Taking a few minutes to share my experience with Bartlein barrels and unfortunately, the need for work with their customer service. I am going to keep this straightforward and factual. You can draw your own conclusions in the end.
In June of 2020 I placed a first time order with Bartlein Barrels. The barrel is a .308" Heavy Palma 5r Stainless 400MOD with a 1:9 to 1:8 transitional twist and a finish length of 34". I was particularly attracted to the new 400MOD barrel material they were using. Having done plenty of research, I was confident that this new barrel material could improve barrel life in this 300 RUM from an average 800 rounds to potentially 1000-1200. Bartlein has suggested based on their feedback from ammunition manufacturers, that the 400MOD material was lasting longer in their test barrels than previous, traditional metals. Extrapolated data was indicating 25% or better. I felt that a good chance at 25% longer barrel life was worth the extra $200 for me to spend on the 400MOD. This was a $600 plus dollar barrel.
I received the barrel and shipped everything to Defensive Edge in Rathdrum, ID to let Bob Carlock do his magic on it. I did choose to have them "+P" the throat for the extra velocity potential. Again, having done a lot of research beforehand, I did not feel that I would be giving up much, if any barrel life doing the +P. I've always been one to take care of my barrels, cleaning them when appropriate and NEVER overheating them.
Bob did fantastic work and the finished product looked great. I do believe in barrel break in, so that's where I started. It was apparent right from the start that this thing was a copper hog. I mean I could not get it to stop producing copper even into about 20-30 rounds of break in with more cleaning than I care to admit. I started with a phone call to Bartlein describing my situation. The tech that I spoke with told me this was normal in long barrels and that I should "give it some help" with JB. Not feeling comfortable with this, I called and spoke with Shawn Carlock about the situation. He mentioned that some barrels just copper up and if it shoots well, to just go with it. So, I went and shot some groups of which it shot multiple dime size, 3 shot groups at 250 yards with a low charge across multiple seating depths. I decided to ignore the copper issue and just shoot it.
I keep a hand written shot log of every single round fired through the rifle. I also note cleanings. My cleaning regime became a carbon cleaning every 50 rounds or so followed by a bore cam to verify carbon was removed. Copper did not cause any issues after this point and this rifle never experienced a "pressure up" other than the one time speed up at 185 rounds.
I developed an initial load with 245 Bergers and RL33 at 3150fps. This load NEVER produced sticky bolt lift and I have NEVER shot more than 3 rounds back to back without a barrel cooler going in the chamber for 2-3 minutes. It shot phenomenal and was actually holding around .5 MOA of vertical at just past 2000 yards with this load. I continued to shoot this load until 185 rounds or so when it FINALLY sped up. I needed to back the charge down about 1.5 grains to get back to the original speed. Off and running again.
At about the 250 round count, I decided to pick up some 250 Atips as the 245 Bergers were unobtanium and I was running low. I began load development with the 250s and during seating tests, putting them nearly in the same hole across multiple depths...still shooting excellent. I transitioned to RL50 at this point because it produced a little better speed at the same pressure along with better load density. This is where I began to see issues of which I attributed to the RL50 powder I had never worked with before. ES of 60-80 fps. Primer changes, neck tension changes along with a couple of other tests would not fix the ES issue. I wrote off the 250/RL50 load.
I took a look at the throat with my bore cam and a few inches beyond, to my surprise, the +P section was all but gone. There may have been .0005" or less of visible lands. Taking a measurement to the lands with my dummy round confirmed I had a big problem. For further confirmation, I grabbed up my old load of RL33 and 245 bergers. The Labradar came in 70fps slow of the last time I shot that load. It was obvious what was going on. My hope now was that I could finished "blowing out" the +P section of throat and maybe get some stability back in the velocity. By this time I'm probably at the 375 round count.
Now, it was just getting more rounds through this thing in hopes of some stability returning. From here out, I set up the Labradar for every time I shot to track this. What I found was a rapid decrease of pressure and a needed powder charge increase to maintain velocity. We're talking close to 2 full grains of increase in 30 rounds fired. I gave another bore inspection and this time, I marked the shaft of the camera so I could measure the erosion in the throat. 1.75" of freebore past the neck in the chamber before there was any resemblance of a land. This was WELL BEYOND the +P section of throat.
