Christensen Carbon Barrels on Custom Rifles. Accuracy?

Hello-

I recently built a couple rifles using Christensen Arms carbon barrels. I have been pretty disappointed in their performance. I have about 100 rounds through each, and neither one consistently shoots better than 1 MOA (I've gone through multiple load development processes). Ultimately, I am just wondering what kind of accuracy other people are getting, and if I just happened to get a couple bad barrels.

P.S. These are their newer barrels, purchased about 3 months ago.

Had a 6.5 SAUM that was way better than I was. Kept wanting a fly to land on a target.... never happened. Maybe not the barrel???

I have owned five. No problem getting .5 moa or better.

Have one that's a couple years old that is on my 300wm sako trg action. Same as above, threw together some rounds out of the book and am getting around .5moa on average. Maybe you've got copper, or maybe they are just bad. They should settle around 200rds and maybe they'll come together then.

There junk

jwing said:

There junk

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Ya, complete junk. You can not possibly be taken serious with a statement like that.

Where junk?

I have a 26 nosler in the ridgeline that shoots better then .5 all day long with the 140 accubonds. Tried the ELD-x and after 3 or 4 down the tube it would start sending flyers because of copper fouling. Zero problems with the accubonds.

I would check your bedding and bbl channel for contact if you haven't already. If your groups are stringing horizontal it's usually a shooter/hand placement issue. Good luck.

Thanks for all the feedback! I'm glad to hear that most of you are getting good, and even great performance with your CA guns and barrels.

Just to give you a little more information, I've tried Berger, Hornady, and Accubond. All had similar results. I also know that the machining, bedding, barrel channel, etc. are good. I've triple checked everything, which included using a borescope to check the throat for any issues. A couple of you have also mentioned that the issue might be the shooter, which to be fair, is often the cause of poor accuracy. However, I can say with absolute confidence that there is a difference between these two CA barrels and other barrels I have used.

For example, after going through the load development process, here is an average group I would get with the CA barrels:
I recently pulled the CA barrel off one of the actions and put on a Bartlein. I used all the same components--action, stock, trigger, etc.--and I machined everything using the same process and the same reamer. Here is what the gun did with the new barrel after the first round of load development:
Here is what it is doing now with a little fine tuning:


I love the look and feel of the CA carbon barrels, and it sounds like most of you are getting great performance with them. Thanks again for all the feedback, guys!

Here is one of the rifles. I'm putting a new barrel on this one this week.

you could also try some sierra bullets. I find that they are always easier for me to load and tune. The BC may not by as high as some of the others, but they kill all the same.

Seems obvious you know how to shoot and reload. Looks like barrel issue from what your finding

I'd make a call to Christensen and see if they will replace them. I'm sure they'd want to have a better showing than this.

Boman said:

I'd make a call to Christensen and see if they will replace them. I'm sure they'd want to have a better showing than this.

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I agree. It definitely makes me think that something is wrong with the CA barrels I have after seeing that other people are getting good performance with them. I've contacted CA a couple time already. One of the answers I got was, "Your headspace is wrong." Which, I know for a fact, it's not. I'm going to try them again today to see if they will let me send the barrels back for inspection.