Which is the Best Standalone Barrel ?

[AdminMASTER]

Calling on Mr. 'Guru' & anybody who wish to state from experience...

Which would be crowned King - purely on 100% barrel performance ...and 2nd & 3rd places ?

1. Walther choked
2. CZ (not the AA - but from CZ factory)
3. Feinwerkbau (Fwb800 for 10m)
4. Steyr FT short
5. Steyr FT Long
6. Steyr -Mannlicher hammer forged
7. Anschutz (from 8002 or 9003 for 10m)
8. BSA (current batches & under ownership of COMETA Spain)
9. WEIHRAUCH
10. ____ ? (forget name - 2 groove USA made barrel fitted on Mac 1 Air Rifles)

NB: Whats the difference of the Choke on the CZ versus the Walther choked one ? Ive heard the CZ choke is longer choke, and any explanation why a shorter choke might be an advantage ? or none ?

[Steve]

Apart from No.10 I have or have had.Hand on heart I will say I have never been able to get the groups I get with the FWB 800.

[USFT-JIM]

Benchmark is the name you are after.

I have a few barrels I will be testing indoors to 50 yards.

LW standard 1:18 twist, 177, 24" long (OEM barrel for USFT #158).
LW custom 1:36 twist, 177, 24" long (new barrel)
HW standard, 1:18 twist, 177, 18" long (OEM barrel for USFT #27, was 24", cut down prior to my purchasing the rifle).
Benchmark, ??? twist, 22cal, 25.5" long (new barrel).

The LW standard 24" and the HW 18" were the two original barrels on my USFT rifles (The 24" won the AAFTA GP for 2013 and placed 2nd at the Nationals, one point behind 1st place).

The 1:36 LW I got from Dan Brown who had LW make a custom batch and the BM in 22 is from Mac-1.

I'm hoping to have everything back in the next couple weeks.


As a "teaser" I have a 44 yard group of ten shots from the standard LW barrel (fully benched & rested)...

Here is the raw target scan, outer circle is 1.5", inner circle is 0.5", group is 0.392" ctc.

So far getting decent pellets appears to be the issue for 177. I'm seeing some big variations between tins of pellets with the same lot/die/qc numbers (when they still had all the information on the sticker. FYI, JSB pellets in the USA no longer have the orange stickers listing lot/die/size/qc etc. And in general the opinion of ft shooters feel the quality of their pellets has been going downhill for the last few years.

I typically buy a batch of pellets (12 tins), JSB & AA 4.52mm head size, label each tin, A, B, C, D, E, etc... And #1, #2, #3, 4, etc... I then shoot three sets of groups from each tin, indexing the target number and sheet with the tin the group was shot from (sometimes I shoot through a chrony and list the velocity spread for the group).

I then bring the target sheet into cad and figure the group sizes, then back to Excel to list the distance, tin number, group size, etc, etc. From this I figure out which tin of pellets is best and keep those for the AAFTA matches, I shoot the crap pellets when doing velocity strings (I get 100 shots per fill out of my unregulated USFT from 1600psi to 1300psi).

So far I have been tracking my two USFT's, an Edgun in 177 and a Cricket in 177. To date the Edgun (18" special made LW barrel) has been producing the most consistently small groups from the four rifles. By consistently I mean, with the most pellets. The smallest groups with the best pellets goes to the USFT #158 and the Edgun.

All rifles tuned to under 20ft-lbs (10.34 grain pellets at around 860-880 fps).

[AdminMASTER]

Thanks for the feedback USFT-JIM

Please keep us posted on your other barrel results...