They where cast steel long ago! You should try opening a book some time it will do wonders for your. Remington's first real game changer for themselves are other gunsmiths where their cast steel barrels! Unless you work in a museum though you have likely not seen one in real life, handled one or fired one.
Long before Remington purchased a CHF machine they used what would be considered by todays standards some very impure steels for barrel steel. People joking called these modern rifle barrels cast because of the history of Remington long long ago using cast steel barrels. If you tried to use harsh cleaners like strong ammonia from Hatcher's Notebook it would attack the barrel steel and eat pits into it. A high quality very uniform 4140 or better will not be easily attacked by exposure to strong ammonia unless it is left in a really really long time. Even Sweet's which does not contain strong concentration but rather weak concentrations of ammonia was often enough to attack the steel.
Science, Math, History can go a long way in preventing one from looking foolish on a topic that has been very well documented.
Funny that there is not a single military purpose built sniper weapon made with button rifled barrel or cut rifled barrel today. The Army's latest sniper rifles have to have a minimum 20,000 round barrel life with specified accuracy. The only way to do that is with CHF barrel no cut rifled or button rifled barrel can do that. Likewise no serious BR shoter in America would ever use anything but button rifled and baring the 30BR most never see a 1000 rounds before they are replaced. Hart makes some fantastic barrels but they also in my experience shoot out faster.
CHF=mass produced OEM barrel I doubt they are checking the mandrel that closely before making the next barrel. I doubt they are maintaining the mandrel to ideal specifications before sending it back to tooling to be refinished.
I worked for General Motors for 7 years in manufacturing. They figured they could stamp 3X-4X the number of pick up truck box panels before repairing the dies if they just shot some orange peel in the paining to hide the uneven stretching as the dies wore out. They figured out that if they filled the rear axles of light duty pickup trucks with synthetic gear lube they could call it lubed for life lowering initial cost of ownership for fleet sales and save $0.03 per rear axle by not machining and threading a bolt hole. They ran the water based tool coolant at one plant at something insane like 40X higher concentration than manufacture recommended to reduce tooling cost. That created 2 problems first workers where exposed to to neurotoxins from that high concentration of coolant for decades and it encouraged black mold to grow under all the of the line. My point is that large corporations consistently do things not in the best interest of their workers or their customers. You can not compare something manufactured under those conditions to something made with an eye to detail and quality specifically for those that want the best accuracy bar none!
It is not the process or the machinery sometime often it is the men and women running the machine and the direction the boss above them gives them. Modern manufacturing tries to build in fantastic levels of precision compared to 20 years ago with the design of the tooling and assembly line layout so that mostly unskilled labor can turn out a quality product that is far more accurate than most products in the past with less time, re-work and skilled trades needed. Consistency over skilled work.
Today you can make 5X the number of rifles made in a given amount of time with almost no need to re-work a single rifle. You can get 85% of those rifles to shoot MOA or better. That was unheard of 10 years ago and even more so 20 years ago. In the past with an army of gunsmiths and skilled machinist and old equipment you had a bell shaped curve with sub MOA factory rifles making up the tiny front of the bell most rifles in the largest part of the bell curve in the 1.75-2.5MOA area and the back of the bell curve being 4MOA or worse. You probably had 20% rework required and who knows how much factory warranty work because the rifle was not right when it left. The numbers I put up are not real numbers I made those up just to illustrate a point. Sure the rifles looked better finish wise and were often much slicker but the man hours needed to do that was insanely high compared to today. The skill required was also much higher.
We just do not have enough skilled trades and gunsmiths today willing to work for the wage needed to be competitive. People with those skills can go some place else and either make a lot more or make the same in a far more comfortable setting.
Look at the improvements Ruger has made to Marlin lever guns. The quality, fit and finish and consistency is fantastic by design! There is a great video explaining how they have managed to do that with a small line, small number of unskilled workers, modern machines. If you find the video I think it is 20 minutes long tops and it is a very good video.
People who make cut rifled or button rifled barrels have a bias towards what pays the bills! Nothing wrong with that. I think it is dishonest though to put the blame on the method when in reality the comparison is not apples to apples. It would be like comparing a fwd n/a 4cyl Toyota Camry to a rwd Ford Mustang with a turbo charged 4cyl. Sure they both cars with 4cylinder engines but that is about all they have in common. Comparing a 1/2 gasoline truck to a 1 ton diesel. A hand forged hi end kitchen knife to a Walmart of Dollar Store kitchen knife!
