however, you do get good and bad with cut and button barrels. Out of the 40 or so button rifle barrels I've fitted this year, none have showed any issues and are extremely accurate and consistent.

£200 verses £300 + not worth it but personal choice.
 
From a production perspective each method of rifling has it's advantages and disadvantages. From an accuracy standpoint, I have yet to be able to distinguish between button and cut barrels. I have never owned a hammer forged barrel but I can say that nobody I know that competes uses hammer forged barrels.
I currently have 2 sporting barrels one cut the other buttoned and both shoot 0.5 MOA. My current .308 match barrels are all Schneider button drawn polygon rifled and are superb. I used Krieger cut barrels and Maddco button barrels, so you see I have no preference. Most times, as far as my .308 TR rifle is concerned it comes down to what ever is available at the time, and when I am attending a lot of prize meets a .308 barrel might last 12-18 months.
I would be more than chuffed to be able to continue with Gary Schneider's button barrels but they are no longer available here.

Something to ponder ...... the life of a barrel is approximately 3-5 seconds.

regards
Mike.
 
Why are the different techniques thought to have an effect on accuracy?

Naively, I would have thought hammer forged would be the most accurate since there are no tool marks?
 
5R rifling makes a huge difference in the amount of fouling, I am not sure but this might only be an option on cut rifling.
 
Mungo ... hammer forging produces barrels with an extremely good internal finish and structure and have the reputation of lasting many rounds, however, the machines used are costly, complex and very BIG. I will go out on a limb here an suggest that there is probably a stigma attached to the hammer forged barrels due to the process alone & this alone dissuades competition shooters from using them. I would suggest that it would only take an elite shooter to start using one and winning to start a trend toward their use. I will stand corrected but I don't think there are any hammer forged barrels available "off the rack" as it were, down here.
Tool marks whilst not desirable, do not, within a barrel determine accuracy. If you looked down a new barrel with a borescope you just may be horrified with what you saw. I have looked down a number of barrels which have all manner of imperfections, gouges, striations etc and the buggers still shoot. All custom barrels that I know of are hand lapped after rifling to smooth out the high spots. This hand lapping itself is a highly skilled task and adds to the cost. Then there is the barrel break in routine which, if performed correctly will enhance the barrel. There are people that don't subscribe to the break in theory and one could start a vicious debate on this topic alone.
A cut barrel can take up to an hour to finish and it is the skill of the operator and the accuracy of the machine performing the work that determines the outcome. A buttoned barrel is usually completed in about a minute, the rifling being cut in one pass of the carbide button. But in both cases it is the skill of the machinist to deep hole drill the barrel blank to begin with.
Much has been written and debated about the causes of the loss of accuracy in barrels and it is generally agreed that poor cleaning skills are the main culprit.
I think that this debate, button over cut methods will continue for as long as the debate over which cartridge is the best.

regards
Mike.
 
Mungo ... hammer forging produces barrels with an extremely good internal finish and structure and have the reputation of lasting many rounds, however, the machines used are costly, complex and very BIG. I will go out on a limb here an suggest that there is probably a stigma attached to the hammer forged barrels due to the process alone & this alone dissuades competition shooters from using them. I would suggest that it would only take an elite shooter to start using one and winning to start a trend toward their use. I will stand corrected but I don't think there are any hammer forged barrels available "off the rack" as it were, down here.

regards
Mike.

No, there is far more too it than just fashion. Find a video of how a hammer forged barrel is made and you'll see the forces involved are staggering. (A short, fat 'blank' is bored through and has a mandrel forced into it, the mandrel having the rifling on it as a 'negative', and in many cases, the chamber too. The blank plus mandrel are fed into a machine which pummels the outside with opposed hammers literally squeezing it onto the mandrel, reducing the O/D by a half or so and increasing the length also by around a half. The mandrel is then pulled out of the near finished barrel.)

The problem is that enormous stresses are fed into the blank in the process. Even with substantial post hammering destressing, it is very difficult to make the barrel stress free. These are often released as the barrel heats and the POI shifts, sometimes as a gradual process, sometimes abruptly after x number of shots and the barrel achieving y-deg temperature. Conversely, match barrel makers destress their blanks first and do everything possible to reduce subsequent stresses. Cut rifling inflicts virtually no stress in a match barrel shop as the rifling machine only takes a tiny cut from a groove at one time. Button rifling injects more as the 'button' pulled through the bore swaging the rilfing into a previously smooth surface. The most likely problem from button rifling is in skinny barrels which taper to a small diameter at the muzzle. The tendency of the barrel metal after the button has gone through is to expand. This is resisted successfully in fat match barrels, but often causes lightweight examples to expand at the muzzle so they are marginally oversize there which rarely does much good for accuracy.

