Transcript

Travis Bader: [00:00:00] I’m Travis Bader and this is The Silvercore Podcast. Join me as I discuss matters related to hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits with the people in businesses that comprise of the community. If you’re new to Silvercore, be sure to check out our website, www.Silvercore.ca where you can learn more about courses, services, and products we offer. As well as how you can join The  Silvercore Club, which includes 10 million in North America wide liability insurance to ensure you are properly covered during your outdoor adventures

[00:00:43] To quote the late, great Colonel Townsend Whelen, “only accurate rifles are interesting”, in that vein, I’m once again joined by Ryan Stacey. The sixth time national service rifle champion, and director of directions for international barrels. International barrels mix high-end precision rifle barrels and we’re going to talk about the facts and myths of making your rifle into tack driver, whether that’s for hunting purposes or long range competitions.

[00:01:07] This is going to be a fun podcast because we have a number of questions that you, the listener have asked, and we’re going to go through them and answer as many as time will allow. For anyone listening, who isn’t aware of, how you can contact us with your questions or podcast topic suggestions, simply email podcast@silvercore.ca. Or even better, reach out through social media, Instagram, Facebook, we don’t have a Tik Tok account, yet. If you want to reach international barrels directly, they’re also all over social media, or you can get them at.. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:01:37] Support@IBIbarrels, info@IBIbarrels, or you can email me directly Ryan@IBIbarrels. 

Travis Bader: [00:01:43] Perfect.

Ryan Steacy: [00:01:43] .Com 

Travis Bader: [00:01:45] We put out a couple of questions to people, we’re asking them about, what do they want to know? What do they want to know to make their firearm.

Ryan Steacy: [00:01:51] That’s right. 

Travis Bader: [00:01:52] More precise or more accurate and. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:01:54] Yep.

Travis Bader: [00:01:54] I was thinking maybe we should start with the difference between accuracy and precision. I can take that one away if you want. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:01] Sure. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:02] All right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:02] Give me your ideas. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:04] So not even my idea, we’ll just go straight to Wikipedia.

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:07] Okay, here we go. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:08] So accuracy is a proximity of measurement results to the true value. So IE. How close are we to the bull’s-eye? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:16] Sure. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:16] Precision is the degree to which repeated or re reproducible measurements under unchanged conditions show the same results. IE. What’s your grouping 

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:25] Good grouping size. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:25] Yeah. So as marksman, you want to combine or marry both accuracy and precision. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:31] That’s right.

Travis Bader: [00:02:32] Nice group size, in the bullseye. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:34] Exactly. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:35] So with those basic definitions out of the way, we got a whole slew of questions. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:40] Yeah we get a few. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:41] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:42] It was good. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:43] A couple repeats, which is good because it means that there are some popular questions here. Why don’t we start off with what you guys got an Instagram.

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:51] Okay.

Travis Bader: [00:02:52] So. We had a guy by the name. He goes by impactshootin. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:02:55] Yeah. That’s Pete, he’s in South Africa. 

Travis Bader: [00:02:57] Hey Pete, this is for you. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:03:00] He’s a, he’s a bad bad-ass PRS shooter down there and hunter. 

Travis Bader: [00:03:04] Nice. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:03:04] He shoots our barrels. Surprisingly enough.

Travis Bader: [00:03:07] Surprisingly enough. Of course he does. Gain twist barrels. Is there any merit there or marketing fluff?

Ryan Steacy: [00:03:14] Okay. So I think there is merit to gain twist barrels in a couple of ways. I think that gain twist barrel well. Okay first of all, we should probably explain what a gain twist barrel is. 

Travis Bader: [00:03:24] That’s a good place to start. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:03:25] Yeah, okay. So gain twist barrel is a barrel that starts at a slow twist rate and speeds up as it gets to the muzzle. So the idea there is that you start with slower rotation in the beginning as the bullets entering the rifling from the throat. And as it progresses down the barrel, the twist rate of the barrel speeds up to give you that stability at the end. 

[00:03:49] Now, I guess the idea is that well a couple of things, first of all, it may impact the amount of torque that gets put out on the gun, because if you’re taking a well, probably a heavy projectile in particular, and you’re jamming it into a fast twist right off the get go, it may incur a bit more recoil or a bit more torque on the gun.

[00:04:10] So that’s one thing. So we start with a little bit slower twist rate in the beginning, the projectile enters that and then as it progresses down the barrel, it speeds up. So it may impact the torque. Now whether that’s reality or not, I I’ve never shot a gain twist barrel, to be honest with you. I don’t know whether that’s a factor. Whether it’s even measurable is another question maybe in the really big calibres that might be. 

Travis Bader: [00:04:34] Didn’t gain twist start with artillery?

Ryan Steacy: [00:04:36] I think it did yeah. Way back in the day. 

Travis Bader: [00:04:39] Like the Lee Harvey Oswald with his carcano right? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:04:43] Was it car-can-o? Or the carc-a-no?

Travis Bader: [00:04:45] Carc-a-no.

Ryan Steacy: [00:04:46] Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told that it’s properly pronounced, but I don’t know. Car-can-o, that’s what I always called it. 

Travis Bader: [00:04:50] I believe that was a game twist. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:04:51] Was it? 

Travis Bader: [00:04:52] I believe so, wasn’t it? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:04:52] That was a Six-five something or other wasn’t it? 

Travis Bader: [00:04:55] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:04:55] Interesting. Yeah, that’s probably a whole ‘nother podcast right there because I have my own theories on what went on with all that stuff. So we probably don’t want to devolve into that just quite yet, but.

Travis Bader: [00:05:06] That would be a fun podcast.

Ryan Steacy: [00:05:08] Yeah, we should because there’s stuff. I think that people don’t understand about guns and you look at the stuff that’s on YouTube and I just shake my head half the time. It wouldn’t do this. It would do, you know, his head would explode in this direction and it’s like, Oh my God, people, do you know anything about internal ballistics or, you know, physics.

Travis Bader: [00:05:30] Well, let’s leave it to the listeners. If you guys want to hear about that episode. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:05:33] Yeah, let’s do a Lee Harvey. 

Travis Bader: [00:05:34] Yeah. Let’s, give us an email, comments, but let us know that that’s where you want to go. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:05:39] Okay. So back to gain twist, so we’ve got somewhat the possibility of recoil mitigation. But the one that makes a little bit more sense for me is projectile deformation, basically. So if you’re going to jam a projectile into a fast twist and torque on it immediately, out of the chamber, then I think probably the chances of deforming the bullet a bit more. I don’t really, I’m not really sure how that would work, but. 

Travis Bader: [00:06:09] Is IBI set up to make a gain twist neuraldo gain twist rifling?

Ryan Steacy: [00:06:13] No, so the only way you can do gain twists rifling, so far, is through cut rifling and computer controlled, cut riflers. With a button rifling or any of the other varieties, well, you can probably do it with a hammer forge, but it might be, let’s see on a mandrel, you might not be able to do it on a hammer forge either. So cut rifling can cut any twists, like the guys at Bartlein, you can order a one in 7.93264. 

Travis Bader: [00:06:43] Hmm.

Ryan Steacy: [00:06:44] Twist barrel and they can do it needs, they programming in a way you go.

Travis Bader: [00:06:47] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:06:48] With button rifling because you’re pulling a button through a barrel you can’t, yet. 

Travis Bader: [00:06:53] And it uses that button too.

Ryan Steacy: [00:06:54] Yeah. So the button pulls through at one rate of speed, the twist rate is cut into the button.

Travis Bader: [00:06:59] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:00] As well as you are also turning the barrel at the same time, at the same twist rate as the button. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:08] I guess another type of rifling would be ECR. Have you ever seen that done? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:11] I haven’t. No. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:12] I was at a factory in the States at Springfield, Massachusetts. Smith & Wesson factory, their doin’ pistol barrels.

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:17] Mhmm.

Travis Bader: [00:07:17] And they had, I forget how many it was, I don’t know maybe 80 barrels sitting in this bath. I think it was kerosene or something.

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:25] Yeah something like that. Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:27] And they all had these mandrels in them and they flipped a switch, you see a bunch of bubbles come up, in about I don’t know, 15, 20 seconds they just rifled.

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:35] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:36] Those 80 barrels. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:37] So for those folks that don’t know what ECR is, this electrochemical rifling. So it’s kinda, what’s that type of, uh. 

Travis Bader: [00:07:47] Kinda like EDM?

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:48] Yeah. It’s like EDM. Yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:07:49] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:49] Exactly. That’s basically what I was.

Travis Bader: [00:07:51] Electrostatus Discharge. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:07:52] Yeah it’s kind of the same idea so. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but that might be something that would be very interesting with really hard steals. For example, machine gun barrels. Man have we gone way off track here already. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:03] We sure did. How are we going to get through all of these questions? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:08:05] Jeez I don’t know.

Travis Bader: [00:08:06] We have a lot.

Ryan Steacy: [00:08:06] This is crazy. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:07] Okay. Well let’s get right back onto . 

Ryan Steacy: [00:08:09] Okay. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:10] Let’s go back to the gain twist. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:08:11] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:12] So do you feel thumbs up, thumbs down? What? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:08:14] Yeah. I think it has it’s validity yeah. So less deformation on the bullet. Probably jamming it into a hard, fast lands right off the get-go, maybe better to do it a little more softly and then spin it harder as it gets towards the muzzle. So I don’t think it’s fluff. Like I said, I’ve never shot one so I don’t know whether it’s more accurate.

[00:08:35] I highly doubt that it is because I’m not seeing any accuracy difference between cut rifled, hammer forged or buttoned overall. As long as you pay attention to the other parts of the process to make the barrel.

Travis Bader: [00:08:47] The stress relief process.

Ryan Steacy: [00:08:48] Stress relieving is a huge thing. And then you know, having a hone is a huge thing. You can’t get the same results just by an lapping that you can with at hone. 

Travis Bader: [00:08:57] Well, we’re going to talk about lapping as well later, but let’s, do you want to jump in top the next question? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:09:00] Okay, let’s do it. We’ve got one. Sorry, Pete, I blew that one. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:04] CRLewisContracting, 22, way to plug your own business here, I love that spirit. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:09:11] That’s really smart actually. Nice. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:12] .22 long rifle. Your specifications say that within 0.0001″ to 0.0002″. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:09:22] One 10,000th of an inch.

Travis Bader: [00:09:23] Which is extremely consistent. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:09:26] Yep.

Travis Bader: [00:09:26] Many people talk about 22 long rifle barrels needing a choke. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:09:30] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:09:31] With this consistency, are your barrels not choked? And is it really required? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:09:37] That’s that’s actually a great question. Good job CRLouisContracting. So yes, back in the day, when they were strictly hand lapping barrels, you can choke the barrel a bit by holding the lap a little bit short or doing more strokes through the barrel so that you get a bit of a pinching effect. Now with 22 barrels, you’re shooting lead projectiles.

[00:10:02] So as that sucker goes down in the barrel, it’s going to resize basically to any tight spot in the barrel. And if it’s tight in the beginning and then loose towards the muzzle, it’s going to be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway it’s.

Travis Bader: [00:10:16] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:10:17] In micro terms. 

Travis Bader: [00:10:20] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:10:20] It’s going to rattle down there. So the idea was that you would choke the muzzle and you would make sure that the muscle was the tightest part of the bore so that, when that sucker leaves, it’s doing its thing right? So with the hone, you don’t really need that anymore because the bore is very consistent. The Sun and Guys are the guys that make the hone for us. They say that you can get down to a millionth of an inch somehow. I don’t know how you would.

Travis Bader: [00:10:47] Wow.

Ryan Steacy: [00:10:47] Even measure that. And honestly, I don’t think it really matters 10,000ths or 2/10ths. 

[00:10:52] Travis Bader: [00:10:52] That’s crazy. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:10:52] Is pretty crazy, but it’s measurable so you can measure it. So as long as we have that consistency all the way through the bore, then we’re finding that you don’t really need to have a choked. And we monkeyed around with hand lapping and holding the laps short so that you get a bit of a pinch on the end. And again, it’s like maybe a 10 thou or maybe 2/10ths at the end. So it doesn’t really make too much difference. 

[00:11:16] Actually you know, there’s another thing that people ask about 22s all the  time and it’s Hey, muzzle threads, I want to, I want to either put a can on the end. I want to put a fake can.

Travis Bader: [00:11:27] Sure.

Ryan Steacy: [00:11:28] I get that a lot in Canada. I want to put muzzle break, I’m not sure why you would put the muzzle break on the 22 other than it looks cool.

Travis Bader: [00:11:34] Right. The LCF. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:11:35] Yeah, the LCF. So that’s fine. You can do it, but I will tell you that the closer you spin your profile to the bore of the axis of the bore. So the tighter you get, so the thinner, the barrel you get, the more chance you have of growing the bore. So the bore will actually expand a little bit. If you spend close to it. 

Travis Bader: [00:11:55] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:11:55] Now, you can defeat most of that via excellent stress relieving processes. But it’s not necessarily the best thing to do on a barrel when you’re spinning half 28 threads on a 22 barrel, that doesn’t leave you a lot of meat to keep things nice and tight at the muzzle, which is the most important part of the 22 barrels. 

[00:12:16] So people ask why we don’t really recommend threads, like you can run them if you want. In our testing, we haven’t really seen too much difference with threads and without. But at the same time, if you’re looking for the utmost inaccuracy, I would probably avoid trying to cut muzzle threads on a 22 long rifle. 

 Travis Bader: [00:12:35] So just the process of cutting those threads on a slimmer profile barrel will cause it to, I guess, stress-relieve. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:12:42] Yep.

Travis Bader: [00:12:43] And expand just a minuscule amount. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:12:44] I don’t know if it’s stress relieving and I’m not a machine is so I’m not a hundred percent sure what the factor is that causes it to grow. It may just be that you’re removing materials there. 