I respect Franks knowledge a lot until he starts talking about CHF barrels that he does not make. We have no idea just what can be done since factories do not share their research with us on what they could make if they decided too. Some companies pre-profile the barrel blanks before hammer forging some do not. Some normalize the steel twice most only once. Almost all OEM's hide behind "that's proprietary".
I am still waiting to see all these barrel makers finance engineering research and publish the results! I do not see them giving away anything like an instruction manual or competitive analysis or their trade secrets! They will not even put the name of a well known OEM barrel normally when they put up a video or still images or any measurements! If your science and truth can not hold up in a court of law and your afraid to speak the truth for fear of a law suite you not really doing anyone any favors really.
In fact if scientist and medical professional where not likewise such cowards the world might not be in the situation it is currently in with SARS-CoV-2, Vaccine Injury's, Lack of Efficacy, Mounting Supply Chain Crisis, Inflation, Huge Spike in All Cause Mortality, all down to fear! Cant speak the truth out of fear! I might be wrong from time to time and I often have to apologize for being blunt but I always tell the truth unless my wife is asking me if a dress, skirt or pair of jeans makes her butt look fat!
Anyone that has looked down the sewer pipe that Savage calls a button rifled barrel can see that the man and the tooling and attention to detail matters! HARTS button rifled barrels look nothing like a Savage!
Are Remington 700 Barrels Button or Hammer Forged
- Thread starter brianc74
- Start date
For as long as I remember, All Remington barrels are hammer forged on a mandrel, except 40X custom shop were button rifled. Hammer forged barrels can be accurate...they also tend to have stress, but I have found them to be very tough, able to take high round count and heat over a long period of time, and whats left of the the rifling will be rough and cracked at the chamber area and still be fairly accurate. Many praise hammer forged barrels in the military and European manufacturers advertise its use as a plus.
26 for the .308 and 28 for the 300, The 30 inch ain't getting you a thing and it may cost you accuracy "bullet still in the barrel when the whip comes down"
k80skeet
Silver $$ Contributor
That is correct. All the 40-X's were button pulled the rest were hammer forged. I wonder why??
DaveTooley
Gold $$ Contributor
783's are buttoned or were
k80skeet
Silver $$ Contributor
And the answer is but the time they started building the 40-X's the mandrels were so rough the had to do something to make sure they were accurate.
CHF is not a magic bullet. If you do everything right and have clean, crisp mandrells you will always get a more consistent result than you can with button rifling in a mass production setting. Notice I did not say better? Better in what way?
When you look down a CHF barrel that is not a POS it should look like you are looking at a dark colored mirror. It should look like someone cut groves in a piece of glass. Just like you can turn out a fantastic barrel with CHF you can also turn out a turd.
Any barrel maker that is anti CHF is either ignorant or has too much confirmation bias to be intellectually honest. Every car salesman will tell you his car or truck is the best even if it is a POS. Everyone selling you a horse will fill your head with heritage and breeding! If you talk to Brux, Krieger, Proof or Bartlien they will tell you single point cut rifling is the best. If you talk to Hart, Shilen, Douglas, LW, Bergara or Lija they will tell you button rifling is the best way to make a barrel. Someone has to be a liar because they can not both be true!
All of the best sniper weapon systems globally use CHF barrels. The US Army TDP for modern sniper weapon systems requires what 20,000 round accuracy life for being able to kill a man cleanly at 800m for 7,62 NATO and well beyond that for all the other cartridges. You can not get close to that accuracy life with a button rifled barrel.
I am not disparaging custom made button rifled barrels but I am disparaging mass produced OEM button rifled barrels as the single most inconsistent thing on new rifles for the 50 years I have been alive.
No one uses 4140, 4150 or 416R in aviation gun barrels or in tank barrels or Artillery barrels. None of them are button rifled! No machine gun to day uses button rifled barrels. In fact I do not think there is a single modern military rifled barrel that uses button rifled barrels.
The only company I know of in the USA that sells a CHF barrel blanks that is not designed for an AR is LW. There is a Russian Ebay seller as well but I have not seen anything from them in a while. I think it was Alpha Barrels or something like that.
So how is anyone me included going to be able to speak intelligently when we are comparing mass produced CHF barrels from OEM rifle manufactures and low volume custom made button rifled barrels available on the after market from guys that just make barrels and have a vested interest is selling their barrels? You might as well be asking a parent to admit their kid is garbage and yours is clearly better!
