Barrel dimensions

B J Atkinson

B J Atkinson

Member
At the recent World Benchrest Championships in South Africa, I was interested to hear various ideas on the 'correct' length for a rimfire benchrest barrel. Also, the ideal thickness. We were talking about a heavy rimfire with an all up weight of around 14 pounds. Without giving away the ideas put forward, what do forum members consider to be ideal?
 
Hi Brendon

What answer are you fishing for. I do abit of rim fire work in NSW and lots of reading, I am guessing you will get responses from
Dia from 0.75 till 0.9" seems to be the range if fitting a tuner.
Length option 1, you need to slug the barrel and let it tell you the length.
Option 2 is about 23" is ideal.
I build my heavy guns on 0.85" and finish as per the slugging method finishing at about 25".
My 10.5 pound gun currently being put together will be 0.85" finished to about 23".
Now what were the thoughts from SA and who's thoughts were they.
Brett
 
Brendan, r u now coming to get a rimfire world title to match your recent centrefire one?

Mate take the time to listen to Brett, the young fellow has impressed in a very short time in both shooting & building rimfires. We are tipping him to do big things @ World Rimfire Benchrest Champs in USA 2011 & also he is in a few peoples opinion the budding Bill Calfee of Australia, the rifles he has already built, let alone the 2 killers he is working on at present are top notch.

Sorry I can't actually answer your question, i just shoot em but have noticed the barells are round.
 
Bill you are too kind

Bill you are too kind.

I read as widely as I can, glean info from as many top RF gunsmiths as I can, but Calfee, that's too much, maybe when I have been in the game for 40 plus years maybe.
 
I did say budding;

–verb (used without object)
7. to begin to develop.
8. to be in an early stage of development
 
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Brendon,

Looks like some are not keen on giving a former centerfire individual world champion and current centerfire world champion team member any tips on rimfire barrels.

I can see a group of centerfire shooters having different (strange) views on rimfire barrels, most of them don’t believe in tuners. Without a tuner you want it stiff to cut down on vibrations so thicker and a little shorter, would be the go. With a tuner you want it to vibrate and then control the vibrations with a tuner, so longer and thinner is what you want.

For a 14lb gun the norm would be a .9 straight 24-25” with a tuner and noodle and you’ll still need a bit of weight in the stock if you want it anywhere near 14lbs.

Peter
 
Wow...do I detect some suspicion here?
In actual fact I did do a lot of rimfire shooting in the past, when the old traditional rules applied. I think I still hold a National record in that class.

Anyway, it was just a simple question. The people that I was speaking with are not only centrefire shooters, but keen European rimfire shooters as well. I have no intention of naming them.

Popular consensus was a barrel length of around 23-24 inches, but opinions varied on thickness. Some thought around .850 and others as much as 1.25.
Naturally, tuners would be used.

All agreed that top quality ammunition is the major sticking point - but we all knew that.

Hopefully some of these folks will be here in Australia for the 2012 World Benchrest (rimfire IRB) Championship.

Cheers

Brendan Atkinson
 
Brendan I have dealt with 2 gunsmiths on jobs this week through my sideline hobby business, one likes .85 the other 1" as I said I dont really know & I think it may come down to personal preferences , the rifle & as you say the ammo. I've seen some light sporters shoot as good as big guns.
 
22 RF barrels dimensions

Hello Brendan,

I actually own two 22 RF rifles

My prefered one is based on a Turbo action pillar bedded in a Scoville stock.
Barrel is a Brougton 4 grooves, 1.125" at the breech, then .825" cyl. The barrel has been slugged and cut at the right place. The length finished at 23.5".

The other one, shooting also very well, is a 1807 Anshütz action reworked to thread the barrels in. It is pillar bedded in a custom stock made of French walnut wood. The barrel is a 5 grooves Broughton with the same diameters. It ended at 24.25" after slugging.

As said in Krokodilspruit, I will mail next week some of our targets .
Our 2008/2009 National Circuit ended one week ago.
We had 26 registred matchs and 302 shooters participated in at least one match.

Should you need more information, please E-mail me.
 
THE PIGMAN 2 said:
Hello Brendan,

I actually own two 22 RF rifles

My prefered one is based on a Turbo action pillar bedded in a Scoville stock.
Barrel is a Brougton 4 grooves, 1.125" at the breech, then .825" cyl. The barrel has been slugged and cut at the right place. The length finished at 23.5".

The other one, shooting also very well, is a 1807 Anshütz action reworked to thread the barrels in. It is pillar bedded in a custom stock made of French walnut wood. The barrel is a 5 grooves Broughton with the same diameters. It ended at 24.25" after slugging.

As said in Krokodilspruit, I will mail next week some of our targets .
Our 2008/2009 National Circuit ended one week ago.
We had 26 registred matchs and 302 shooters participated in at least one match.

Should you need more information, please E-mail me.
Click to expand...

Thanks J-L,
I appreciate your input.

Cheers

Brendan
 
Just a couple of thoughts from my own experiments:

For a heavy gun (15lb for us (I hear)), the FWB 2700 dimensions seem about right (24mm (.945”) x 670mm (26.38”). Bill will tell you these shoot pretty good straight out of the box and can probably be improved further by adding a tuner with no extra weights.


The 10.5lb class is another problem. I’ve been playing with short barrelled Shilen (.850”) and Lilja (.895”) (both around 21”) in my Annie 2013 action. While I can get them both to shoot well, it takes a lot of weight on the tuner (11ozs). Which unfortunately then puts both barrels (and rifle) over the weight limit. I’ve got round this by machining down the boss on the Lilja and fitting it into my lighter 1913 action. This, with the 11oz weights gives me a total rifle weight of 10lb 7.8ozs.