Travis Bader: [00:12:55] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:12:55] And the reality is, is we’re talking about a few 10 thousands of an inch in growth. But when you  need that muzzle to be the tightest thing possible, a few 10,000’s of an inch is probably not a great idea to try and take away from the accuracy end of it. So I saw there was a question on the Schnooble there somewhere on one of these so. 

Travis Bader: [00:13:18] Yeah, we’ll get to that one, but that’ll probably. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:13:20] It kind of leads into that so that’s why we have that knob, lovingly called the Schnooble. 

Travis Bader: [00:13:27] You call it a Schnooble?

Ryan Steacy: [00:13:28] Well.

Travis Bader: [00:13:28] I always call it a Schnovel. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:13:29] Yeah, Schnoble is actually the proper term, but the way this all came up was when we first started doing it, we were doing a barrel for Doug Blessin, who’s a Canadian Paralympic shooter. And he had a Walther rifle and it had a knob on the end of it. And so we’re like, okay, well we gotta make it the same as his existing Walther barrel. And I can’t remember how it came up, but somebody goes, what’s his knob on the end of it called and I’m like, I don’t know.

[00:14:03] And so I remembered back to my film days and I remember we were talking once about the knob on the end of a nice wooden stock that had inlaid bone and all that kind of stuff. 

Travis Bader: [00:14:14] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:14:14] And they had called it well now I know they called it the Schnabel, but that had been like probably, you know, seven or eight, nine years ago. And I couldn’t remember what the heck it was called. And I said, I think it’s called a Schnooble. And Tim, the barrel maker looks at me and he goes the what? And I said, the Schnoodle. And he’s like, how do you spell that? And I’m like, I don’t know, just like sch and a bunch of O’s and Schnooble so, so the next time it came up, it was spelled with three O’s and you know, so it just turned into this weird Schnooble.

Travis Bader: [00:14:48] Is it common to have a Schnooble Schnabel on the end of a barrel? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:14:51] Not really, nope. The Olympic shooters have them on there for two reasons. Number one, to make the barrel easily the right size to put their open sites on. And number two, you go back to the half 28 threads to make sure that the muzzle is the tightest. So they’ll have that extra large knob on the end to make sure that they don’t spin anywhere near close to the bore so that you don’t get any bore growth so.

Travis Bader: [00:15:20] I remember about, I don’t know, 20 years ago, a guy came into the shop and he had a firearm and he wanted it super light. He’s like, can you drill out the bolt handle? Can you flute the barrel? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:15:30] Drill the bolt handle? 

Travis Bader: [00:15:31] Oh yeah, everything. He wanted it, he’s like, I want this same light and all right, sure. Not a problem, see what I can do right. And I throw it into the milling machine, dial it all in, got it in a spin index there, and I’m doing the fluting on it. And I, fellow says, Hey, when you, when you’re floating a barrel, just don’t go full depth on your first and final cut on each flute because you’re relieving too much stress, the thing can come around. So I’m just, I spin around and I do a little bit, do a little bit, and it’s like tightening the nuts on a tire, right? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:16:04] Yep.

Travis Bader: [00:16:04] You’d go opposite and go around. Anyways on one of my final cuts, something slipped and everything was looking great at full depth. And I start running, I engage and the barrel wasn’t indexed properly and it starts running down and I got short section, which is going to be wider than the rest of the fluting. I was able to fix the rest of the fluting and all look good. But I had this one short, ugly section. I’m like, what do I do with this? Right. Do I just give it to the guy and say, Hey, sorry, messed up right? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:16:35] It’s custom. 

Travis Bader: [00:16:36] That’s right, it’s custom. So I thought, well he wants it, he wants it light. So put it in the lathe, dial it all in. And I just took it off the front and thing looked as if it should have been. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:16:48] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:16:48] I’d never seen a barrel that had a big lumpy, schnoble on the end of it before. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:16:53] There you go. 

Travis Bader: [00:16:53] And I thought, well I’ll give it over, I’ll see what he says and if he doesn’t like it, I’ll just get him a new one, right? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:16:59] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:00] He loved it. So he took it out to the range and he it and I’m like, thank God he loves this thing. I’m never going to, I was able to fix this one and about a week later a guy comes in, he says, Oh, I saw this guy at the range and he had this really sweet set up on his barrel. Can you do the same thing for me? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:17:14] Yeah, of course. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:15] Nope.

 Ryan Steacy: [00:17:15] Yeah. The mistake turns into something, yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:17:17] That’s right. Nope.

Ryan Steacy: [00:17:18] That’s the well, the Schnooble was kind of along those lines. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:21] Okay.

Ryan Steacy: [00:17:22] Yeah. It was like just a silly play on words that just kind of stuck so.

Travis Bader: [00:17:26] I love it. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:17:26] I said it to our German distributor and she’s like, what’s a Schnooble and I go, well it’s actually supposed to be Schnabel and she’s like, ah, Okay, that makes sense. But what’s a Schnooble and I’m like, I just didn’t know how to spell it. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:41] All right. I think that answers it. No, your barrels aren’t choked and it’s not required. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:17:46] Yeah. We don’t really need it once we run the hone and we handle lap on top of the home. 

Travis Bader: [00:17:50] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:17:51] So they’re super, super consistent to the point where we don’t, if we get a gunsmith that, like a top end gunsmith somewhere, for some example, phones up and say, Hey, I need this type of barrel. I just pull one off the shelf. There’s no.

Travis Bader: [00:18:04] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:18:05] There’s no picking or anything like that, they’re all the same.

Travis Bader: [00:18:09] Very cool. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:18:10] Very consistent. Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:18:11] All right, next one. You have a rattlingrancher. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:18:14] Rattlingrancher.

Travis Bader: [00:18:15] Rattlingrancher, barrel length, short or long for accuracy, which is better? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:18:19] These are all rabbit hole questions.

Travis Bader: [00:18:21] I know.

Ryan Steacy: [00:18:23] Here we go. Wait, wait for this one. Okay, so for accuracy, it really depends in my opinion, on what you’re doing. What you’re trying to achieve. So obviously shorter barrels are stiffer, stiffer leads to accuracy. So in hunting rifles, I get guys asking for super light, thin barrels all the time. I would prefer, and these are all guys that, you know, 300 metres is like, Whoa, that was a long shot. 

Travis Bader: [00:18:49] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:18:49] I would prefer that they go to a shorter barrel to cut the weight then to a thinner barrel.

Travis Bader: [00:18:54] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:18:55] Because you get the stiffness, you get the accuracy and you’re not really losing too much in velocity if you went from say a 24 inch barrel to a 20 inch barrel or more, or even shorter. I mean, we’ve got this weird trend right now, the guys are doing 12 and 1/2 inch, 308’s. 

Travis Bader: [00:19:10] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:19:11] And putting, the guys at Reliable, put them on their like Savage axis and all this kind of stuff and.

Travis Bader: [00:19:17] Big fat barrels, but short. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:19:18] Well I mean, some of them are fat, but I mean, they’re short, but they’re still profiled. They still got a profile on them, but they’re light anyways. And they shoot great out to about 200 metres, I think. 

Travis Bader: [00:19:30] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:19:30] So the question is shorter long for accuracy. So I think for for accuracy, it doesn’t matter. For precision, probably shorter and fatter is better. Although if you look at the target rifle guys and F class guys, for example, their barrels are all pretty much on the F class side they’re anywhere up to about 30 inches.

Travis Bader: [00:19:52] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:19:52] And on the FTR side, they can be anywhere up to 32, 31 somewhere in there or the F open I mean. So those guys are trying to extract accuracy, but they’re also trying to keep the velocity where it cuts through the wind, because they’re trying to, they’re trying to smack a target that’s anywhere between 600 and a thousand yards or metres away. So having extra velocity, helping you cut through the wind is going to be the thing. 

[00:20:22] So on the question  there, rattlingrancher, I would say it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your barrel, or with your rifle. If you’re shooting long range, added velocity is probably a good thing. If you’re shooting short range, 300 metres, maybe 400 metres, probably shorter and stiffer might be the way to go.

Travis Bader: [00:20:42] Mhmm.

Ryan Steacy: [00:20:43] But for me, I think in the PRS game  you know, 24, 26 is fine. You don’t really need anything that’s super, super long for that game. Because the reality is, is you’re not trying to hit a half MOA at a thousand metres you’re trying to hit six, five or six MOA. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:02] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:21:03] And all you gotta do is make a hit on it, doesn’t even have to be in the middle so. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:07] So there’s your answer. Depends. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:21:08] That was sort of all over the place wasn’t it? 

Travis Bader: [00:21:11] It depends. What if you had the shorter barrel, but a faster powder burn. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:21:15] Well, I mean, there’s always ways that you can modify things right? 

Travis Bader: [00:21:18] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:21:18] So if you’re trying to get more velocity, you can always change your powder, but the action has to be able to handle it and the casing has to be able to handle it as well. So it’s not like you can super hot rod your 308 in a 12 and 1/2 inch barrel to get it going 3000 feet per second, it’s probably not going to happen. You’d probably blow your gun up, but I mean, there’s so many new powders out there. 

[00:21:38] You should definitely experiment to see what you can get out of it. Because of a powder that works good in an a 24 or a 32 inch barrel may or may not work really well in a super short barrel. So you may want to play with some, maybe some little hotter, a little faster powder, see where it goes. 

Travis Bader: [00:21:55] Do we want to digress for a second and talk about.

Ryan Steacy: [00:21:57] Again.

Travis Bader: [00:21:57] Why. Talk about why.

Ryan Steacy: [00:22:00] Sure.

Travis Bader: [00:22:00] A different powders like produce  different results?  

Ryan Steacy: [00:22:03] Yeah, I mean, I’m not sure I’m an expert on that kind of thing. I can give you my opinion, but.

Travis Bader: [00:22:07] Sure.

Ryan Steacy: [00:22:08] Yeah, so obviously different powders have different burn rates. So as  you go to a shorter barrel, you want to try and make sure that the powder is completely burned within the barrel and that you’re not ejecting unspent powder or unburnt powder out of the muzzle, which in winter time you can actually see that at the range sometimes.

Travis Bader: [00:22:28] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:22:28] You see black specks in the snow in front of your target and that’s probably unburned powder more than likely dumping into the snow. So the idea is to try and to get a complete burn in the barrel, while the projectile is still in the barrel, so that you build up as much pressure on it as much velocity as you possibly can.

Travis Bader: [00:22:43] Wouldn’t this basically come down to barrel harmonics. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:22:47] Oh for sure. Definitely. But I mean, there’s a lot of velocity stuff in there as well. The harmonic thing is kind of a combination between the bullet and all the loading processes and all that stuff. 

Travis Bader: [00:22:56] Okay. 

 Ryan Steacy: [00:22:57] As well. 

Travis Bader: [00:22:57] Well, rattlingrancher. There we go.

Ryan Steacy: [00:23:00] We did a bit of rattling on that one. 

Travis Bader: [00:23:01] We sure did. Then we got a Kris Feng. Finally, I think this is a normal username. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:23:08] Oh, there we go. Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:23:09] Who’s got two here it looks like. So first one. They say that you need a straight barrel bore for accuracy. Is this true? How straight is a bore? I thought after drilling, boring and rifling the OD, or outside diameter, of the barrel would be machine concentric to the bore between centres, therefore the bore should really be straight. So all barrels should be very similar in tolerance and dimensions. So that was one big run-on multi question. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:23:38] So let’s break it down into pieces for Kris. So you need a straight barrel bore for accuracy is it true? Well I have seen thin hunting barrels that were basically bowed in the middle. So I mean, it’s very slight, but at the same time, back in the day, they used to have guys that would actually bend barrels. 

[00:24:02] They would come off the lathe or whatever and these old guys in their eighties, they’d look at it and they’d hold it up to the light and they’d look down the bore and spin it a little bit.

Travis Bader: [00:24:11] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:24:11] Take it over to you know, some sort of a bending press. And then they’d just give it a little couple of paps here and there, and then they’d stick it up to the light again and have a look and see. So they try to make them as straight as possible, but.

Travis Bader: [00:24:23] So does it need to be straight? Well, I mean.

Ryan Steacy: [00:24:25] Yeah, I mean it does need to be straight and we try and spin concentric to the bore with very little run-out. But you are going to get a little bit of run out no matter what you are. I mean, I’ve seen hunting barrels that have 70 foul run out and guys are like, yeah, that’s fine. 

Travis Bader: [00:24:42] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:24:42] Whatever. And if you’re spinning it between centres, the chamber end, this is kind of where I was going, the chamber end and the muzzle end are on centres, so there may be a bit of a bow in the centre.

Travis Bader: [00:24:53] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:24:53] So the reality is it doesn’t really matter what happens in the middle as much as making sure that the ends are on centre and then you can spin it. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:02] Right. The Germans, they made their corner shot type rifles too right. Those ones that. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:06] Yeah. Shootin’ around the corner. Yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:25:07] That’s right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:08] Those definitely had some curve to them. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:10] A little bit of curve.

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:10] I think MythBusters actually did that one. They saw.

Travis Bader: [00:25:13] Did they?

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:13] Yeah with a 22, and I can’t remember, I think it was a rifle, but they bent it and it was past 90 degrees and it’s still shot. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:19] Wow. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:20] Yeah, that was pretty cool episode. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:22] I never caught that one. I’ll have to watch it.

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:24] Yeah, you gotta check it out. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:25] Kris Feng’s got a second question here. He says, is there such a thing as a hummer barrel as a hummer barrel? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:31] Yeah, I think there probably is. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:33] Let’s tell them what a Hummer barrel is for those that don’t know. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:35] So a hummer barrel is just a barrel that just shoots. 

Travis Bader: [00:25:38] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:25:38] It’s kind of this unicorn kind of thing that people get they’ll, you know, if you look at the top end of shooting a bench rest, F class, target rifle guys, they’ll buy more than one barrel at a time. They’ll get them all screwed on chambered up and headspace properly, and then they’ll shoot them all and see which one shoots the best and that’ll be their competition barrel. That would be kind of the hummer barrel. And then they’ll take that one off and put it away and only shoot it in competitions. 