A lot of people on the internet are compulsive liars when it comes to group size their rifle can shoot. For all the talk about sub MOA factory Remington's with factory ammo I never see them at the range or competition! To listen to internet forums sub MOA Remingtons are as common as table grapes or red apples! All of the fantastic shooting Remingtons in my life have always been reworked and rebarreled or built for the government under tight technical data packs to ensure a quality weapon was delivered.
The old 40X was not mass produced it came out of Remingtons Custom Shop so people putting them forward as examples are not comparing apples to apples. On top of that reworked 40X rifles where always better than the Remington factory version,
When you look down a CHF barrel that is not a POS it should look like you are looking at a dark colored mirror. It should look like someone cut groves in a piece of glass. Just like you can turn out a fantastic barrel with CHF you can also turn out a turd.
Any barrel maker that is anti CHF is either ignorant or has too much confirmation bias to be intellectually honest. Every car salesman will tell you his car or truck is the best even if it is a POS. Everyone selling you a horse will fill your head with heritage and breeding! If you talk to Brux, Krieger, Proof or Bartlien they will tell you single point cut rifling is the best. If you talk to Hart, Shilen, Douglas, LW, Bergara or Lija they will tell you button rifling is the best way to make a barrel. Someone has to be a liar because they can not both be true!
All of the best sniper weapon systems globally use CHF barrels. The US Army TDP for modern sniper weapon systems requires what 20,000 round accuracy life for being able to kill a man cleanly at 800m for 7,62 NATO and well beyond that for all the other cartridges. You can not get close to that accuracy life with a button rifled barrel.
I am not disparaging custom made button rifled barrels but I am disparaging mass produced OEM button rifled barrels as the single most inconsistent thing on new rifles for the 50 years I have been alive.
No one uses 4140, 4150 or 416R in aviation gun barrels or in tank barrels or Artillery barrels. None of them are button rifled! No machine gun to day uses button rifled barrels. In fact I do not think there is a single modern military rifled barrel that uses button rifled barrels.
The only company I know of in the USA that sells a CHF barrel blanks that is not designed for an AR is LW. There is a Russian Ebay seller as well but I have not seen anything from them in a while. I think it was Alpha Barrels or something like that.
So how is anyone me included going to be able to speak intelligently when we are comparing mass produced CHF barrels from OEM rifle manufactures and low volume custom made button rifled barrels available on the after market from guys that just make barrels and have a vested interest is selling their barrels? You might as well be asking a parent to admit their kid is garbage and yours is clearly better!
A lot of people on the internet are compulsive liars when it comes to group size their rifle can shoot. For all the talk about sub MOA factory Remington's with factory ammo I never see them at the range or competition! To listen to internet forums sub MOA Remingtons are as common as table grapes or red apples! All of the fantastic shooting Remingtons in my life have always been reworked and rebarreled or built for the government under tight technical data packs to ensure a quality weapon was delivered.
The old 40X was not mass produced it came out of Remingtons Custom Shop so people putting them forward as examples are not comparing apples to apples. On top of that reworked 40X rifles where always better than the Remington factory version,
BoydAllen
Gold $$ Contributor
Actually, hammer forged rifling is common among factory rifles. Remington, Ruger and many others, including European brands.
D Coots
Silver $$ Contributor
I do not need to look any further than the equipment lists in SRBR to see what is winning in that particular field.
Later
Dave
FNSafari
Gold $$ Contributor
I had a 2K$ brand new Sako 85 .223 rifle that had a barrel that looked horrible...tool marks, inclusions, pitting. I called Beretta USA and they sent me a return label. I sent it back and they told me they would replace the barrel. To make a long story short, after finding out this spring they were going to replace the rifle and then finding out they had no rifles to do so, they did send me a full refund. Took a year to resolve. No complaints there, but never, never again!!
AlNyhus
Silver $$ Contributor
Amen, buddy. The Interweb is a weird place....
IIRC Hammer Forging induces the most stress on a barrel ( it is made by pounding the crap out of it), button barrels less so, and cut rifling has least inherent internal stress. If you are sniping and the first shot only counts then the stress imparted by the manufacturing method most likely won't rear it's ugly head. If you are shooting competition, or a dog town where multiple shots are the norm which elevates barrel temperature odds are that HF barrels will not serve you well- no matter what stress relief methods they claim to employ post forging.
c3d4b2
Silver $$ Contributor
Here is a link to discussions on measuring residual stress.
Coyotefurharvester
Silver $$ Contributor
CHF barrels also have the chamber forged as part of the mandrel, why do the chambers vary?
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