Green Mountain Barrels

[urbanrifleman]

But that was back when components were plentiful and women were women.

The two things are directly related, interestingly enough.

 

[Ralph Littlefield]

I'm going with the Green Mountain barrel. The rifle is a Savage, so I am accustomed to seeing machine marks in the bore that look like railroad ties. The barrel that is being replaced looked terrible but shot better than I could.

Well, it has been a long wait, but I finally have my rifle back with a new 24" Green Mountain barrel. I got it Monday and loaded up a few rounds to sight it in and shoot a group. I cleaned the barrel and used 5 rounds to get sighted in then fired a 5 round group at 100 yds. I want to clean it before i fire it again. It may be a fluke, but my first group with it was 5/8". I am impressed and pleased. Hopefully, with a little load development, and time to break in, it will do even better than that. The load was 39.5 gns of AA4350 and 147gn Hornady Eld-M. Ave velocity for 10 round was 2424 which seems a little slow, but I hope to gain a little velocity as the barrel breaks in.

 

[troupe]

Green Mountain is in the league of the Wilson barrels. Both are ok for budget builds. What you spent towards a Green Mountain or Wilson will be better put towards a higher end barrel. If the budget does not allow it, then you will be ok with the lower barrel if you are not looking for the top accuracy potential. JMO and you know what opinions are worth sometimes.

Good luck on the purchase.

 

[mauser284]

Green Mountain is in the league of the Wilson barrels. Both are ok for budget builds. What you spent towards a Green Mountain or Wilson will be better put towards a higher end barrel. If the budget does not allow it, then you will be ok with the lower barrel if you are not looking for the top accuracy potential. JMO and you know what opinions are worth sometimes.

Good luck on the purchase.

I have not used a GreenMoutain barrel but I have used WIlsons that cleaned up just as easy and produced consistent groups inline with Brux, Lothar Walther, Lija, Hart, Douglus, Prefered, X-Caliper, Krieger etc.....I have not shot enough of them to know if I was lucky or if they make a really really good product. Plenty of other people have used Wilsons and had nothing but good luck. Even the big dogs of "match grade" after market barrels produce some dogs they are not all zingers! I am not saying they should be your first choice if you are already competing and podium'ing at regionals or nationals or are building a BR rig but for real shooting done off hand with or with out a sling you only need a good barrel not a world class barrel to win. More people lose because of ammo and wind reading than anything else! If you are shooting prone, standing or in multiple postions the barrel itself is not usually the make or break item until you are routinely making the podium.

How well the gunsmith has machined your rifle and rebarreled it is far more important than the absolute barrel internal diemensions. Then comes ammo consistency! After that is mastery of the fundementals of shooting. Lastly if you can not read the wind you will not win!

Buy the best barrel on Earth then let a substandard gunsmith do the work and come talk to me about how it shoots! Outside of Benchrest you do not need the best barrel you just need a really good barrel!

It is hard to argue against HART, Lija, Shilen, Brux, Kreiger, Douglas those guys have had a lot of winners use their barrels. The further you go back though the more the winning barrel names change to names few on this board under 50 or 60 years old would even recognise. A lot of newer barrel makers have had winners use their gear. Each sport has it's prefered brand that seems to podium most. So much so that no one with an IQ above 73 could make the case for any one brand if looking at all the individuals that have won with one of their barrels. Off of the top of my head I would think HART is the one brand with more records and the tightest groups ever yet they are the least talked about on this site! Maybe it is my age or the fact that this site is not well represented by BR types. Douglus has won a ton of matches and was the darling of the DOD and FBI and other's for a long long long time and again no one mentions them today! Krieger and DOuglas where on more Palama, Silhoutte and X-Course winning rifles than any other brand for decades and now you seldom hear about them!

Consistency and Customer Service count for a lot and since you can not purchase a barrel directly from Wilson or a profiled barrel let alone a pre-fit from Wilson or GreenMoutain I think that is the bigest trike against them. If I call up Brux and get a lemon it is not that hard to get another barrel sent my way. I think the customer service and ability to buy a close to finished product direct is the bigest difference. Wilson, ER Shaw and Greenoutain are not going to stand behind their product are they?

I have been in this game long enough to know that you can get a bad barrel from anyone that makes barrels. You pay extra for great customer service and greater than average consistency. If you do not need that and can get a good deal it is sometimes worth it to roll the dice of chance. If it is not a competition gun you can afford to have to put up with more hassles and delays getting a replacment barrel from the OEM. The difference in price can be huge in some instances and for a lot of applications a 3/4 to 1MOA rifle is plenty in some cases a 1/4 MOA might be the starting line!


The same thing applies to machining of a rifle 99% of people will be fine with touching off the reciever face, lapping the lugs and doing a really good job on chambering. In some cases nothing less than a full blueprinting will do! In some cases that is not enough and you have to go even further! The idea of absolutes is kind of silly when talking about barrels and actions. You have to really define what you want to do.

A rifle that might be a winning rifle in F or Silhoutte or Palma would not stand a chance in BR! Just like a car that would do great in NHRA is not going to be a great Le Mans car and would not do well in Formula 1 or even NASCAR. Some things hold true for all of them but each is so specilized that you really need a spefic tool. It would be stupid to build a NASCAR engine like you build a Formula 1 engine!