Short barrel bench rifle

[Paul H]

I thought the question was the ability of the shorter rifle to shoot accurately, not what the velocity is for various barrel lengths. And hence the suggestion to go to a thorough, albeit time consuming and expensive test to find out what happens at various barrel lengths.

If I ever get serious about rimfire benchrest I'd be curious to try some other options such as the gain twist barrels being discussed by the centerfire folks. I'd be curious to see what happens if you have a barrel that starts at say 1-20 and transitions to 1-17 at the muzzle performs.

 

[Mad`]

About four years ago I happened to be at our benchreest range one day and two of the better and respected centerfire BR shooters were there as well. One of them is a centerfire BR gunsmith. They were reloading and testing their 6PPC's. One of the barrels on a Panda was old and worn out. The groups were opening up so they decided to do an experiment. They hacksawed the end of the barrel off at an eyeballed 45 degree angle, debured the crown with a hand turned drill bit that was larger than the I. D. of the barrel, and ran a patch down the tube.
Then they shot some groups. The groups were just as tight (about .250") as the barrel was before the hack job, but the groups moved about three inches in the direction of the hack job. Then they cut another 45 degree angle in the opposite direction. Again, more .250" groups but three inches in the direction of the hack job. By then they were tired of sawing and unscrewed the barrel and screwed a new one on and kept up with their load development.

Conclusion: The condition of the crown and the barrel being about an inch shorter after every cut, had no effect on accuracy.
We were all scratching our heads. They asked me if I wanted to try it on my 40X rimfire BR gun but I declined.
Dale McClure

 

[Guy Pike]

length

So if the longer barrels shoot better in very light wind conditions due to slowing the bullets velocity, why not develop slower ammo for short barrels to shoot in the wind? Other than no demand to justify cost?