The main benefit of hammer forging is high output and low per barrel cost, so it is high output producers who invest in them. They have been used in match and precision rifle barrels, Parker-Hale making all of its barrels by this method. Some of the P-H TR and police / military sniper rifles shot brilliantly, but some performed very badly. In the latter case, P-H was very good at taking the rifle back and rebarrelling it without quibble. P-H's machinery is owned by Armalon Limited which completely refurbished it, replaced all the electronic and control bits with modern digital systems and makes very attractively priced barrels that look very good and which perform more than adequately for sporting rifles, sniper rifles and some competition disciplines. Many CSR competitors use Armalon barrels on their straight-pull .223 Rem AR-15s. Peter Sarony, Armalon's owner claims they will match the best of the limited output cut or button barrels, but I for one won't accept that they'll consistently provide the ultimate precision that is the norm from Krieger, Broughton, Bartlein, Benchmark etc products. Another issue is that match quality blanks are invariably supplied as just that - rifled blanks - and the gunsmith uses a finishing chamber reamer and throating reamer that suits the customer's needs or specifications to a 'T'. Likewise rifling pitch and barrel finished length / weight. Hammered barrels nornmally come with the rifling pitch and the chamber / throat the barrelmaker specified. As mandrels are incredibly expensive items, the cost of a drawer full of reamers, the barrelmaker is unlikely to have more than one design. Most gunsmiths will not attempt to alter a hammered barrel, for instance by reaming the throat longer, as the hammered steel is so hard that it is difficult to cut with the required degree of precision and may wear the reamer out prematurely or damage both it and the barrel.
 
Thanks for the answers.

So is there any statistical comparison of the 3 techniques - ie. a decently large sample of each one, shot using the same loads and cleaning regimes for the same number of shots under the same conditions?

As far as I can see (as with almost everything to do with rifle accuracy), there are a lot of personal anecdotes and reference to what experts do, but no actual systematic data?
 
Thanks for the answers.

So is there any statistical comparison of the 3 techniques - ie. a decently large sample of each one, shot using the same loads and cleaning regimes for the same number of shots under the same conditions?

As far as I can see (as with almost everything to do with rifle accuracy), there are a lot of personal anecdotes and reference to what experts do, but no actual systematic data?

Military outfits have been known to run endurance tests, but marksmanship unit shooting teams aside, aren't exactly large users of custom barrels. Just note though that in the USA where High-Power Service Rifle is BIG, and all three US services plus the National Guard have shooting teams some full-time, they all use custom barrels on their competition M16A2s - not a factory hammered forged barrel in sight.

So far as accuracy and life tests, that's three identical (barrels aside) rifles as you won't get comparable results with one rifle and rebarrelling it and shooting it weeks or months after another, depending on the cartridge 1,000 to 5,000 rounds each, a strict regime of shoot maybe 10 rounds, followed by x minutes to cool or until a thermo strip on the barrel shows temperatures have dropped, with cleaning every 50 or 100 or 150 rounds, with x number foulers to follow.

I think you can guess the answer as to whether anybody has done it or is likely to do it. ;)
 
Ive got 2 armalon barrels and they are very accurate with tuned handloads, I tested some 155gr smks (2156s) last sunday at 1000yds with my 308, I am relying on the markers doing the targets to mark them proper,believe it or not the 3 shot group looked around 6 inches frew the scope, this is prone shooting no sandbags just a bipod, I got another shooter to put another 3 shot group and it was about the same size,maybe fractionly bigger, my issue is with my 6.5 06, I just feel its under performing, I think I will find I will shoot better with a cut or button rifled barrel, I think shooting at 1000yds is when you will see the difference, vince bottomley said there isnt a hammer forged barrel that holds any benchrest records.thanks laurie for your knowledgeable reply,
 
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Mungo , one would need to be extremely well heeled and have the time and anal retention to emphatically prove that one method of rifling a barrel was superior to another.

Laurie makes very good point. In essence, a maker of hammer forged barrels cannot produce a barrel that has been specified to have a tight chamber and perhaps a tight throat and zero free bore unless the person requiring it, was prepared to pay an exorbitant amount for the forming mandrel which would in fact be a one off mandrel and even then I doubt the tolerances will be as good as custom chamber reamer etc. Another thought , how many barrels are hammered over a particular mandrel before the mandrel becomes out of spec. I would suggest that it could be many dozens or perhaps hundreds. So logically one would think that the first barrel hammered on a new mandrel will have much tighter specs than the last barrel off it and just how much does the mandrel suffer when being subjected to the hammering forces. I wonder what the tolerance range would be plus/minus how many thousandths and how often is a mandrel changed ?

regards
Mike.
 
Laurie, i always thought custom button rifled barrels are rifled before profilling, in fact as far as i know, the top makers rifle parallel blanks, stress relieve them before contouring, then air gauge them and sell them according to spec, ie match, super match or standard and select grade etc...

Ian.
 
Yes, barrel makers like Douglas and Shilen will measure and grade their barrels. So do military barrel makers, and after the action is installed into a rifle like an M-16, the chamber will be gauged and the assembly scored.

I don't think you can simply say that button rifled, or cut rifling, or hammer forging is better than the other, because there is the ingredient of how well any of them are done, and the other manufacturing steps around that one process. For example, I believe CZ still laps and polishes their barrels. There are different types of hammer forging and swaging barrels; you cannot lump them together. And some steels are easier to cut smoothly with a broach than others, or take more time to do that - so the quality is only tops if the maker does all the steps the best way.

For hunting, there are other considerations besides super accuracy which will never be needed or used. One maker may do a wonderful bluing job. Or he may cut any contour you want, and fit it to the action and stock, and install the iron sights and scope bases and rings. All those are worth a lot.
 
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