To Flute or not to Flute?

[antelopedundee]

My understanding is that most button rifled barrels are rifled, stress relieved, and then contoured. Is that not the case? They are definitely chambered and muzzle threaded after the stress relief.

Why would they contour or do any other operation after stress relieving when the could simply do it before especially if that's what a customer is ordering? I don't claim to know how these places run their operation, but if you order a Remington contour barrel from Hart do they pull one off the rack that's already finished and re-contour it or wait until the particular barrel comes up in the schedule and do it then.

BTW are all Remington barrels hammer forged or just the ones on the bottom tier rifles? Does after the sale machining mess them up too?

If I wanted a barrel fluted I'd order it that way, but I'm done buying barrels.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Why would they contour or do any other operation after stress relieving when the could simply do it before especially if that's what a customer is ordering?

My understanding is that process of button rifling induces stresses in the steel. If you contour/flute/thread or just machine the outside of the barrel prior to relieving the stresses induced during the rifling process you risk having changes to the bore dimensions. Thus, makers of quality button rifled barrels stress relieve after rifling to mitigate issues from further machining after rifling.

I don't claim to know how these places run their operation, but if you order a Remington contour barrel from Hart do they pull one off the rack that's already finished and re-contour it or wait until the particular barrel comes up in the schedule and do it then.

I'd bet its done differently by different manufacturers. It seems patriot valley arms with their Opsrey barrels contours them to order (has a rack of uncontoured blanks that they contour as orders come in) or takes bulk orders based on a limited # of common contours. I bet most are done in batches by order. Like if company X is making 8 twist 6mm barrels in 2 weeks but 7mm barrels in 2 months, the time id receive a barrel order likely depends on which of the 2 i chose.

 

[2Die4]

If you are looking for stiff, but light weight, carbon fiber wrapped barrels are hard to beat.

 

[Redmt]

I couldn't be happier! Paul at boltfluting.com did a fantastic job. I ran about 50-60 rounds through it in about an hour and a half shooting squirrels and it barely got warm. It is a huge difference from the same plain bull barrel.

 

[dan.kirkpatrick]

i just recently got a savage high country 7mm mag with the factory spiral fluting and like it so far,,upon shooting it ,it seems to not heat up as fast as a plain barrel and just looks nice too

 

[Mattmann]

My builder is fluting my 300 PRC as we speak. Now if my stock would come in that would be great!

My Seekins is CF or it would be fluted as well!

 

[WapitiBob]

Alex Wheeler​

Well-known member​

“I have had this discussion a few times this week so I figured a post would be worth while. The vast majority of barrels I chamber are not fluted. I dial in the breach end only when I chamber so there will be some runout at the muzzle end. 90% of barrels fall into a normal range. Even the carbon barrels are in the normal range. But when I do fluted barrels they are typically far more out than normal. Like double the high end of normal. That would be spiral and diamond flutes. The straight flutes dont seem to be an issue. So why is this a problem? If we assume the bore is perfect, its not but its very close, and then we do something to that barrel to make it move we have distorted the bore. Also with the spriral you have made a 360 degree cut so the minor diameter of that cut has really reduced the stiffness of the barrel. A straight flute really doesnt reduce the stiffness much. Not to say a spiral or diamond wont shoot but in my opinion your odds of getting a great barrel go down when you do that.“

 

[Redmt]

Not all spiral barrels are 360* fluted. In the case of mine that is as wicked accurate as it was originally, it is only 270* or a 3/4 rotation. Any input on that?