Travis Bader: [00:26:11] Ahh yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:26:12] So what makes a hummer barrel? I haven’t got a clue. I don’t know. I think sometimes just the stars align and you know, pixie dust gets sprinkled on it. 

Travis Bader: [00:26:23] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:26:23] A unicorn farts in its general direction and it basically is just a barrel that all the, everything is perfect and it shoots and it doesn’t take much to get it to shoot. I don’t know. With our stuff, we get sent pictures of groups and things that, I don’t even know how the guys shoot those groups. Like I can never shoot groups like that to groups in the ones in the low twos.

Travis Bader: [00:26:52] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:26:53] Point one, like.

Travis Bader: [00:26:54] That’s crazy. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:26:55] The guys at PGW sent me a group the other day that we did for a 6BR Norma and it was a 0.187 five shot group.

Travis Bader: [00:27:04] Holy crow. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:05] And I’m like, holy smokes, I could never do that, but I would classify that as a hummer barrel.

Travis Bader: [00:27:09] Ahh yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:10] But we probably.

Travis Bader: [00:27:10] And that’s an IBI barrel.

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:11] That was ours. Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:12] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:12] Yeah, I’ll take credit for that one. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:14] There you go. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:16] We get sent stuff like that all the time so I don’t know. Maybe it’s combination of good stress-relieving, good steel to begin with. And then just focusing on all the processes to make the barrel as good as possible. Like we don’t skip any steps, we don’t change anything. Every barrel that comes through our shop gets the same treatment. So maybe that’s the reason why we, we see lots of hummers on the Facebook user page and all that kind of stuff. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:42] Precision tolerances.

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:43] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:44] headspacing, I mean.

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:45] And chambering was sharp tools. Like, you know.

Travis Bader: [00:27:48] That makes a huge difference.

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:49] Let’s do the right thing right.

Travis Bader: [00:27:50] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:51] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:27:52] On the headspacing, are you getting them as tight as you can and?

Ryan Steacy: [00:27:55] Not necessarily no, it depends on,what the guy wants to do with it. For the most part we try and make them fairly tight, but we’re not going to make them overly tight so that they’re only tight on closing.

Travis Bader: [00:28:09] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:28:09] But if we get somebody that says, Hey, you know, I want you to hold it a little bit short, or, you know, I want you to make the headspacing as tight as possible. Okay, sure, we can do it. 

Travis Bader: [00:28:19] And headspacing for those who don’t know is.

Ryan Steacy: [00:28:21] It’s basically the relationship between the bolt face and how far into the chamber the cartridge goes.

Travis Bader: [00:28:28] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:28:28] And how it butts up against the shoulder of the chamber. You have to be able to close the bolt. So, but it can’t be loose at the same time cause then you destroy your cases. 

Travis Bader: [00:28:39] Perfect. Want to jump over to Reddit?

Ryan Steacy: [00:28:42] Sure. 

Travis Bader: [00:28:43] Okay. user Elendal, E-L-E-N-D-A-L asks. I’m curious. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:28:50] Oh, here we go. 

Travis Bader: [00:28:51] What’s the purpose of a schabel on a barrel? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:28:54] Well, Elendal you left out about three O’s in the pronouncing of Schnooble. I think we kind of went through it all in the beginning there.

Travis Bader: [00:29:04] I think so.

Ryan Steacy: [00:29:04] It was kind of a goofy thing, but in the 22 long rifle barrels, because you want the muzzle to be the tightest part of the barrel and you can cause a bore growth by spinning close to the muscle or by close to the bore dimension, then we just left it a little bit big on the muzzle end to ensure that there’s no growth.

Travis Bader: [00:29:28] Beauty. Now we’ve got a Troycifer_tron asks any plans on a barrel in 6.5 PRC. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:29:36] Well, we had a lot of plans on those about eight months ago. So you’re about eight months behind. We’ve been making 6.5 PRC barrels for ages now.

Travis Bader: [00:29:46] There you go. I figured you were already on it.

Ryan Steacy: [00:29:47] Yeah, it’s a pretty cool calibre too. That and the 300 PRC are both pretty neat. I might actually have to build a gun on that. But yes we can, we can spin you a seven and a half twist, which is good for all the big bullets, but it’ll still spin 130’s+ no problem. But if you go to a bigger 65 bullet, the seven and a half twists will spin it. No problem. So, yup. 

Travis Bader: [00:30:14] Okay.

Ryan Steacy: [00:30:14] 65 PRC’s are already in the cooker so.

Travis Bader: [00:30:17] Beauty.

Ryan Steacy: [00:30:18] Give us a holler.

Travis Bader: [00:30:20] Dane-Atello. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:30:22] Dane-Atello.

Travis Bader: [00:30:23] Dane-Atello asks, is there any accuracy or other differences between the number of grooves a barrel has?

Ryan Steacy: [00:30:31] Hmm. Well, I think if you asked probably a hundred people that question, you’d probably get about a hundred different answers.

Travis Bader: [00:30:36] I agree.

Ryan Steacy: [00:30:37] Yeah. But I haven’t really seen any. We cut most of our barrels, with 5R as the standard. The only one that we don’t cut in 5R yet is the 6 mills. And I get asked the question, how come you don’t do the 6mils in 5R? And the answer is because I’d only ever shot a four group before and I needed to sort of base it, the accuracy on something that I had already kind of dealt with. So I just went with four groove and it works good. We’ll probably going to get a 5R going here pretty soon for some testing and see how that works.

[00:31:13] As far as accuracy goes, no, the answer is it’s no, basically I haven’t seen any differences as far as accuracy goes. Where I do see a bit of a differences in cleaning. The 5R style rifling seems to clean up a little easier and that’s just, I think because of the shape of the lands and grooves, they’re a little bit different, they’re more trapezoidal than square on the edges so there’s less places for stuff to hide. 

Travis Bader: [00:31:41] That makes sense. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:31:43] Yep. And I think, one thing that I’ve noticed is a lot of people say, Hey, I know you guys are little bit faster than what I’m used to. I reached the same velocities I was trying to get, trying to find a note at, with less powder. So I have a feeling that the 5R rifling because of its design, maybe a little bit faster as well.

Travis Bader: [00:32:04] Interesting. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:32:06] Overall.

Travis Bader: [00:32:07] Interesting.

Ryan Steacy: [00:32:07] Maybe a bit yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:32:08] All right. That’s a Dane-Atello. 

 Ryan Steacy: [00:32:11] Yep. Oh here you go.

Travis Bader: [00:32:13] H3llfir3pho3nix and all the E’s are three’s. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:32:16] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:16] Asks, is there any truth at all to barrel break-in? It always struck me as an extreme fudd lore, but if there’s actual science behind it, I’d love to hear that. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:32:27] Okay. I think there’s a lot of lore around barrel break-in. I think a lot of it was started by barrel manufacturers back in the day, to get you to burn up a lot of barrel life, trying to make the thing, you know, do all this mythical, shoot one, clean one.

Travis Bader: [00:32:45] Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:32:45] And shoot five, clean five and blah, blah, and on and on before, you know it, you got a hundred rounds through the thing and you have never even fired one at a target yet. 

Travis Bader: [00:32:52] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:32:53] So that takes away from your actual barrel life use. So I think there is some of that. There may also have been somewhere, maybe you need some examples where you need a bit of a break in because the tooling used to cut the chamber might not have been as sharp or as good as it could  have been and there might’ve been some edges or something along those lines. 

[00:33:18] I’ve tried both ways on a multitude of different barrels from different manufacturers. And I personally have never seen any difference, in the just take it out and shoot a crowd or the shoot one clean one for a hundred kind of thing. And I’ve done it both ways. I think the reality of that is, whatever gives you the mental confidence to be happy with , your barrel so that you’re not thinking about that as a possible reason why you can’t shoot. I think you should fill your boots, whatever way, blows your hair back. 

[00:33:50] But for me, I just go by what I see and if you look at all the pictures and stuff on the user page that people send us, like I just had one the other day and it was, this is the first five shots out of this barrel, period and they all went into like 0.5. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:08] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:34:08] So, I mean, you know, with no load development, factory ammo, if you’re shooting 0.5 on the first five shots out of the barrel.

Travis Bader: [00:34:16] You’re doing okay.

Ryan Steacy: [00:34:17] You’re doing fine. So for, people ask all the time, this is a question we get asked a lot and my answer is generally don’t worry about it. Just take it out, shoot it, shoot your 30 rounds or 40 rounds or whatever you’re shooting the first day range, don’t worry about it. Then take it home and give it a good scrub out. Use some Wipe Out, scrub it down to the you know, to the bare metal and then carry on after that and then.

Travis Bader: [00:34:44] You know, I think you nailed it. I think you nailed it on the head there. You hit the head, hit the nail on the head, hammered on the head. Hammer, hammer the nail on the.

Ryan Steacy: [00:34:50] I knew, I knew where you’re goin. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:51] You nailed it. On the confidence thing.

Ryan Steacy: [00:34:53] Bout the confidence. Yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:34:54] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:34:54] Totally. 

Travis Bader: [00:34:55] Yeah. I’m a very big believer in that. If you believe that your gun’s going to do what it’s got to do.

Ryan Steacy: [00:35:00] Exactly. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:01] That’s a huge part of the battle. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:35:02] Well, not only that, I mean, if you’re having issues and you’re trying to iron out those issues, the last bloody thing is, you don’t need to be wondering if you should have cleaned it a certain way in the beginning.

Travis Bader: [00:35:13] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:35:13] In order to extract more accuracy out of it. So whatever works for you the best, if you want to clean the crap out of it for the first 150 shots, fill your boots, that’s good, I’ll sell you another barrel afterwards. But for me, it’s not really even a thing I don’t even bother. Is there any more, right? Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:34] So next question. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:35:35] Okay. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:36] User leadpoisonedbrad asks

Ryan Steacy: [00:35:39] I hope not. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:40] No kidding. He says, exactly how “international” is IBI?

Ryan Steacy: [00:35:45] I see. 

Travis Bader: [00:35:46] I expect most of your business is with Canada and US, d’all have much business in other markets, Europe / Asia?

Ryan Steacy: [00:35:54] So International Barrels surprisingly enough, is quite international. We have a huge presence in Australia and we are gaining a lot of presence in, probably the second biggest place after Canada, well, maybe in Australia is Scandinavia. 

Travis Bader: [00:36:13] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:36:13] So we’ve caught on like fire over there and it’s going gangbusters. We have probably a couple of gunsmiths in Sweden, we have the top guy was using our barrels. We have a couple of big companies and one of the top gunsmiths in Norway, that’s using our stuff. We’ve sent barrels to Finland.

Travis Bader: [00:36:36] Wow.

Ryan Steacy: [00:36:38] Denmark I’ve sent barrels to. Yeah, I think, I think that’s pretty much it. So the answer is, yeah, we send barrels all the time. I would say Scandinavia is probably the third biggest. Australia, we send a lot to, we deal with Cleaver firearms down there and they pumped through barrels like there’s no tomorrow. And then they catch on really well. So believe it or not at the moment, probably our smallest market is the US. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:05] Really?

Ryan Steacy: [00:37:06] Yeah. Which is kind of a weird one. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:09] So just export reg’s or?

Ryan Steacy: [00:37:10] No, nope, it’s not even that.

Travis Bader: [00:37:12] They’re just set in their ways. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:37:14] Yeah, there’s some of that. I mean, there are some awesome barrel makers down in the US.

Travis Bader: [00:37:18] Sure.

Ryan Steacy: [00:37:19] And so, getting people to switch to an unknown, somewhat unknown brand from shooting the barrel from the company they’ve been using for the last 30 years and getting good results from is difficult.

Travis Bader: [00:37:32] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:37:32] In places where there are less barrel makers and you can produce something that’s awesome and get it to them in a short period of time, that kind of rules of ruse. So Scandinavia and Australia are two perfect examples of that. 

Travis Bader: [00:37:46] That’s a no brainer. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:37:47] Yeah. It’s pretty much a no brainer over there, but in the US it’s, people are more, hesitant to try. But we’re starting to make inroads there, which is good. And I fully understand why people don’t automatically pick up another barrel user or another barrel company.  I was the same way, you know, I was shooting Krieger’s before and I’m like, nah, these things shoot so awesome. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:10] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:38:11] Unless our own barrel shoot is good, you know, I don’t want to, I want to make our own barrels shoot as good as what that does. So that was part of the process. So the answer to that is yes, we’re fairly.

Travis Bader: [00:38:24] You’re fairly international.

Ryan Steacy: [00:38:26] Fairly international at this point. I mean, we’ve sent barrels to South Africa all over the place. Pete down in South Africa shoots our barrels. 

Travis Bader: [00:38:33] There’s Pete again, hey Pete. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:38:34] Pete. Asia, not so much yet. Asian countries, I find have a lot more harsh restrictions on firearms usage.

Travis Bader: [00:38:41] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:38:42] There are places like the Philippines and I’ve had some inquiries, but there’s always some interesting stuff going on in places like that, that you really have to sort of vet who you’re sending to and quite often we’ll get requests and it just seems sketchy. 

Travis Bader: [00:39:00] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:39:00] So I get requests to send stuff to Pakistan all the time.

Travis Bader: [00:39:04] You’re in it for the long haul. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:39:05] And yeah, I just, you know, even if it is a valid request, I just don’t know if us, as a company really want to sort of go there. When there’s human rights abuses and all kinds of crazy stuff going on over there. I didn’t really want to be sending them a gun parts.

Travis Bader: [00:39:21] Agreed.

Ryan Steacy: [00:39:21] They can figure out their own stuff. 

Travis Bader: [00:39:22] Yeah. So we got the next one, user canadaboi, B-O-I, asks what’s up with “seasoning” a barrel for rimfire? I’ve heard all about fouling up a barrel, but is there any truth to it? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:39:35] Yeah, I think there totally is truth to it. I think when you’re shooting lead projectiles through rimfire, it takes a certain amount of shots in order to sort of lay down that layer of lead and fouling. And why it’s different than, than copper, it seems with a rimfire led fouling, to a certain degree seems to make the barrel shoot better Copper on the other hand, not so much, you get lots of copper fouling in there, usually your accuracy goes to crap. 