Later this year I’m going to try a .850” barrel in the 2013 action, hopefully around 25”.

Maybe Brendan and Brett can keep us up to date with their findings, I’m interested.

Brian
 
Brendon,

I know you’ve done well in rimfire in the past and things haven’t changed, if it shoots it shoots.

At any time there is a trend and that doesn’t mean that is the only way to do it. Based on my own experience and what I’ve read and seen my next barrels on my big gun will be .9 straight with a Harrell tuner and Papas noodle. But regardless of what anyone says or uses it all comes down to tune. I have a 21” reverse taper barrel on my sporter and it took a lot more work to get there, but once it’s in tune there is not much difference between it and big gun. If it shoots it shoots.

Ammo selection for us down here is a bit of a B****, we just don’t get the volume of lots to select from. If what you are using you need to buy by the brick to test, to do it properly it is cheaper to fly to Europe and lot test at the factory than to stuff around here trying to find something good. One guy has already been over and others are looking at it. The trick is having enough spare cash to buy a few years of match ammo in one hit. But one guy taking a few barrelled actions and splitting the cost might be the way we do it in the future.



Brian,

The problem with the 10 ½ gun is leaving enough weight so you have some options with the tuner. Brett is fitting a extra .83 barrel to my Hall sporter in about 8-9 weeks I’ll let you know how that goes. If I wanted to use it for 10 ½ there is plenty of room for a noodle and extra weights if I want.

But the truth is you could build a gun on a single shot action in the right stock with a 24" .9 fluted barrel and shoot all 3 classes, the trick would be getting it to shoot without the tuner in the 8 ½ lbs sporter class. The stock design is new but the idea I got from something Bill Calfee did with his 52 project.

Peter
 
Peter,

Yes, be interested in hearing how the sporter turns out.

Fluted barrels for the LV rifle are something I’ve considered but don’t hear/see too much of. How about some of our American friends chipping in on this thread to give us their experiences.

Brian
 
Brian,

Doesn’t look like anyone is going say anything. I think if Brendon had of asked what size is Calfee putting on these days, it would have been different. I could be wrong but I think it’s a .9 straight around 24” barrel on Tony Boyer’s new rimfire.

Just remember before you put one of your barrels in the mill, you can only flute them before they are lapped. But there is something I’ve been meaning to ask you guys, is there any reason you don’t use Border barrels? All the ones I’ve seen in Australia are real good and if I could buy one here I would.

The 50m test tunnel here is all computerized (no paper target) and when I run the sporter through I’ll send you a copy of the printout, but I’ll be feeding it Midas+.

Peter
 
Peter,

Guess the US shooters don’t want to give anything away.

My reason for looking at what’s the norm for a 10.5lb rifle is we can get Lilja barrels over here pretty easily. Contour and fluting don’t seem to be problem for Dan, what I’m looking for is some dimensions/guidance to give him.

Border barrels don’t have any track history in rimfire although the guy who imported my Lilja swears by the Archer barrels for centrefire. Cost is another factor, the Archers are 450GBP and the cut rifled 650GBP – my Lilja was 380GBP including shipping and proofing.

Brian
 
For what it's worth, I'd venture a guess that the majority of guns in the U.S. are probably 10 1/2 lb. guns and the barrels are most often straight, probably between .850" and .925" and 23"-24" in length for many of the sanctioned matches. The ARA shooters will shoot, on occasion, guns up in the 15-16 lb. range but this seems to be less common. For non sporter guns, probably 10 1/2 lb. is the common denominator. Flutes are very rare.
 
Brian,

Lilja are easy to get here too and that is what is going on my sporter.

There are a few good shooting rimfire BR guns in the US with Borders barrels and I’ve had my butt kicked by them here at times too, the ones here are drop-in barrels chambered by Border. I went and looked and there is a guy importing Border centerfire barrels and going by the pricing they are only a little more than a Lilja, so I asked about a rimfire, if I can get one I’ll take it.

Tim
Thanks for your imput.

Peter
 
Thanks for the reply Tim, how you guys build 10.5lb guns that shoot as well as they seem to is something we still have to master. I’ve shown a picture below of my Annie 1913 with the 21” Lilja barrel and that’s right on the limit.

Do you, or anyone else know how much a Turbo action, bolt and trigger weigh?, They must be a lot less than I thought.

IMG_0037.jpg
 
I know the Turbo's are not that heavy. You folks probably want to start playing with the stock equation, this is where you're going to come up big with weight savings. For instance I hace a couple Swindlehurst actioned guns and they are relatively heavy. One is in a McMillan edge with a 24" .900 barrel and I have a tungston rod weighing almost 1 pound in the back. The edge's in light varmint configuration weigh not much over 2 pounds. The other has a 23" barrel, same diameter but in a walnut 3 lamination stock. Even the centerfire type redwood/cedar, carbon fiber stocks do not weigh much over 2 1/2 pounds.
 
So, if you were building a rifle in a class with a maximum weight of 14 pounds, would it not make more sense to use a barrel of 1.25 diameter, as weight is of no real consequence?

On the subject of barrels, Lilja seem to be the barrel of choice in rimfire circles. I actually have one if these, and yes it shoots very well. What is the current thinking on barrel makes? Has anyone tried a Krieger or a Bartlein? Does anyone use Hart rimfire barrels anymore?

Just curious.
 
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