Barrels, which manufacturer??

I have used Hatt, Kreiger, and Bartlein...all have performed well. Brownells has Kreiger barrels in stock. Just bought a 6.5 Medium Palma for my 6.5x47 PRS rifle. Generally long wait times for Bartlein and Hart barrels.

I have a Lilja on my Edge and love it

A Button rifled barrel can shoot just as good as a cut barrel. A good barrel is a good barrel period. I know of a well respected BR shooter who just in the last few months replaced his Bartlein with a button rifled barrel, he told me he shot the button barrel a 23 shot string and it never changed POI from shot 1-23. Properly stress relieving, steel and tooling are key.

L.Sherm said:

A Button rifled barrel can shoot just as good as a cut barrel. A good barrel is a good barrel period. I know of a well respected BR shooter who just in the last few months replaced his Bartlein with a button rifled barrel, he told me he shot the button barrel a 23 shot string and it never changed POI from shot 1-23. Properly stress relieving, steel and tooling are key.

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What brand of a button barrel did he use?

L.Sherm said:

A Button rifled barrel can shoot just as good as a cut barrel. A good barrel is a good barrel period. I know of a well respected BR shooter who just in the last few months replaced his Bartlein with a button rifled barrel, he told me he shot the button barrel a 23 shot string and it never changed POI from shot 1-23. Properly stress relieving, steel and tooling are key.

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I am no metallurgist by any means, that being said, I machine many types of steel and the pre-hard, stress relieved steels hold tolerance when removing material. when I build fixtures, that's the materials I usually want because it will be in the same shape as pre cut after I take it to size, but swaging steel will itself lend to a nice hard "compact" surface. why would this not be good for a land and groove. they should be denser. and then a good stress relieving process should relax the barrel.. is there any data out there that would say that? We use a lot of double forged rods in my work just for this reason. very High HP Pro dirt drag ATVs, the rod ends are needle bearing surfaces also . I know there is a difference between a 41 series steel I would use in a fixture and 400 series stainless, but the techniques are comparable to a point. Its my understanding that cut barrels are stress relieved before cutting and that very small pressures are used while cutting so stress is a very minimal factor and button pulling or pushing are stress relieved after , I guess it boils down to the quality of stress relieving.

I guess it comes down to who's sales pitch you choose to believe. The good news, there are MANY top tier barrels to choose from that will generally outperform the shooter/s.

I've used multiple different companies barrels on builds, Hart, Krieger, Lilja, Broughton, Douglas, and Shilen. Of those that I have used, Hart and Krieger are my two favs but that doesn't mean the others haven't shot very well, too.

Also, I'm pretty sure Hart barrels uses a pushed button process and many, maybe even most, of the other button barrels are pulled button. What benefit one process has over the other, I have no clue.

L.Sherm said:

A Button rifled barrel can shoot just as good as a cut barrel. A good barrel is a good barrel period. I know of a well respected BR shooter who just in the last few months replaced his Bartlein with a button rifled barrel, he told me he shot the button barrel a 23 shot string and it never changed POI from shot 1-23. Properly stress relieving, steel and tooling are key.

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None of this has anything to do with hunting accuracy.
BR shooters get sighters, which are pre-foulers and preheating of the bore. Once any bore is up to stable temps & fouling, it will shoot with better PRECISION (grouping) for record shots.
Let me show you what a Tubb2K & competitive level button barrel does in cold bore accuracy testing.

It's 1 shot every 10mins, with an immediate followup, wait 10mins and fire like this again, over & over. Notice the hot grouping of followups is way better than warm bore shots. Given this, a gun that grouped fantastic in competitive format at 600yds, sucked completely for any hunting potential.
This is the danger in crediting grouping results -for hunting potential.

I should say above is an example of what you MIGHT have with a button barrel.
I have a Cooper with a Wilson, which is button, and it holds cold bore shots together way better. Maybe it was cryo'd, I don't know.
I do know that every cut rifled barrel I've had held same POI cold or hot.

Bartlein every day of the week

Mikecr said:

I should say above is an example of what you MIGHT have with a button barrel.
I have a Cooper with a Wilson, which is button, and it holds cold bore shots together way better. Maybe it was cryo'd, I don't know.
I do know that every cut rifled barrel I've had held same POI cold or hot.

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I also have a Cooper with a Wilson match grade barrel i(n 6.4x284). It will group clean, fouled, hot, or cold shots into a .5MOA group, same POI, for at least 60 rounds before cleaning. Also,
I'm going on my fourth season without having to adjust my 200 yard zero. Great barrel!!!

Mikecr said:

I should say above is an example of what you MIGHT have with a button barrel.
I have a Cooper with a Wilson, which is button, and it holds cold bore shots together way better. Maybe it was cryo'd, I don't know.
I do know that every cut rifled barrel I've had held same POI cold or hot.

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Mikecr, wondering what others opinion on cryogenic treated barrels. I've read reams of opinions from "it doesn't help/waste of money" to "it's the way to go", but never read one word of it being a negative effect. A championship Az off-road racer's crew chief once said, give me your new barrel and I'll send it in with some of my parts to cryo treating, if you don't like it I'll buy you a new one. It was a buttoned barrel and after seven years it still is <1/2 MOA at 300 yds and very easy to clean. To this day I still haven't seen a documented pro or con on the subject.

I usually buy Bartlein, Brux or Rock Creek, depending on what Bugholes has in stock. www.bugholes.com

I have always been a fan of the cut barrels, Krieger, Rock creek, and Brux being my preference. Stress is why. However, after seeing some things lately I am starting to second guess this. Actual machine work is down the list compared to steel quality when we are talking accuracy. Cut barrels are usually dimentionally better, but that doesnt mean much to me. The thing with a cut barrel is they take the steel they get. The supplier does the stress relieving before they get it. Button barrels are stress relieved in house by the better button barrel makers. I am going to be trying more top button barrels to see what kind of consistency they provide. I am hoping the in house stress relieving may be more consistent and though than what the steel plants put out for the cut guys.

Krieger cryos their barrels.