Travis Bader: [00:40:05] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:40:05] So there’s, there’s definitely something to have the barrel seasoned with ours, I’m finding that it is probably going to take at least 500 rounds to sort of get it there. There may also be something to do with the lube that’s on most 22 ammo. 

Travis Bader: [00:40:20] Right. 

[00:40:21] Whether that lays down a layer in the barrel or not I’m not a hundred percent sure. I will tell you this, that at the beginning of this stupid virus thing that we got going on, I started shooting my 22 and between then and now I’ve put over 10,000 rounds through it in a few months.

[00:40:41] And I went to a match in Kamloops, the CRPS match, and I figured, Oh, you know, I should, I was cleaning out the action and the bolt and all that stuff and I figured, yeah, maybe I’ll pull the thing through and cause you know, I probably put like six or 7,000 rounds through it at that point. And I figured maybe I should pull it through. So I get up to Kamloops and I shoot on the zero target and it’s like five inches off and I’m like, oh, damn it. I knew I shouldn’t have pulled it through.

Travis Bader: [00:41:09] Yep.

Ryan Steacy: [00:41:10] So it will change your accuracy, your point of impact the more you pull it through. I think as the day went on and I put more and more rounds through it, it went back to where it should have been. But you know, when you’re at a match, that’s probably not a good idea. If you want to clean it, clean it, and then take it to the range and re-season it and re-zero so that you know you’re not going to get any shifts again. 

Travis Bader: [00:41:34] Do you know what the coating is that they put on the bullets?

Ryan Steacy: [00:41:35] It’s a combination. It really depends on the company like Lapua and SK is like a really oily.

Travis Bader: [00:41:41] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:41:42] Lubricant. But if you go to Eley, the top end Eley’s are actually, it’s some sort of combination. I believe it, it has beeswax in it.

Travis Bader: [00:41:49] That’s wat I was.

Ryan Steacy: [00:41:50] Yeah. It’s a different, it’s a much thicker lube on the Eley top end, Eley ammo than the other ones. 

Travis Bader: [00:41:56] What about, let’s say Moly, molybdenum. Molybdenum disulfide.

Ryan Steacy: [00:42:00] Yeah. So I’ve never seen that on 22 ammo.

Travis Bader: [00:42:03] No.

Ryan Steacy: [00:42:04] But on centrefire ammo I have.

Travis Bader: [00:42:06] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:42:06] There’s a couple of different coatings. The Moly is one of them. It’s a bit messy, I think and it takes a bit to get it on there. And then the other one was a hexagonal boron.

Travis Bader: [00:42:20] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:42:20] Which I tried and yeah it’s slippery, but did it extend barrel life or anything? I don’t really think so. 

Travis Bader: [00:42:27] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:42:27] You’re still, it monkey’s with your velocities because you have to use more powder to get the same velocity as you do, because you have a slipperier projectile. 

Travis Bader: [00:42:36] Interesting.

Ryan Steacy: [00:42:37] So you have to up your powder charge to get the same velocity. So in my opinion, if you’re upping in your powder charge, what you’re probably saving in barrel life from the projectile going down the barrel, you’re probably killing in throat wear.

Travis Bader: [00:42:51] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:42:51] Anyways right.

Travis Bader: [00:42:52] Throat erosion.

Ryan Steacy: [00:42:53] Yeah, it doesn’t really make any sense to me, which is kind of why I think both of those have slowly faded away over the last 10 years probably. 

Travis Bader: [00:43:01] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:43:01] I know the odd guy that still uses Moly, but it’s one of those things where they’ve been doing it fo 25 years and it works good. So I’m not going to stop.

Travis Bader: [00:43:10] Why change it? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:43:11] Yeah, why change? 

Travis Bader: [00:43:13] So user DrinkLuckyGetLucky. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:43:16] Oh boy.

Travis Bader: [00:43:16] Asks, how as a manufacturer do you make sure your barrels shoot well enough to be competitive at the highest levels. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:43:24] Gotcha. 

Travis Bader: [00:43:24] Well, that’s an easy question. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:43:25] Yep. Well, I dunno easy, but there’s a couple answers there. 

Travis Bader: [00:43:29] Pixie dust and.

Ryan Steacy: [00:43:30] Pixie dust and unicorn farts. Uh…no. So 

[00:43:34] basically the first thing we do is we make sure that we totally control all the processes, when we’re making the barrels. So I’ve talked about mental management before, we use that sort of process in making the barrels. So each step along the way, be it pulling the button, drilling the stress relieving, lapping, running it on the hone, any of that kind of stuff.

[00:43:58] We make sure that after that’s done the barrel is a hundred percent the way we want it to come out from that process. And we took a lot of time and effort to make sure that when we are operating those processes, that it gives us what we require in end result. So when you stack all those things together you get the end result that you want. In mental management, you pay attention to the steps of whatever you’re doing, and you focus on the performance of those and then you get the end result that you want. 

[00:44:32] Well, it’s the same in barrel making. So all of the steps that we take, we pay a lot of attention to, and we make sure that we’re good at them. Then in the end we take it out and we shoot it. 

Travis Bader: [00:44:41] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:44:42] And we do a lot of testing. And in the beginning there were times when I took stuff out and I shot it and it wasn’t satisfactory. So it’s back to the drawing board at that point, whether it was a slightly different bore size or a different rifling configuration or different diameter on the lands and grooves or whatever the case may be. That’s what you gotta do. 

Travis Bader: [00:45:02] So I guess I’ll just be a lot of trial and error at first. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:45:05] Yeah. In the beginning there was trial and error. I mean, we’re pretty good at it now, so we know what combinations and what sort of algorithm works when you put it all together. Right. You’re going to get the end result you want. So there’s a lot less testing now, but I will tell you that nothing leaves our shop that’s new, that doesn’t get tested to the nth degree to make sure that it does what we claim that it’ll do, and then what we need it to do.

[00:45:28] So at the highest level, I mean, part of it also is getting into it in the hands of people that shoot at that level. So, I mean, the first thing that we probably had shot at up at a high level was an AR15 barrels because it was me that was.

Travis Bader: [00:45:41] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:45:42] Shooting them at a national championship. And they clearly compete with anything else out there from any other manufacturer.

Travis Bader: [00:45:51] They perform.

Ryan Steacy: [00:45:51] And I’ve shot them all, so I will tell you straight up that our AR15 barrels shoot as good or better than anybody else’s. So there you are. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:01] I love it. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:46:01] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:02] Next question user, Striker-of-Life asks, with modern barrels is there any point in choosing, say a varmint / bull barrel or standard barrel for long range shooting? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:46:15] Well, I mean, there’s always a point, right? Like again, it kind of comes down to what kind of long range shooting you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re shooting long range from a prone position and you’re shooting like 2000 metres, then it’s going to be one type of barrel clearly. I mean, you could slap a hunting barrel on there, but are you doing yourself any kind of favours? Probably not.

[00:46:44] So you kind of just have to go off of what you’re trying to achieve. I guess one of the ones that I get asked a lot about is, guys that want a barrel to hunt with, but they want something super accurate as well. 

Travis Bader: [00:46:57] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:46:58] So we have a couple of profiles that I recommend that are sort of halfway in between the reality is, is if you want something, that’s gonna shoot a half MOA group at a thousand meters, it’s not going to be any of the hunting barrels. It’s going to weigh seven or eight pounds probably, so be prepared for that. but on the other hand, if you’re looking for light and you’re shooting long range, you may want something that is a bit heavier.

[00:47:22] And light may not be the way to go, or maybe you want something that’s sorta light, but maybe fluted to take a bit more weight off there. So, I mean, there is actually a lot of point in choosing the barrel in relation to what you’re doing. 

Travis Bader: [00:47:36] Mhmm. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:47:36] So you kinda just have to be real with yourself. Like I get guys that are like, yeah, I want this for hunting. Okay, good. How long, how far do you shoot? Oh, you know, probably I shoot to 800 metres and I’m like, yeah, but have you ever actually shot 800 metres? 

Travis Bader: [00:47:50] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:47:50] Well, no. All my shots have been in within 200. Okay. Well you just want something that maybe you can shoot to 800 metres with.

Travis Bader: [00:47:57] Sure.

Ryan Steacy: [00:47:58] Well, yeah, okay. All right, okay. Here’s what you need basically. 

Travis Bader: [00:48:03] You brought up something about fluting as well. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:48:05] I did. 

Travis Bader: [00:48:06] And fluting was an interesting one because I remember there there’s a point in time when everyone says you got to get your barrel fluted, cause it’s going to increase rigidity  on your.

Ryan Steacy: [00:48:15] Oh god.

Travis Bader: [00:48:15] barrel. And it doesn’t!

Ryan Steacy: [00:48:17] No.

Travis Bader: [00:48:17] But I still hear people saying that.

Ryan Steacy: [00:48:19] No.

Travis Bader: [00:48:20] For the same way barrel, you’re going to have better rigidity, I think is a common school of thought on that one. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:48:26] I think it depends on how you flute.

Travis Bader: [00:48:28] And how you flute. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:48:29] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:48:29] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:48:30] Yeah. So we pretty much only spiral flute and we could straight flute, providing the flutes were relatively thin, I think we’d probably be okay. But you see on some barrels, like I think the Remington, maybe like the SPS had these really wide flutes. 

Travis Bader: [00:48:49] Yeah, they’re kind of flat like they use a Woodruff cutter or something. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:48:51] Yeah something, yeah. I don’t know what the deal was with that, but anyways they got these big wide flutes on it. So if you look at the barrel head on, you’re going to notice that the diameter of the barrel is actually pretty much cut down by the width of the flutes. So if you take a spiral fluted barrel, and you look at that, that’s done with fairly narrow flutes, the diameter of the barrel is probably not much different than what it is before it’s fluted.

[00:49:19] So in my opinion, you retain a lot of that rigidity with, a little bit better with a spiral fluted barrel, than with a straight fluted barrel, a wide straight fluted barrel. You could probably get the same thing with narrow straight flutes, and I had a guy, I think it was, was it yesterday or the day before asking me if we’re going to straight flute. And I basically said we could, but you know, the reality of it is, is that I would have to add probably about 1500 sku’s into my computer system so it’s. 

Travis Bader: [00:49:51] So probably not.

Ryan Steacy: [00:49:52] It’s probably not going to happen. We’ve had really, really wicked results that have been verified by companies like PGW Defense. And they shot barrels before they were fluted and they spiral fluted them and then they shot them again. And there was no change in group size, no change in accuracy, no shift of impact, none of that kind of stuff so. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:15] Are you really losing much weight when you spiral? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:50:18] You can. 

Travis Bader: [00:50:19] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:50:19] Believe it or not on like an MTU, you’re almost losing a pound out of the barrel.

Travis Bader: [00:50:24] That’s significant.

Ryan Steacy: [00:50:25] Which is significant yeah. Why you would want to do that on a match heavy, super heavy barrel anyways, why you would want slightly lighter I’m not sure. But I mean, there might be something to be said for some of the F class guys that want, in FTR in particular, where you’re your gun weight is I think 18 pounds, to have the thickest possible barrel with the thickest diameter that’s the lightest. 

[00:50:49] So spiral fluting on something like that might be a bit of a thing and I know that we’ve had a couple already, that guys have done super well with the spiral fluted barrel down at US nationals last year. 

Travis Bader: [00:51:02] Nice. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:51:03] Yeah. So that could be a thing. 

Travis Bader: [00:51:05] User Juno7 asks, I’m trying to find a good reload using solid copper bullets, such as Barnes TTSX, Nosler e-tip, etc, in a Tikka with a 1 in 11 twist. I’m seeing lots of articles suggesting that you don’t go by the weight of the bullet, but rather the length. Why is that? And is that the true way to find a good bullet for a barrel? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:51:31] Well, I think you can’t pay too much attention to that stuff in general because everything you read on the internet is not necessarily true and people will tell you different things depending on who you’re reading. But there is some truth to solid copper bullets being a little different than lead cup and core bullets. And the reason is because they don’t weigh as much for the same. So if you have a copper one, you’re going to get a much longer bullet for the same weight. So if you compare, let’s take Barnes TTSX, cause that’s what I’m familiar with. 

Travis Bader: [00:52:04] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:52:04] That’s what I use for hunting. I shoot the 150 TTSX. And if you compare it side by side with a 175 Sierra Match King or one of those match type bullets, the 155 or the 150 TTSX is actually longer.

Travis Bader: [00:52:22] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [00:52:22] By quite a bit. 

Travis Bader: [00:52:23] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:52:25] So you have a, obviously a longer driving band and longer contact surface area in the barrel. Now Barnes sort of puts those little can lures around there, so they try and minimize that extra contact, but I’ve always found that a 1 in 11 twist, even a 1 in 10 twist  faster with a TTSX and a 155, is probably gonna work good. 

[00:52:50] I dunno if he’s talking about a 308 here, I’m  guessing with a 1 in 11 twist it’s a 308 is probably would be. So, I mean, as far as the examples of, I’ve shot in Nosler e-tip’s before, they shoot pretty good, but the Barnes TTSX is kind of my go-to for hunting.

[00:53:05] The e-tip is actually looks like just a regular jacketed bullet, so it doesn’t have any of those can lures so that one may not shoot as well as the TTSX, but I would probably monkey around with different grain weight bullets before I sort of threw them in the garbage saying they don’t shoot.

Travis Bader: [00:53:23] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:53:25] Like for me the solid coppers generally need to be driven a little harder than some of the other bullets out, the lead cup and core bullets, in order to expand. So quite often guys will go to a, like in a 308 for hunting guys, we’ll be shooting like 180’s, something like that with solid copper. The 150 or even the 130 that Barnes makes are probably pretty good choices for a 308 and you can ramp up the speed a bit and then get them to blossom when they.

