300 Remington Ultra Magnum ABS Barrel Review By Michael Eichele

[ADMIN]

Day One At The Range

I never judge a rifle based on my first day at the range. There are too many mental distractions and hopes to really concentrate on the task at hand. However, there were 3 groups that showed signs of real promise and with excellent hunting bullets to boot! I was getting really excited. The very first group was right at 1 MOA. A couple of groups later it shot a .75 MOA group. The last group was 0.4 MOA. Read More...

This is a thread for discussion of the article, 300 Remington Ultra Magnum ABS Barrel Review, By Michael Eichele. Here you can ask questions or make comments about the article.

[HUAINAMACHERO]

Michael
Thanks for the article, very interesting and very well written.

[mindcrime]

A great article Micheal. Did ABS do the re-rifling of the barrel?

I have a tight necked 6mm PPC, benchrest Rem 40XBR with a Accumax II barrel (it's virgin, never fired!), that I would like to have re-bored and re-rifled to 6.5mm and either chamber in a 6.5x47 Lapua or a .260 Rem for shooting local F-Class. The steel in the Accumax barrel is a proprietary 700 Series Stainless that is supposed to be harder and last longer than regular stainless steel used in barrel manufacture, and unfortunately Black Star is no longer in business.

Thanks for any info on the re-bore.

Jeff

[Michael Eichele]

1st off thank you.

ABS did not rebore the barrel. They had a barrel maker they use barrel blanks from do the job. I forget the name of the outfit but they are in Prescott Arizona. Pederson or Pedersen rings a bell.

As far as reboring it, it is best to rebore ONLY if the barrel is a cut rifled barrel and NOT a button pulled barrel. The ABS barrel when it was a 300 RUM barrel was originally a cut rifled barrel from Rock Creek. Mike D. at ABS told me that reboring a button pulled barrel is possible but only after some type of heat/stress relief. Personally, I dont know that I would trust it but then again I am not a metalurgist. Mike seems to know alot about metal and rifle barrels. On the flip side of the coin, Lilja does not recommend reboring a button pulled barrel. I guess you would have to find out if your barrel was cut rifled or button pulled and if it was a button pulled barrel do some research on altering the structure of the steel before reboring it.

In case you dont know, with cut rifle barrels, material is removed or cut away from the bore to form the grooves. With a button pulled barrel the grooves are made by displacing metal instead of removing it. This is why you dont want to alter the outside diameter oe inside for that matter of a BP barrel after the bore is finished. The ID can actually grow due to this displacement from the tension inside the metal. With a cut rifle barrel there is not that tension in the metal to change the ID or any other part of the barrel when the metal is altered be it changing the OD or reboring it.

I hope that helps!

[mindcrime]

It definitely helps! I'm pretty sure that my barrel is a cut riflle barrel. I DO know that the inside diameter "chokes" down right at the muzzle. I'll do some searching on the net and make some calls and see if I can get someone to re-cut the rifling on this barrel.

THANKS!

[GameSniper]

Thanks for the article. I have been a fan of good carbon fiber in any form for a long time. There are only a few manufacturers that are in the carbon wrapped barrel game at this point. I have been toying with the idea of rebarreling a 300 RUM I currently own with a carbon barrel and Christensen and ABS are my final 2 choices. Currently I have a custom 26" krieger with a McMillan thumbhole stock. Tend to sitck with the 180 grain TTSX. Bedded and designed as a hunting rifle. Amazing gun for Africa and large N. American game.
A lot of people have talked about heat. Carbon is a good insulator and everyone knows heat kills barrels. I often wonder how many of us shoot enough rounds in succession with our rifles where heat becomes a serious issue. I also wonder if anyone has done any research on wear with a carbon wrapped sleeve -v- normal barrels. Asked my smith about it - his facial expression did not support the sleeved theory.
Anyone have a good article or background? How does the barrel hold up in hunting conditions when a gun could be dropped etc? Its a lot to spend on a hunch or to save 2 pounds on a rifle.

[JB99]

Below is a link to an article on the ABS Barrels. If the link doesn't work you can find it at ABS Barrels website under the "News" tab then the Shooting Times 2008 article link.

They sound very impressive, but do a search of the threads from this site and you get some very honest opinions.


Carbon's Next Step