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which barrel is better
boltaction
Member Posts: 505 ✭✭✭
Which barrel is more accurant hammer forged or button rifling.Also which one's do most gun manufacture's use.
Comments
You are trying to compare apples with oranges.
Now, if you had asked which is better... "cut" rifling, or "button" rifling, then the answer might be a little easier to discuss. That said, in my humble opinion, "cut" rifling is always preferable unless you are talking about 22 rimfire barrels (which don't really seem to shoot any better regardless of the rifling type).
Hammer forging is a method of treating barrel steel prior to boring and rifling it.
Bert H.
Real Men use a SINGLE-SHOT!
WACA Historian & Life Member
The question is almost unanswerable as a well made hammer forged will be better then a shoddy button cut and visa versa. Still, I think it can be said that high production runs of the same exact barrels, ie military, will generally be hammer forged, though there are probably many exceptions. Lesser volume batches, say Win, Rem & Ruger can be either. Smaller runs from speciality companys will generally be button cut. It would depend on the rifle to be rebarreled that I would be juggling over hammer vs button. An AR15 16" carbine would be a different story as to a AR15 24" varmint rifle. A 20" 30/30 vs a 26" 300 ulta mag would be another example. The farther you want to reach out with real accuracy is a measure of how good a barrel might be in order for any given project.
[?][?][?] See my response above.
Bert H.
Real Men use a SINGLE-SHOT!
WACA Historian & Life Member
quote:Hammer forging is a method of treating barrel steel prior to boring and rifling it.
No it isn't. Hammer forging is method of making barrels in mass production. The Germans use it more frequently than we do here in the U.S. but Remington and some of Ruger's barrels are hammer forged as well as others, I'm sure. It's fast, easy and cheap. I know that a while back, Remington was on record that the cost to produce one of their standard hammer forged barrels was $7.50 each.
"Hammer-Forged Factory Barrels. First developed in Germany, hammer-forging technology is a method of manufacturing a large volume of barrels very quickly. Today, this technology dominates factory barrel production and is in use by Remington, U.S. Repeating Arms, Sturm Ruger, and many others.
In hammer forging, a short piece of barrel steel is extruded along a mandrel that has the reverse of the rifling form desired for the barrel. Unlike button rifling, however, hammer forging forms the barrels around the mandrel, rather than putting rifling into a full-length piece of bar stock. Despite all of the marketing hype, however, hammer-forged barrels are rarely paragons of accuracy and performance. Laden with internal stresses, these barrels also often exhibit very rough bores, which are the result of poorly maintained production mandrels. All in all, most gunsmiths do not consider hammer-forged barrels to be good candidates for a high-quality custom rifle." http://www.xtremeaccuracy.com/Rifle_Barrel.htm
Best.
boltaction...
Hammer forging is a method of treating barrel steel prior to boring and rifling it.
Bert H.
Real Men use a SINGLE-SHOT!
Bert= a hammer forged barrel is a barrel tube cold hammered over a rifling mandrel...like Steyr does[or did]
Love them Pre-64's!!!!-Bob
why chase the game when the bullet can get em from here?....
Got Balistics?
I think that your second question has been answered, the largest manufacturers use the hammer forged process due to it being inexpensive.
The question of accuracy comes up frequently and seems to revolve around which manufacturer to choose, usually implying a custom barrel. But accuracy is more than just who made which kind of barrel. It's a complete system that starts with the quality of the steel and ends with how accurately the barrel was put onto the receiver by the gunsmith. You can even extend the concept of accuracy to how good the load and its' components behave within that system and how good the shooter was on a given day. There just isn't a simple answer, unless you just want the Ford vs. Chevy debate on brand names.
Speaking in generalities, most of the rifles/barrels manufactured today are of sufficient quality to insure acceptable accuracy when loaded and handled with average skill. Simply, the average joe (us) can buy an off-the-shelf rifle and expect to get decent accuracy with decent ammunition and average skill. There are always exceptions to all generalization, of course.
Best.