Travis Bader: [00:53:59] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:53:59] Impact the meat they’re supposed to blossom in.

Travis Bader: [00:54:01] Well I think you, you know, one of the things you said was you don’t always believe what you’re reading on the internet, or watching, reading on the internet. And I think a big part of this is go out there and try it yourself. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:54:12] Yeah, for sure. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:12] Because it’s all an experimentation process.

Ryan Steacy: [00:54:15] Yep.

Travis Bader: [00:54:15] What kind of, your bullet weight, your bullet length, your powder.

Ryan Steacy: [00:54:18] Absolutely. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:18] Your, and see what works in your firemen. I think most people kind of want to shortcut that and they say, Oh, I’ll just buy this and then we’ll buy that one, and the internet told me that. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:54:26] Yeah, there’s a lot of the reading off the internet and how come it doesn’t work in my gun.

Travis Bader: [00:54:30] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:54:30] Kind of thing and it’s like, because it doesn’t work in everybody’s gun. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:33] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:54:33] Just because it’s, one guy has it workin’ doesn’t mean the other guy. 

Travis Bader: [00:54:37] Then they got the analysis paralysis and. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:54:39] Oh man, you know, the one I get as well, quite often, this sort of on the topic here is, guys that they’ll buy let’s use 308 for example. There is an absolute metric shit ton of data out on the internet right? And most of it is pretty verified because 308 has been around for a long time. You put 44 and a half grains of Varget over a 175 or a 168 and with a federal 210 match or a BR2.

Travis Bader: [00:55:08] Yep.

Ryan Steacy: [00:55:09] And you shoot it and it’s probably going to be three quarters or less, at a hundred. So the one that I get quite often is, Hey, I bought one of your barrels and the load I want to use is  well, first of all, I’m pulling 147 bullets out of some old machine gun ammo, and I’m going to use those. They have this black tar on them, but it should be fine. And, I’m going to use a Norinco brass steel, and I’m going to use primers from Russia.

Travis Bader: [00:55:38] As one does.

Ryan Steacy: [00:55:39] Yep. And I’m gonna use a powder that, I’m not sure where it came from, but I got it at garage sale. 

Travis Bader: [00:55:44] Yep. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:55:44] So I’ve been shooting this in my other gun and it shoots awesome, but I put it in your barrel and I can’t get it to shoot. So I wanna know how to fix this, or I want to send the barrel back because I think there’s something wrong with it. 

Travis Bader: [00:55:59] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:55:59] And it’s literally like, Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel here? 

Travis Bader: [00:56:04] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:56:05] I mean, experimentation is cool and fun. And what works in one gun might well, I mean, if you’re putting that combo together, you’d probably be lucky if you got it to shoot in any gun.

Travis Bader: [00:56:14] Yeah, no kidding. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:56:15] But yeah, I literally had a guy somewhere in the prairies there that was he was shooting a Stag 10 when they were legal and and it was a light barrel, it was a hunting oriented barrel. And he had this crazy load and he was cramping necks and all this and I’m like, Oh my God, no wonder this thing doesn’t shoot you’re lucky you haven’t blown yourself up. 

Travis Bader: [00:56:32] That’s funny. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:56:33] So my advice is just go with the standard stuff, the proven stuff, and shoot that if you want good results, because those are all pretty much proven loads. You know, thousands and millions of people have probably gone over that and verified that it works good. And if you have a question, just email me and I’ll give you a load that.

Travis Bader: [00:56:54] Beauty.

Ryan Steacy: [00:56:55] Is probably going to be somewhere in the zone of what you’re looking for, but.

Travis Bader: [00:56:58] You heard it here. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:56:59] Don’t use the garage sale powder.

Travis Bader: [00:57:02] All right, let’s get off of Reddit and go over to Facebook. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:04] Oh my God. 

Travis Bader: [00:57:06] Let’s see if there’s going to be a difference in the type of questions. I can see right off the bat here, I think it will be. So Ian Thompson wants to know.

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:13] Good ol’ Ian.

Travis Bader: [00:57:14] Why are you so GQ? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:15] Yeah. Well, Ian knows. I know Ian, and he knows that I’m about as far from GQ as you could ever want to be. So I think that was more just a.

Travis Bader: [00:57:25] I think it was based off that picture you got there.

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:27] Which one? 

Travis Bader: [00:57:27] The black background that Graham took. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:30] That was Graham yeah. 

Travis Bader: [00:57:31] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:32] That turned out good. 

Travis Bader: [00:57:32] Yeah, it did. Didn’t it? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:33] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:57:34] Yeah. He’s quite the artist with that camera. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:36] Yeah, he’s pretty good. Yep. 

Travis Bader: [00:57:38] Let’s go over to Martin. Martin, ganon, how do you pronounce that? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:42] Gan-yon.

Travis Bader: [00:57:42] Martin Gagnon asks, for my hunting rig, with weight saving in mind, should I go with a pencil barrel or a carbon fiber wrap of the same length? 

Ryan Steacy: [00:57:52] Yeah, okay. That’s a good question. I mean, again, it kind of comes down to, is qualifying what you want to do with it right? The reality is that Pencil barrels are great for weight but after a few shots, they tend to open up and it doesn’t really seem to matter what you do with the stress-relieving. 

[00:58:13] You know, really light pencil barrels are kind of designed for one or two shots in the same hole, and then it starts to open up. So if you’re going to bang a string of 15 through it and wonder why it doesn’t all go through the same hole at a hundred metres, you need to rearrange your thought process on why you got this.

Travis Bader: [00:58:32] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:58:32] Okay. So with carbon fiber barrels, you’re going to get a light steel liner on the inside, which may be about the same size as just a straight steel pencil barrel. I know for ours, the internal liners about 63 I think. Which at the muzzle is about the same size as our medium hunter. So the medium hunters shoot really well. 

[00:58:56] So if we can increase the stiffness a bit by adding some carbon fiber, which only really adds a few ounces to the barrel, then you’ll probably prevent it from opening up a little bit, by having the carbon fiber on there. You’ll prevent it from opening up over a longer period ring of shots. 

Travis Bader: [00:59:13] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:59:14] So you’ll probably get, well, I mean, we’ve seen guys with a carbon fiber barrel shoot, 10 shot strings all into, you know, the size of a dime or a nickel or whatever the case may be.

Travis Bader: [00:59:24] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [00:59:24] You probably aren’t going to get a string of 10 shots out of a medium hunter that all go through the same hole, although I have seen it done. It’s, I probably wouldn’t recommend buying that style of barrel if that’s what you want to do. Maybe get something a little bit heavier, get the carbon fiber version cause we can add stiffness to it with minimal weight with the carbon fiber so. 

Travis Bader: [00:59:45] Beauty.

Ryan Steacy: [00:59:46] Martin, I would say probably the carbon fiber would be the way to go if you’re hunting sheep or something along those lines and it’s a one or a two shot go you know, you might want to think about maybe just the straight medium hunter or even a fluted medium hunter, which will bang a few more ounces off for you if you’re really trying to save. But I think for rigidity over the same sort of weight, you’re, the carbon fiber is going to win pretty much every time. 

Travis Bader: [01:00:12] Okay, next one, John Gingrich. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:00:14] John, good ol’ John.

Travis Bader: [01:00:15] Asks fast twist 22 barrels. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:00:19] Yeah. It’s kind of funny cause I actually had a phone conversation with John about fast twist 22 barrels about two days ago. And the answer is yes, there will be some coming shortly. 

Travis Bader: [01:00:30] Nice.

Ryan Steacy: [01:00:30] Yeah. So right now our 22 barrels are all 1 in 16 twist. We are experimenting, we will be experimenting shortly. The barrels should be getting pulled this week actually, in 1 in 12 twists and 1 in nine twist. So the fast twist barrels are going to give us a little more stability.

Travis Bader: [01:00:50] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:00:50] At longer ranges. So the idea is that, probably the 16, we know those shoot really well, out to 100, we’ve seen some groups that are around the half minute at a hundred. And I’m sure the 12 and the nine will also shoot really well out to a hundred, probably even a little further than that, 150, maybe 180, something like that.

[01:01:12] But once you start getting past that sort of 200 metre mark, which is really common today with the rimfire PRS type matches where you’re trying to bang steel anywhere out to, well I mean, back East, they shoot them out in 500 metres.

Travis Bader: [01:01:26] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:01:26] With a 22 long rifle, so once.

Travis Bader: [01:01:31] 500 hundred metres, 22?

Ryan Steacy: [01:01:32] I know it’s crazy, right. The furthest I’ve shot is 436, I think. 

Travis Bader: [01:01:35] That’s impressive.

Ryan Steacy: [01:01:36] To a piece of steal. Yeah, that was good yep. And that was crappy ammo too. 

Travis Bader: [01:01:41] Mmm.

Ryan Steacy: [01:01:41] So what they’re looking for is a little more rotational stability past that sort of 200 metre mark. So what you’ll notice if you’ve shot rimfire is that you start to get more fliers the further out you go. And that’s probably a combination of a couple of things. 22 rimfire bullets, their ballistic coefficient is terrible so that doesn’t help. 

[01:02:04] But also your well, two things can happen, you can go through the transonic zone if you’re shooting supersonic stuff, which I’ve seen personally at about the 300 metre mark. The vast majority of your shots will go where they’re aimed, but you’ll get the odd one here and there that catches the wrong something, and it goes two feet lower, two feet higher. You get a weird flyer and.

Travis Bader: [01:02:27] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:02:27] It’s like, I didn’t call that, why’s it way over there. So the idea  with the faster twist rates is to eliminate a lot of that transonic zone D stability. Now guys, that shoot.

Travis Bader: [01:02:41] And for people who don’t know what a transonic zone is.

Ryan Steacy: [01:02:43] Well, so it’s the zone in between where the bullet is supersonic and going to subsonic.

Travis Bader: [01:02:49] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:02:49] So it’s this area where all kinds of wacky stuff can happen to the bullet. And when it’s slowing down, it hits this zone and then it becomes, can become unstable. So it doesn’t happen all the time, but you get those weird fliers every now and again, in my opinion, I think it’s probably because the supersonic stuff is going through that transonic zone.

[01:03:08] Now there are guys that shoot subsonic like myself because I saw those weird wacky flyers and I thought, Hmm, I wonder if I stayed subsonic all the way out there, whether that would eliminate a lot of that. And for the most part, it did, depending on the ammo. But you still get the odd flyer and when you’re subsonic, you’re also dealing with more wind and.

Travis Bader: [01:03:29] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:03:29] More dope and all that kind of stuff. So you have to deal with that. So if we can add a little more rotational stability to these projectiles, we may eliminate some of those weird fliers. 

Travis Bader: [01:03:41] Beauty.

Ryan Steacy: [01:03:41] That guys are seeing past that sort of 200 metre mark. So we’re going to be testing that here shortly. And I would probably imagine that we will have barrels available, providing the testing does what we think it will do. Hopefully we’ll do some videos on it so guys can actually watch it, which would be kinda neat. And it will probably have barrels available probably January, I would think. 

Travis Bader: [01:04:03] Nice!

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:04] Yeah. I need some testing over the winter here. Get a few things done. 

Travis Bader: [01:04:07] Well that’s exciting. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:08] Yeah. It’s kind of cool because, I don’t think there’s too many other companies, well I know there’s nobody else in Canada that does it. But even in the States, I don’t think the fast twist 22 barrels are really super common yet. 

Travis Bader: [01:04:20] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:21] So we’re hoping to jump on that one. 

Travis Bader: [01:04:23] That’d be pretty cool. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:24] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [01:04:25] Okay. So we’ve got a number of, there’s no names attached to these questions.

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:29] Alright.

Travis Bader: [01:04:29] And some of them I’m looking at them. They’re already repeat, so we’ll just bang through them.

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:33] Sure.

Travis Bader: [01:04:33] Quickly. Cold bore vs. Clean bore. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:36] Yup. 

Travis Bader: [01:04:37] So first round shot, and any deviation that you might find, there’s people that talk about cold bore shot and other people say nah, nah, nah, it’s because it’s a clean bore shot. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:49] Okay. So cold bore, I think honestly is more likely cold shooter shot.

Travis Bader: [01:04:54] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:04:54] I don’t really believe in the whole cold bore thing. Now clean bore is completely different kind of topic. The two are kind of apples and oranges. Clean bore, yes, definitely. Things are gonna change as you put some fouling through the barrel. So as far as cold bore goes, I’m not really much of a believer.

[01:05:12] I know that in my case, when I’ve got up to the line and I’ve fired the first shot of the day and it’s not gone where I wanted it to, I usually generally can eliminate that by dry firing a few times, and sort of getting back into the rhythm of what firing a perfect shot feels like. 

Travis Bader: [01:05:33] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:05:34] So for me, I’ve basically dry fired a few times before, and generally speaking, those rounds that you fire on the cold bore, go where you want them to. So in my opinion, for me, there’s no such thing as a cold bore for me, it’s more of a cold me than it is a cold bore.

Travis Bader: [01:05:50] Yeah, I agree with that.

Ryan Steacy: [01:05:51] Now, clean shooting. There’s definitely something there, for sure. I mean, if you look at the bench rest guys, they’ll clean after a 10 shot string and then fire a couple more sighters, or fowlers through it to get it back.

Travis Bader: [01:06:04] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:06:04] And so I think there’s something to be said there for sure. Clean bore and foul bore are, are different. 

Travis Bader: [01:06:11] So next question. How often do you clean your barrel? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:06:14] Well, hmm. It depends on the barrel. Like the rimfire barrel, like I said, I got 10,000 rounds through it and I pull it once and I was sorry that I pulled it so.

Travis Bader: [01:06:25] Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [01:06:26] I’d probably just leave it. As far as rimfire goes, I clean the chamber a lot and the action to make sure that all the gunge that comes out of there is taken out. And with rimfire in particular, one of the downsides we’re figuring out is the lube, especially in winter conditions, can cause all kinds of extraction issues in the cold. 

