What is?

T

tlo

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Sorry for this, but what is that barrel finish called where it looks like the gunsmith used an orbital sander on the barrel:confused:?

Thanks, Tom
 
Sorry for this, but what is that barrel finish called where it looks like the gunsmith used an orbital sander on the barrel:confused:?

Thanks, Tom

it's just that an orbital sander on the barrell while it is turning in the lath.I have a used barrell with this finish on it.Its suposed to make it cool better.Looks like crap to me ,will be sanding it off:D
 
Tom

What is that finish called??. I guess "rough and ugly" would be as good as any.
It is supposed to make a barrel stay cooler, which is, in my opinion, a non factor in 100-200 yard Benchrest.
In reality, what it really is, is an answer to a question nobody asked........jackie
 
You may be talking of the Dan Dalling (sp?) finsih. Not sure the name he gives it, but have seen barrels with it. Hope this helps
 
I do it on almost all of my personal barrels, I call it the 30 second finish. 60 grit paper on a vibrating sander applied with the barrel turning at 70 RPM. It may not be the prettiest finish out there, but it sure is QUICK. Barrels seem to shoot OK regardless of the type of finish...
 
My gunsmith did that finish on my Pac-Nor barreled .17 Remington. I rather like it!! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

I use this rifle mainly for prairie dog hunts, but I also take it out on predator calling stands once in awhile too. There is little or no glare off of this type of finish.

Barrel_end_flutes--small.jpg


17-Rem--194_NK_Stamp--small.jpg
 
Anyone that has polished a barrel, or any shaft for that matter, knows that is is a real PITA to get something pretty looking.

It takes a lot of time with smaller and smaller grit paper.
Makes a lot of dirt.
Does not justify increased pricing for your time.

Nice and shiny high-polished barrels sure do look nice, but as someone said above, this does not make them shoot better.

On a hunting gun a polished barrel will cause a lot of glare while a barrel with some sort of cross-hatch finish will tend to glare much less.

I put a cross hatch finish on my personal barrels with maroon scotch brite at about 150 rpm.
Wrap it around the barrel and go from one end to the other in a second or two. Do this 5 or 6 times then do the same thing running the spindle in reverse.
It looks good and saves a whole bunch of time.

This also helps to hide the "polishing rings" that were left in the barrel from the manufacturer.
 
A very highly polished barrel looks nice when inside of a building but is distracting in sunshine or bright daylight. A bead blasted finish looks o.k. but easiy shows scratches. I call the orbital sander finish "cat scratch" and think it is more practical than a polish or bead blast. The swizzle finish done by Dan Dowling took several hours for me to master but I like it best of all for myself.
I'm not a gunsmith, just a hobby tinkerer. Opinions differ.
 
Silver fox

How does your .17 shoot? and is that a std neck or tight neck? What powder and bullets do you shoot?

Hal
 
Hal--If you look real close at the second photo in my post above, you should be able to see "17 Rem" and "194 NK" stamped on the left side of the barrel. It is a .1945" neck and that is what you would call a tight-neck chamber. Most SAAMI chambers probably measure somewhere around .200" to .202". One reason I went with this neck diameter was because of the crappy neck wall thickness on Remington brass. I had several thousand .17 Remington casing on hand and the ones that I measured neck thickness on with my Mitutoyo tubing mic were about .01235" all the way down to as thin as .00980". To get uniform neck thicknesses on all my casings I turned them down to .00985". The neck diameter on my loaded rounds measures about .1917" to .192".

The rifle shoots pretty decent. I am still working to find the magic load with some 27.8 gr. Hammett BTHP bullets. I did some experimenting with Danzac, but will be trying hexogonal Boron Nitride when the wind goes down and it warms up enough to get out and do some shooting at the range.

Right now, with the 27.8 gr. Hammetts I am trying to decide between H4895 and N-540. For the 25 gr. Hornady HP bullets I use 23.2 gr. of H4895--not real fast, but very accurate. With the 25 gr. Hornady V-Max I have tried Varget, H4895, N-135, and N-540. The 25 gr. V-Max seem to want to tumble once in awhile out of this rifle??? I shot a bunch of the 25 gr. HP Nagel bullets using 21.8 gr. of N-135 with good success. I tried the 30 gr. Kindler Golds and no matter what powder or load I used, I got shotgun-like patterns :mad: :confused: :mad:

The little 27.8 gr. Hammett does a number on prairie dogs. When I was using the bare bullets I had a load of 24.8 gr. of N-540 and was getting 3,998 fps at the muzzle. With Danzac coating on the bullets and a load of 25.3 gr. of N-540, I am getting 4,017 fps at the muzzle. Here's what the little 27.8 gr. bullets do to prairie dogs from around 125 yards.

Quartet_of_PDs_and_Rifle--small.jpg


Here's a double I got at 170 yards in distance.

170-yd_dbl_and_rifle--small.jpg
 
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