It was obvious at this point that the barrel was completely gone. 460 documented rounds. This is where the phone calls and emails started with Bartlein.
Call number one…I explained the situation in great detail with the tech, he agreed to take a look at it and asked me not to clean it (this is an important detail for later). I was told that an invoice would be created and I would be set up to return the barrel, hang tight. At this point, the conversation switched to email. Generally sounded positive.
June 28th. First email from me with a bore cam video, pics and additional details on the round count, cleaning history, hand notes documenting round count etc. and asked about authorization of return.
July 5th, hadn't heard a response yet, so I emailed again.
July 10th, Got a response back. The tech had been sick, would talk with the owner about the return of my barrel.
July 24th. Gave it some time. I followed up again and asked about confirmation of the barrel return. No response.
August 2nd, switched back to phone call mode. Left a voicemail for the tech. Later that day I finally got a response back to the original email thread. They were sorry, I "fell through the cracks" and they would be sending me a prepaid return label for the barrel.
Received the label and shipped the barrel out within 2 days of receipt.
Roughly 2 weeks go by and I hear nothing. I played some more phone tag with the tech and finally made contact. Initially, he said he had not seen my barrel. After some "digging around" he found it. Tech said they would look at it by the middle of the following week.
August 30th. I finally get an email response back of reasons why Bartlein could not and would not provide me with customer service on this barrel and that my "old barrel would be shipped out today":
1. Company will not warranty +P chambers or similar throats
2. So and so at Sierra Bullets says that a RUM is only good for 600 rounds at peak accuracy (whatever peak accuracy is defined as and by whom?)
3. Blame towards "poor cleaning", carbon ring, fouling etc.
4. Tech states..."you run into problems with the RUM being a 'finicky' cartridge at best"
5. Tech states..."you cooked it to death even at your claimed rate of fire"
I responded via email to dispute these claims as follows:
It is my belief that the +P throat had nothing to do with this as the erosion rapidly continued well past the +P section of throat. If the +P was to blame, one could expect the erosion to slow down as the +P section went away. I believed the issue to be poor metallurgy.
I stated my previous experience with 300 RUMs and many personal friends who own them, a good average, accurate barrel life is 800+ with traditional barrel materials.
I debated the claim that I had not cleaned. I had literally carbon cleaned within 50 rounds of sending the barrel in and verified carbon removal with a bore cam. Immediately before sending the barrel in, I took a bore cam video showing only very light carbon in the throat and certainly no carbon ring that would make contact with a bullet.
I disagreed with the statement that the RUM is "finicky at best"...probably all I need to say there…
"Claimed rate of fire"... I reiterated that my hand written notes on round count and statement that I have never fired more than 3 rounds at a time were exactly accurate and that I didn't appreciate the assumption that I was being dishonest. I place a high value on my word and integrity.
I then began conversing with the owner of Bartlein barrels. It was more of the same, the owner backing up what the Tech said and placing heavy blame on the +P throat, which is an easy target. The theme continued of an attitude that I had not been honest with them and it left me feeling insulted as a customer. I was finally offered a consolation prize of 50% off on another barrel, but at this point I had made the decision to part ways with this company after my experience and communicated that with the owner.
September 10th, still had not received my old barrel back. Emailed the tech asking for confirmation of action on this. Never received a response.
September 20th, called and left a voicemail with the tech asking for update on my old barrel and the return process. As of this writing (9/23) I have not received any response from the company on my old barrel which was to be shipped out back on Aug 30th as per the tech. They still have a piece of my property that at this point, I have to assume is gone.
Final thoughts:
I remained calm, patient and reasonable in this process as I realize sugar gets us a lot farther than vinegar. I have done my best, but this whole process from start to end has led me to publish this as a "proceed with caution" to other shooters. As someone who works in an industry and a small community where customer service is everything, I understand the value in that and also the impact to a customer of not being treated right. Future barrels for me will be with other companies. I hope that someone finds some value in this writing.