Travis Bader: [01:06:47] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:06:48] Because that lube is instantaneously hot and then instantaneously frozen, if it’s below zero. 

Travis Bader: [01:06:54] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:06:54] So that can cause all kinds of shenanigans. As far as centerfire goes, I used to be of the opinion that just clean it until it stops shooting. Well.

Travis Bader: [01:07:07] Sorry, clean it until stops? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:07:09] Pardon me.

Travis Bader: [01:07:09] Or clean it when it stops?

 Ryan Steacy: [01:07:10] Clean it when it stops shooting.

Travis Bader: [01:07:12] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:07:12] Just shoot it until its not shooting anymore. 

Travis Bader: [01:07:14] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:07:15] So I think my.

Travis Bader: [01:07:17] You’ve changed that have ya?

Ryan Steacy: [01:07:18] I have, yeah, my realization recently has been that, I think you should pay a little bit more attention to it because it may stop shooting and you may not realize that it’s shooting. Like I’ve run, well I think I’ve the most I’ve done is about six or 700 rounds without cleaning. 

Travis Bader: [01:07:39] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:07:40] Still again, paying more attention to the chamber than anything else, but not pulling the bore. 

Travis Bader: [01:07:45] That’d be like in a 223 or?

Ryan Steacy: [01:07:46] No, that was my competition 6mil.

Travis Bader: [01:07:48] Okay. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:07:48] Yep. Trying to push the limits and see what I could do.

Travis Bader: [01:07:51] Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [01:07:52] And so, you know, I’d take it to a competition and it had three or 400 rounds through it. And then maybe not have quite the results that you were kind of hoping for and then come back after the competition and put it on paper. And, Oh, look at that, it’s shooting like an inch at a hundred or an inch and a half at a hundred.

[01:08:12] And then put a borescope in there and go, wow, there’s a lot of copper and stuff in there. So then you strip all that out and take the Wipe Out and put it in there and drain it and clean it out. Take it back to the range, and lo and behold, it’s back to shooting, you know, 0.3 or 0.4 or whatever the case.

Travis Bader: [01:08:31] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:08:32] So I think for me, now, I’m going to definitely, probably clean and completely stripped to copper probably a lot faster now. Probably every four or 500 rounds I’ll probably take it down to the bare steel and then re-foul and then go again. But you know.

Travis Bader: [01:08:51] Fouling a couple of rounds. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:08:52] Yeah. If you do it like a deep strip with out and you get all the copper out, it might take you more than that. It could take you 20, 30 rounds to sort of get it back on track, but it really depends on the rifle. It’s hard to say.

Travis Bader: [01:09:07] Well this, is bleeds into the next question. Now you’ve mentioned Wipe Out a few times. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:09:12] Yeah I have. 

Travis Bader: [01:09:13] Okay so. Ryan Steacy: [01:09:13] It’s my go to.

Travis Bader: [01:09:15] Best practices for cleaning.

Ryan Steacy: [01:09:16] Best practices for cleaning. Okay well. 

Travis Bader: [01:09:19] And that’s going to change for whoever you talk to.

Ryan Steacy: [01:09:20] I mean, you know, you got guys that are still using hop’s number nine.

Travis Bader: [01:09:25] With the nitro benzene it in.

Ryan Steacy: [01:09:27] Yes, nitro benzene, and they swear by it. And you know, in the barrel industry I get to clean lots of stuff after testing and whatnot and the reason I mentioned Wipe Out is simply because I will clean or I have clean stuff with other things in the past and hmm, still not doing what I thought it would be doing. And then I take the Wipe Out in there and guess what comes out.

Travis Bader: [01:09:49] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:09:50] A metric shit ton of copper comes out with Wipe Out. And it was all stuff that had been cleaned out previously before with other types of cleaner and I can verify it all, but with a borescope.

Travis Bader: [01:10:03] Yep. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:10:03] So I can just look in there and see what happens after you clean with some stuff. And then I mean, I don’t own stocks in Wipe Out or anything, but I’ll tell you what it, it cleans very, very well. 

Travis Bader: [01:10:13] That’s the ammonia based, whatever in there that you can smell, it’s really.

Ryan Steacy: [01:10:17] You can.

Travis Bader: [01:10:17] Attacking the copper.

Ryan Steacy: [01:10:18] Yeah. And I think the foaming bore cleaner type style is really good for getting into all the nooks and crannies and whatnot as well. And just letting it sort of sit on the bore and really get into the copper. 

Travis Bader: [01:10:30] So you’d use forming as opposed to the patch out? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:10:33] I’ve used them both. 

Travis Bader: [01:10:34] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [01:10:36] Usually what I’ll do is I will take my barrel and take the bolt out and lean it up against the wall, barrel a muzzle down and just squirt the foaming bore cleaner in there and make sure you put a paper towel or something under the muzzle, because you’ll get a whole pile of blue Smurf snot that comes out of there, and that’s all the copper draining out. So I’ll do that and then I will run some wet patches. 

Travis Bader: [01:11:03] Isn’t that why they sell those oilcan. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:11:06] Oh yeah. Wish.com, right? 

Travis Bader: [01:11:07] That’s right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:11:08] Yeah, solvent trap.

Travis Bader: [01:11:09] Solvent trap.

Ryan Steacy: [01:11:10] Solvent trap. Yeah, get those. Not.

Travis Bader: [01:11:11] Yeah, there you go. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:11:12] Yeah, if you want to end up in jail, don’t do that. 

Travis Bader: [01:11:14] That’s right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:11:15] Yeah, so all the blue stuff comes out. So then I’ll push a couple of wet patches through and see how that looks. And then usually I’ll lean it up against the wall again, and squirt the foaming stuff in there and just let it sit. You know and I may have to squirt the foaming stuff in there five or six times, just to make sure. 

[01:11:35] And you’ll know because none of the blue stuff comes out in the end when you just let it sit in there and then some dry patches. And then, I mean, if you want to put oil in your barrel, I guess that’s fine, but make sure you dry patch it before you shoot.

Travis Bader: [01:11:46] A lot of brushing?

Ryan Steacy: [01:11:47] Nope.

Travis Bader: [01:11:48] No brush, no nylon?

Ryan Steacy: [01:11:49] No brush.

Travis Bader: [01:11:49] No copper, just patch?

Ryan Steacy: [01:11:51] No, don’t need it. The Wipe Out takes out everything without a brush. I mean, if you had a really stubborn copper issue, you could probably you could probably use a brush if you want. Just be aware that copper brushes or brass brushes seem to be effected by Wipe Out as well. 

Travis Bader: [01:12:08] They will yep.

Ryan Steacy: [01:12:09] So it will eat your brush bristles. And if it’s a copper brush, it might even leave false readings on your patches and  whatnot. So I don’t even really find any need to brush it out. 

Travis Bader: [01:12:25] You had one person say, he says, Oh no, I always use nylon because it won’t won’t harm the bore. And then somebody else says, well, have you ever looked at the eyelits on a fishing rod? And they got the nylon going through and then over time it eats away. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:12:36] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:12:36] You know, it all does something.

Ryan Steacy: [01:12:38] Yeah. The other one I get is a bore snakes. 

Travis Bader: [01:12:42] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:12:42] This seems to be an ongoing saga of the bore snake. And so I try to explain it a few times and I’m not a guy that would ever run a bore snake through a precision gun.

Travis Bader: [01:12:57] No. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:12:57] Would I carry one in my pocket for hunting in case I lawn dart my rifle into the dirt when I trip?

Travis Bader: [01:13:03] Sure. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:13:04] Yeah. Why not? That would be good to get all the crap out of the barrel. It’s fine in an emergency case, but as a regular cleaning thing, I would never run bore snakes through my gun simply because it’s very easy to wear the edge off of the crown.

Travis Bader: [01:13:19] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:13:19] With a bore snake. You might think you’re pulling it out straight and you might pull it out straight sometime, but you might not. And all it takes to affect your accuracy at the nth level, is just to take the edge off of the crown somewhere. And then things start eroding even faster after that. So for me, I always, like a plastic coated steel rod and that works the best.

Travis Bader: [01:13:47] And are using a bore guide?

Ryan Steacy: [01:13:50] No.

Travis Bader: [01:13:50] No?

Ryan Steacy: [01:13:51] I don’t, but I know lots of people do.

Travis Bader: [01:13:52] Okay.

Ryan Steacy: [01:13:52] But I don’t know. You can, if you want.

Travis Bader: [01:13:55] Just be careful.

Ryan Steacy: [01:13:56] Yeah, just put it in straight. Like don’t jam it in like a.

Travis Bader: [01:13:59] Like a flicka.

Ryan Steacy: [01:14:00] Like a monkey.

Travis Bader: [01:14:00] There ya go. And with the Wipe Out as well, I’m told that you get that on your dining room table and it can attack the.

Ryan Steacy: [01:14:08] You’re told that?

Travis Bader: [01:14:09] This is what I.

Ryan Steacy: [01:14:10] Who told you that?

Travis Bader: [01:14:10] This is what I hear.

Ryan Steacy: [01:14:12] I think somebody that lives with you might’ve told you that maybe. 

Travis Bader: [01:14:14] So word on the street is. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:14:17] Figured out via experience. 

Travis Bader: [01:14:20] Fire lapping. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:14:21] Oh my God. Fire camping. Okay. 

Travis Bader: [01:14:23] So we had somebody askin’ about fire lapping.

Ryan Steacy: [01:14:26] Yeah, I don’t, I’ve tried.

Travis Bader: [01:14:27] Maximize throat erosion?  

Ryan Steacy: [01:14:28] I’ve tried it. I think what fire lapping is, is simply a way to take your throat erosion down a couple of notches. To take the rough edges off of fire cracking, right in the throat. I’ve shot some of the little kits that you can get that are fire lapping kits through 308’s that have had like six, 7,000 rounds through it. Did I see any difference in accuracy? Nope. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work for somebody else. On a new gun, I would definitely not fire lap. I would leave the, if it’s a quality barrel, I would not fire lap. 

Travis Bader: [01:15:11] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:15:11] You might have a, maybe a factory barrel that’s having some real bad issues. Anything, you know, maybe you borescope and you know, something’s funky in the throat there. Maybe you might want to try fire lapping something there. Be aware that you’ll probably void your warranty. If you fire lap it because it’d probably be very easy to see the fire lapping on the inside.

Travis Bader: [01:15:31] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:15:32] Yeah, with a borescope. So for me, not really thing, I shoot 6mils, so they fire crack very easily. You’d look at a brand new barrel after two or 300 rounds and you’ve got fire cracking in there. So for me, I just use a little bit of JB bore paste, which is a very, very fine abrasive and I just run it into the throat and like 20, 30 strokes in there, just in the throat area, back and forth on little felt pellets. You could do it on a patch too, if you needed to. And that just takes the edge off of the fire cracking, and that’s generally all you need. Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:16:10] What about a carbon ring? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:16:12] A carbon ring. Oh my favorite, carbon ring. 

Travis Bader: [01:16:14] Maybe we tell ’em what it is and.

Ryan Steacy: [01:16:16] Yeah. Yeah. So on these new high-speed calibres, they are, especially the 6mils and even the 65’s, to a degree, and some of the smaller ones, like a 22 Creedmoor, you’ll probably see it as well. So when you fire, you get a bit of a carbon ring that goes back underneath the edge of the neck of the casing and it forms right where the chamber basically starts, err not the chamber, the throat starts. 

[01:16:53] So just back from your case mouth is where you’d be looking and you get this carbon ring that goes all the way around the case mouth. So what happens is that carbon ring starts to build up the more you fire and the signs of it is that your velocity started to go crazy because you’re actually pinching the case mouth around it. So you’re adding neck tension basically.

Travis Bader: [01:17:15] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:17:16] To the case mouth. And so when you fire your, you don’t get the same velocity, not a consistent velocity. So the sign of it is a decreasing accuracy and creeping velocities. And so the idea is that you want to get rid of that carbon ring that forms around there so that you’re getting consistent neck tensions. So how do you get rid of the carbon? 

[01:17:39] Well, I first realized that this was an issue on my 6mil on my competition gun. I shoot a six comp match, which is basically a 243 AI. So lots of powder, big velocities on small bullets. And after, I think it was probably about four or 500 rounds, I started getting the sort of weird creeping velocities and the expanding groups from where it had been only a few hundred rounds ago. So I’m like what the heck’s going on here and not being very well-schooled in the 6mils at that point in time. 

[01:18:14] I didn’t, you know, I’d been shooting through 308’s basically, so it’s not really a thing in 308 right. And so I went and looked and I’m like, Holy crap, I have this carbon ring thing in here. So, how do I get this out of here? So I thought, well, I’ll just clean it and it’ll be fine. 

Travis Bader: [01:18:30] Sure. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:18:31] Wrong. 

Travis Bader: [01:18:32] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:18:32] Even Wipe Out doesn’t take it out. So I was trying to figure out how the heck to get this stupid carbon ring out of there cause I suspected that it was causing issues with the accuracy and velocity. So I tried every cleaner known to man and even some cleaners not known to man. I tried some miscellaneous industrial products. 

Travis Bader: [01:18:54] Sure. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:18:55] Nope.  Where did I go? I went on a, I think it was a US high power board and these old high power shooters had these recipes for, I don’t even remember, something, somebody red juice or something. It was.

Travis Bader: [01:19:13] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:19:13] Called, I can’t remember.

Travis Bader: [01:19:14] I made that stuff !

Ryan Steacy: [01:19:15] Yeah. So, and it had like, 10 ingredients in it and they’re all highly toxic stuff. 

Travis Bader: [01:19:22] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [01:19:22] Right. 

Travis Bader: [01:19:22] I still got a bucket of that stuff.

Ryan Steacy: [01:19:23] Yeah, this shit is going to be awesome. It’s gonna peal this right out of here. 

Travis Bader: [01:19:27] Nope. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:19:27] Anggg, wrong. Didn’t even touch it. So I’m like, Holy crap, this is resilient  burnt on carbon. Okay, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to just take the reamer and I’ll run the reamer in and I’ll just cut it out. 

Travis Bader: [01:19:39] Okay. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:19:40] Nope. Reamer, didn’t take it out either. 

Travis Bader: [01:19:42] Really? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:19:42] Yeah. So I was like, Holy smokes, this is insane. So, I can’t remember how it came about, but a buddy of mine, a guy shoot with, and he’s like, maybe you should just try some like floor cleaner or something.  And I’m like floor cleaner? And he’s like, yeah, why don’t you try that CLR shit from Walmart, it’s the stuff that you can, that mold mildew and rust stuff. And I’m like, I don’t know if that works on carbon, but you know, it’s like six bucks at Walmart. So I’ll go over there and try it. So sure enough.

Travis Bader: [01:20:16] It worked.

Ryan Steacy: [01:20:17] Like 10 minutes later, I had no carbon ring. I’m like, you’ve gotta be kidding. So yeah. So that’s how we get the carbon rings out now. 

Travis Bader: [01:20:25] CLR.

Ryan Steacy: [01:20:26] CLR. 

Travis Bader: [01:20:26] Calcium, Lime, Rust. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:20:27] Yep. This stuff that comes in the gray bottle with the orange and green label. 

Travis Bader: [01:20:32] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:20:33] And so the method that I use now is, I will soak an oversized brush. So if you’re shooting a 6 mm, I’ll use a six and a half or seven mil brush, and I wrap a patch around it, dip it in the CLR and just stuff it into the throat and let it sit. So let it sit for 10 to 20 minutes somewhere in there, you can let it sit longer. And then once you have that, then give the brush a few twists and that will sort of dislodge the carbon ring from the chamber wall and then pull it out.

[01:21:04] You’ll see it on the patch and then do it again until you get nothing coming out. Or you can verify it with a borescope or a camera or whatever, if you have it. I will tell you that the carbon ring does not look like much in there, but it has lots of effect. So I’ve had guys that are like, no, I’ve cleaned it, I’ve looked in there where the borescope, there’s no carbon ring. I’m like, okay send it to me. And my buddy, Alex is one of them.

Travis Bader: [01:21:31] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [01:21:32] Love you, buddy, you proved me right he’s like, yeah, it’s clean. So I got in there and I’m like, there’s a carbon ring in here. And he’s like, Oh, there is, I cleaned it like crazy. I’m like, dude, it doesn’t come out with cleaning. So we stuck the CLR in there and sure enough, big black smudge came out. 

Travis Bader: [01:21:49] Beauty.

Ryan Steacy: [01:21:50] Even though when you look in there, it doesn’t look like there’s much, but it doesn’t take much to start effecting your velocities and whatnot so.

Travis Bader: [01:21:56] That’s awesome to know.

Ryan Steacy: [01:21:57] So anyway, yep. His went, his went right back to normal once we got the carbon ring out of there and he had a bit of a copper issue as well. He was doing the same thing as me, he wasn’t cleaning for long periods of time. 

Travis Bader: [01:22:07] How many rounds was he firing in order to develop a carbon ring? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:22:10] I don’t think it takes much, like for me, I’ll CLR every 200.

Travis Bader: [01:22:14] Okay. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:22:15] Yep. Take that carbon ring out of there. And that will probably be less as you go up in bore diameter because you’re having less pressure in there.

Travis Bader: [01:22:23] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:22:23] So the more overboard the cartridges, like at 22 Creedmoor or a 22 to 50, where you have a 22 calibre bullet and a huge ass 308 sized case.

Travis Bader: [01:22:33] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:22:33] That’s probably going to start a carbon ring pretty quick.

Travis Bader: [01:22:35] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:22:36] The one that we talked a little bit about it before we started, was the 6 dasher and there was sort of a thing, where guys were having lots of issues with 6 dashers right around the 500 round mark. And I think probably a lot of that was related to carbon rings back in the day when the 6 dasher was new and people didn’t really understand what was going on with that casing and that carbon rings were a thing.

Travis Bader: [01:22:59] That makes sense.

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:00] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:00] All right. So, we’d done on carbon ring? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:03] I think so. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:05] Okay. We’ve got a, does an 11 degree target crown make a difference over, let’s say a 90 degree or other?

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:13] I think if you think it does, it does. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:15] Yeah. That’s, that’s what I found. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:17] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:18] You ever chopping one down and.

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:19] Oh yeah.

Travis Bader: [01:23:19] Just see how it works. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:22] Done all kinds of funky stuff to the crown. As long as the edges are sharp, we’ve even cut them on angle. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:27] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:27] And as long as it’s sharp, it seems to be okay. 

Travis Bader: [01:23:31] You’ll get.

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:31] Accuracy wise.

Travis Bader: [01:23:32] Precision and your accuracy, your point of impact will change. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:34] Yeah.

Travis Bader: [01:23:35] But yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [01:23:36] Yeah, so the only thing that I would suggest on a crown is to have some sort of a recess crown just in the off chance that you ding it somehow on something, if it’s recess crown, whether it’s 11 degree or whether it’s just a like slightly set back. If something hits the end of your muzzle, who knows you might ding your crown, which is bad. And if it’s reset, you may not have that issue a little bit. 

Travis Bader: [01:24:02] Okay. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:24:03] As much.

Travis Bader: [01:24:04] Barrel or stock. What makes the most noticeable difference to accuracy? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:24:08] Well, again, I think on a mechanical point, probably the barrel, for sure. But it all comes back to how you’re thinking about, you’re shooting. So if you’re shooting a stock, you might have the best barrel in the world, but if you’re shooting a stock that’s not comfortable, it doesn’t fit you properly or you just don’t like it, or I have a problem with this stock because of that. You’re probably already affecting the way your mental state, the way you’re going to shoot so.

Travis Bader: [01:24:30] Good point.

Ryan Steacy: [01:24:32] But mechanically, as far as gaining the most out of accuracy, I think honestly barrel ammunition and glass are probably the three top ones that will get you there as far as accuracy goes. Yeah, make sure you’re shooting good ammo. If you’r shootin’ freedom bucket and you’re probably not.

Travis Bader: [01:24:51] Bedding vs. Vblocks. That’s not really a barrel thing, but some people will bed there and entire their entire barrel length.

Ryan Steacy: [01:25:00] Yeah and I mean, I’ve gone to the extent where I’ve bedded aluminum chassies.

Travis Bader: [01:25:06] Yeah?

Ryan Steacy: [01:25:06] Just to see if it made a difference.

Travis Bader: [01:25:07] And?

Ryan Steacy: [01:25:08] Didn’t.

Travis Bader: [01:25:08] Yeah.

Ryan Steacy: [01:25:09] No, I saw no difference in bedding an aluminum chassis. Now I have seen differences in bedding other things like wood stock’s, some fiberglass stocks as well, a little bit of betting helps. But as far as a Vblock aluminum chassis kind of deal, I don’t think there’s any need to bed it. But again, if it makes you feel like you’re going to be more accurate than okay, go for it. 

Travis Bader: [01:25:33] So a free floated barrel or pressure points?

Ryan Steacy: [01:25:36] Ahh, yes, yes, yes. Well, I think for the most part, my experience would be that a free floated barrels are probably a better option than some with pressure points. I mean, some of the older rifles back in the day all had a pressure point right at the very front of the fore end.

Travis Bader: [01:25:55] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:25:55] And that seemed to work okay, but I dunno. I think if you look at the people that are trying to exact the most amount of accuracy out of their guns, there aren’t any guns that are like that they’re all free floated. 

Travis Bader: [01:26:09] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:26:09] Yeah. I think there’s something to be said on heavy profile barrels to have an inch, inch and a half, maybe two inches of bedding in front of the lug. 

Travis Bader: [01:26:20] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:26:20] And just touching the barrel, but after that.

Travis Bader: [01:26:22] Just in the chamber area? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:26:23] Yep, yeah, just give it a little more support in front of the recoil lug, especially when you’re hanging like MTUS or kind of the trend now is to these 125 straight barrels that are like 27 inches long, 26 inches long. 

Travis Bader: [01:26:37] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:26:37] That’s like nine pound barrel or more right.

Travis Bader: [01:26:40] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:26:40] It’s crazy. So to hang all that off your action, I think it’s probably a good idea to have a little bit of bedding in front of the lug to help support that. 

Travis Bader: [01:26:52] Okay. How about torque settings? Are they all that they’re cracked up to be?

Ryan Steacy: [01:26:56] Well, that is a very interesting thing. I think torque settings or something else that you have to experiment a bit with, especially with aluminum chassies I’ve found. Well, you know, honestly I’ve never really experimented with them, with like stocks and stuff, but I would imagine it probably has a similar effect, but the torque settings can affect your accuracy, absolutely. 

[01:27:24] On a couple levels, I think number one, make sure that the chassis actually fits your action a hundred percent, because if it doesn’t and there’s slight differences in there even a little bit, you can torque your action to the point where you might not even be able to operate the bolt if you’re cranking down on it, like crazy.

Travis Bader: [01:27:42] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:27:43] I’ve seen that before. I think probably the other thing is that, what I’ve noticed is, okay, let me go back a bit here. So I started shooting aluminum chassies with MDT and they got me into a couple of chassies. And so I’m monkeyed around a bit with different torque values. And I talked to a couple of target shooter rifle guys, target rifle shooter guys that shoot at a very high level for Canada. 

[01:28:12] And they said, Oh yeah, you got to play with your torque settings because those guys were really shooting aluminum chassies way before anybody else on the RPA’s and the actions that you could fit into get aluminum chassies made for back in the day before MDT and some of the other companies came around. 

Travis Bader: [01:28:27] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:28:28] And they said, yeah, you don’t necessarily want to go super tight. You almost kind of want to have it loose in there, not loose, but just snugged in. 

Travis Bader: [01:28:36] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:28:37] And that might help you with any of the inaccuracies in the chassis. So I thought, Hmm, well, MDT is pretty good. I will play around with it a bit and, in their chassies I didn’t really see much of a difference between like 60, 65 pounds down to around 35.

Travis Bader: [01:28:57] Wow. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:28:58] Yeah. That’s a big difference. Yeah. But I have seen another chassies differences where looser, down to the 35 pounds sort of zone actually made the rifle group better.

Travis Bader: [01:29:10] Interesting. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:29:11] Yeah. And so I just run all my chassies around 35 now anyway, be it MDT or anybody else. 

Travis Bader: [01:29:16] Okay. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:29:16] And my stocks, snd stocks that that would be a different thing because you’re looking at a different type of bedding in there. So that would be something to experiment with a bit, plus usually on a stock, you’re trying to hold your bottom metal in with the action screws and whatnot. 

Travis Bader: [01:29:31] What about torque settings on your scope?

Ryan Steacy: [01:29:32] On the scope?

Travis Bader: [01:29:33] On the rings, bases.

Ryan Steacy: [01:29:34] I mean, there’s guys that go to the nth degree on all kinds of crazy stuff. Sure, if it makes you feel better, if you want to lap your scope rings, okay.

Travis Bader: [01:29:42] Put rosin in there.

Ryan Steacy: [01:29:43] I don’t know. 

Travis Bader: [01:29:45] You know, I’ve seen old off the rack Weaver rings and bases just do awesome. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:29:53] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:29:54] And I’ve always figured the torque settings, at least in that respect,  was more of a solution to a problem that never existed.

Ryan Steacy: [01:30:01] Yeah, that’s kinda how I feel too.

Travis Bader: [01:30:03] Other than maybe to prevent people from over-torquing it, people who didn’t have the feel, they didn’t know, is this too tight? Am I going to crush things? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:30:09] How tight is tight, right? 

Travis Bader: [01:30:10] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:30:11] Yeah. I mean with mine, I just use a Torx screw driver. I don’t have any torque settings on mine, I just snug ’em down until they’re nice and snug and I don’t overcrank them.

Travis Bader: [01:30:19] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:30:20] Don’t put Loctite on your scope rings. 

Travis Bader: [01:30:22] That’s the next question that we had here.

Ryan Steacy: [01:30:24] Is there a question? 

Travis Bader: [01:30:24] Yeah. Is Loctite overused?

Ryan Steacy: [01:30:26] Hey, look at that! That’s hilarious. I think in certain ways, Loctite is overused yeah. Scope rings for sure. Don’t Loctite, your base to your action. If you have a 20 MOA rail, please don’t because if I’m trying to spin a new barrel on there and I can’t get your scope base off, I’m not really too sure what I’m going to do at that point or what you’re going to do, because I’m going to send it back to you probably. But yeah, don’t Loctite it on there. Don’t Loctite your scope rings down. Yeah, I think Loctite is a little bit overused. 

Travis Bader: [01:30:59] It’s again, something that I’ve often, if it’s properly tightened up, how often do you.

Ryan Steacy: [01:31:04] I’ll tell you one place I do use Loctite and it’s a little bit of a secret. 

Travis Bader: [01:31:08] Okay. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:31:08] I’ll tell you a secret.

Travis Bader: [01:31:09] Just you and me though, right?

Ryan Steacy: [01:31:10] Just you and me. 

Travis Bader: [01:31:11] Okay.

Ryan Steacy: [01:31:12] So you know that I shoot ARS or I used to shoot AR’s at a fairly high level. 

Travis Bader: [01:31:16] I’ve heard this. Yes. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:31:17] Fairly high level. So one of the places I use Loctite is when I am putting an AR15 barrel into the action. So I will put Loctite around the extension and slide it in there and then tighten the barrel nut down.

Travis Bader: [01:31:36] Interesting. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:31:36] Yeah. A lot of guys think that you have to put lubricant in there. Wrong. Do not put lubricant in there. If anything, you want to take up any of that extra little slop and the Loctite seems to work good. Now I don’t use red Loctite and I don’t use a blue Loctite, I use.

Travis Bader: [01:31:54] The green stuff

.Ryan Steacy: [01:31:55] I use the green stuff.

Travis Bader: [01:31:55] Okay.

Ryan Steacy: [01:31:55] Yeah, which you can break free pretty easily.

Travis Bader: [01:31:57] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:31:58] But it takes enough of the slop up because aluminum receivers are not necessarily milled. They’re milled to mill spec. 

Travis Bader: [01:32:05] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:32:06] Which isn’t really all that great for accuracy. So there you go, I just gave you AR 15 championship winning tip right there. 

Travis Bader: [01:32:11] Beauty, now that’s worth listening to, what are we at, an hour and a half into this podacast?

Ryan Steacy: [01:32:15] Are we already?

Travis Bader: [01:32:16] We are.

Ryan Steacy: [01:32:16] Oh my God.

Travis Bader: [01:32:17] I’ve only got a couple more here for those who stuck around this long. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:32:19] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:32:20] There ya go.

Ryan Steacy: [01:32:20] Yeah. Thanks. I hope there’s something good you can take out of this .

Travis Bader: [01:32:23] Barrel tuners.

Ryan Steacy: [01:32:24] Barrel tuners.

Travis Bader: [01:32:24] Do they work? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:32:25] I think they do. 

Travis Bader: [01:32:27] Okay. Maybe we’ll let the people know what a barrel tuner is. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:32:32] Yeah. So barrel tuner is this thing that you either screw onto the end of the barrel or clamp onto the barrel, and it can change basically the harmonics of the barrel. Generally they’re a two piece thing that you can screw in or screw out. And it just moves, I think the way it works mainly is it moves your leverage point a little further out or a little further back. It may also dampen any kind of vibration a little bit, but you can basically sort of change that note a little bit. So where we’re sort of seeing these really take off right now is in the 22 PRS sort of end of it. 

[01:33:05] Travis Bader: [01:33:05] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:33:06] So guys are doing a lot of testing with the tuner because 22 ammunition at this point in time cannot be reloaded. So you have to go off the factory ammo and you have to find ammo that shoots reasonably well for your barrel, for your gun. And so putting a tuner on there can actually help quite a bit really fine tune that sort of, know that you might’ve been almost on with the ammunition itself, but not quite there. It could shoot a little bit better if it was just a slightly different frequency at the end of the different harmonic at the end of the barrel.

Travis Bader: [01:33:39] Just change that sweet spot. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:33:40] Yep, and basically that’s what it does. And so the guys are able to fine tune the groups and, you know, there’s lots of anecdotal target evidence on the net. We get guys that are testing barrels for us that are shooting the tuna can, I think is a red knob one that’s out right now. And yeah, it can be, it can help quite a bit, change your group size. Now on a centrefire gun, is it a thing? I don’t know. You can tune your ammo on a centrefire gun. So whether you actually need that or not is another question. 

Travis Bader: [01:34:09] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:34:11] It might work maybe for bench rest you’d see the guys doing it. For PRS, where you’re trying to whack a four MOA piece of steel.

Travis Bader: [01:34:17] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:34:18] I mean, you know, what’s the point really I guess. If you want to run it sure. Do you need it? Maybe not. There might be one coming from IBI and in the near future.

Travis Bader: [01:34:28] I like that.

Ryan Steacy: [01:34:29] Might, maybe.

Travis Bader: [01:34:30] Perhaps, maybe. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:34:30] Shortly.

Travis Bader: [01:34:31] Test it out. See how it goes. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:34:33] Yeah. You never know anything could happen. 

Travis Bader: [01:34:37] Will the optimal load for a barrel change over the barrels lifespan?

Ryan Steacy: [01:34:43] I don’t think the optimal load would probably change over lifespan, providing you’re not really changing anything in the barrel. What will change is probably the throat erosion. So you may or may not have to monkey around with the load a little bit to, not the load, but the seeding depth to get it, to do what it was doing previously. Like if you have a barrel that shoots and it needs to be 23 off to lands. Sure. If you shoot a thousand rounds through it and your throat erroads 20 thou, you may have to push that bullet out a bit more to get those same results. But you might not, I mean, there’s guys like Eric Kortina down the States and he doesn’t chase the lands at all. He doesn’t care. 

Travis Bader: [01:35:26] Okay. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:35:27] I’m not quite there yet, I’m not. And I have to do a bit more experimenting, but yeah, it’s possible. 

Travis Bader: [01:35:33] So, I dunno if you’re looking at my sheet here, but you’re talking about things that are just leading into the next.

Ryan Steacy: [01:35:38] What else do I got here? Well throat erosion .

Travis Bader: [01:35:40] What’s throat erosion and how can it be prevented?

Ryan Steacy: [01:35:42] You can’t prevent it. If you want to prevent throat erosion, shoot a 22 long rifle. 

Travis Bader: [01:35:46] Yeah. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:35:47] All the low pressure cartridges have a lot less throat erosion. What is it? Basically is, when you ignite a case or you ignite around, you instantly create hot fiery gas with the gunpowder exploding inside the case and that all gets forced out through the case mouth and that’s what pushes the projectile. All that expanding gas pushes the projectile down, but also ready the case mouth that also tends to cook the steel pretty badly right at the throat. So we see throat erosion on high pressure cartridges.

[01:36:24] So like I mentioned previously, anything that’s overbore that has a big case size, but a small bullet diameter tends to get throat erosion super quickly. That’s one of the reasons why he can shoot a 308 for, you know, 6,000 rounds and not really see much in the way of throat erosion, or you can shoot you know, 6 creedmoor and have throat erosion of like 10 thou in like 500 rounds. 

Travis Bader: [01:36:50] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:36:51] So the more of that hot gas, you’re trying to force through a very small opening of the case mouth, the more throat erosion you’re probably gonna get. So if you’re shooting a big straight wall cartridges, like 30 Whelan or something like that, where you have a big bullet and a big case mouth it’s not really too much different than the size of the case, then you’re probably going to have a lot less throat erosion than you would if you have a big case in a small bullet.

Travis Bader: [01:37:17] And we’re getting into our final stretch here, one of them you’ve already basically answered. Will moly coated bullets increase the barrel life?

Ryan Steacy: [01:37:23] Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:37:24] And the answer is. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:37:27] Maybe.

Travis Bader: [01:37:27] Maybe.

Ryan Steacy: [01:37:28] I don’t know.

Travis Bader: [01:37:29] Who knows.

Ryan Steacy: [01:37:29] There’s other issues that come along with moly coating. Especially out here in the West coast, moly coating is a super hydrophilic, so it attracts water so. 

Travis Bader: [01:37:39] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:37:40] If you have a moly coated barrel, have to make sure it’s really dry when you store it, because  if it’s a chromoly steel barrel, you may come back and it’ll be full rust. 

Travis Bader: [01:37:50] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:37:50] So you gotta be pretty careful there. And again, you have to increase your powder charge with coated bullets, be it moly, or hexagonal boron because they’re so slippery that you require more powder to actually push it at the same velocity. So we go back to the throat erosion question again and you know, when you’re increasing your powder charge is probably a pretty good chance that you’re gonna cook your throat a little bit more as the powder charge increases.

Travis Bader: [01:38:19] Yeah. Talk about rusty barrels reminds me of a going back on the Wipe Out. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:38:23] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [01:38:24] And another fellow we’ll just call him Bill S, we’ll just leave it at that. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:38:29] Interesting. 

Travis Bader: [01:38:30] And he’s always trying to save a buck and he says, Oh, this got ammonia in it, I can smell it. And it’s like yeah, I think that’s the active ingredient in it, it’s kind of attacking the copper here, the fouling. And so he thought, I know what I’ll do, rather than buying this expensive Wipe Out, I’ll just get a big jug of ammonia already, and I’ll just run some of this down my bore. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:38:50] Oh boy, good idea.

Travis Bader: [01:38:52] Man, if you looked down this guy’s barrel afterwards. He brought it in, he says, you told me this should be fine, Travis! I said, I never said that. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:39:01] Whoa, hang on a second.

Travis Bader: [01:39:01] I said it smelled like ammonia and I agree with you. It looked like you’re looking down a sewer pipe. It was so rusty.

Ryan Steacy: [01:39:07] Yeah. Was probably a chromoly steel barrel and it all corroded. That’s one thing about CLR that you have to be careful with as well. I didn’t mention in the carbon ring question there is that it needs more experimentation with chromoly barrels. It’s fine in stainless steel, but I have seen some corrosion if you don’t wipe it all out of there in a chromoly steel barrels. I have seen guys that want to clean their muzzle breaks in it, and the muzzle breaks are chromoly and they’re coded in cerakote or something along those lines. And they put it in there and it’s black and they pull it out and it’s grey.

Travis Bader: [01:39:44] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:39:45] So you gotta be careful because I think the CLR has some issues with the chromoly steel. So I would just be careful as far as that goes a corrosion and I wouldn’t put ’em straight ammonia down your barrel either. 

Travis Bader: [01:39:58] Well, it didn’t work out too well for this guy. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:40:00] No, no, definitely not. 

Travis Bader: [01:40:01] And here’s the last question.

Ryan Steacy: [01:40:03] Yep. 

Travis Bader: [01:40:03] And we can always fill in more afterwards if you think that anything’s been missed, but man, we’ve got a lot of things here. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:40:08] Yeah, that was a lot. Yeah. 

Travis Bader: [01:40:10] What gives a premium barrel, a better lifespan? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:40:15] I don’t know if it does. 

Travis Bader: [01:40:16] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:40:16] I think the lifespan of the barrel really depends on how hard that you’re, how hard you’re pushing it. So if you’re shooting just a soft factory loads through it, well it depends on a few things, right? Like soft factory loads will probably give you more barrel life than you running a really hot hand loads out of the same barrel. You’ll get more barrel life out of the factory loads for sure. And also the calibre as well. If you’re shooting a 308, you’re going to probably going to get 5,000 rounds out of it, of accurate barrel life. But if you’re shooting a 6 creedmoor, you’re probably going to get 2000.

Travis Bader: [01:40:54] Right.

Ryan Steacy: [01:40:55] 2200 or whatever, right. Now, I guess steel has a lot to do with that as well. It all depends on the, partly on the hardness of your steel as well.

Travis Bader: [01:41:06] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:41:07] So the harder the steel, the more barrel life you’re probably going to get out of it as far as like stainless goes, I think Bartlein line just came out with some different type of steel that said increases their barrel life a bit. I think it’s only a few Brownell hardness points harder than their previous steel.

Travis Bader: [01:41:22] Okay. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:41:23] So whether that’s actually a change in the steel or whether it’s a change in their stress-relieving processes, I don’t know. Because stress-relieving, it can, it can change your hardness as well. 

Travis Bader: [01:41:36] What about cryo-treating? I know we were on our last question.

Ryan Steacy: [01:41:39] Yeah, no it’s all good. I’m not really too familiar with the cryo-treating to be honest with you, I’ve heard good things and I’ve heard bad things. Some guys think that cryo-treating will do the same thing as that’s stress-relieving and I have no practical experiences to whether it does. 

Travis Bader: [01:41:54] Fair enough. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:41:55] Yeah, unfortunately. So well, I mean, premium barrel life, it’s probably going to help in a couple of ways. If you’ve got a premium barrel more than likely, you’re also getting it cut by somebody with decent reamers and you’re having somebody do it that cares about what’s going on. Not necessarily a factory barrel, that’s pumped out by the thousands and they just. Care about getting it done. It might not even be a sharp reamer right.

Travis Bader: [01:42:19] Right. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:42:20] So I think all of those factors sort of rolled into one, providing you’re not running it super hot, is going to give you a better accuracy for sure and yeah, probably a little bit better barrel life. It’s hard to say. 

Travis Bader: [01:42:33] Well, after all of these questions that we’ve had from Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and emailed and all different places they got coming in here. Is there anything that you think we should be talking about that was missed? 

Ryan Steacy: [01:42:48] I don’t know anything I missed. That was, that was pretty.

Travis Bader: [01:42:52] That was exhaustive. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:42:53] That was pretty hardcore. 

Travis Bader: [01:42:55] You did good. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:42:55] Did I? 

Travis Bader: [01:42:56] Yeah, ya did. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:42:56] I probably screwed a few of them up. 

Travis Bader: [01:42:58] Probably, but.

Ryan Steacy: [01:42:59] Oh well, mental management. 

Travis Bader: [01:43:01] Ryan, thank you very much for being on The Silvercore Podcast. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:43:06] Yeah, anytime. Thanks. 

Travis Bader: [01:43:07] If there’s anything in here that listeners are listening to and they have different thoughts on, Hey, we want to hear ’em, put them up. If they think that maybe we’re off base, let us know why and check out IBI barrels. I mean, give them an email, give them a phone call, go on their Instagram, Facebook. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:43:26] Yep.

Travis Bader: [01:43:27] There’s people all the time posting pictures, asking questions, getting the answers there. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:43:31] Yeah, lots of pictures on Instagram. And if you’re on Facebook and you want to check out what the barrels are capable of, probably the best place to go is the International Barrels user page. And that’s pretty much, I run it, but it’s all mainly the vast majority of the posts are people that are shooting the barrels already, it’s unbiased information that comes directly from them, not through us.

[01:43:56] So it’s not us cherry picking a bunch of groups or whatever, whatever people want to send. It’s just straight up results that people are getting with the barrels so that you can sort of see for yourself. And there’s some beautiful guns on there. 

Travis Bader: [01:44:09] Yeah there are. 

Ryan Steacy: [01:44:09] That guys post pictures of, and you know, the paint jobs and the way they put them together. 

Travis Bader: [01:44:14] Just make you drool.

Ryan Steacy: [01:44:15] Yeah, it does. And the groups too, like, you know, people post stuff and I’m like, you shot that with a pre fit. Like how, like I can’t believe that it’s crazy now what you’re doing with it, you know? So yeah, it’s good. It makes me happy every day. Check out all this stuff. 

Travis Bader: [01:44:31] Well, Ryan, thanks very much.