question on 300 whisper barrel length

[crowminator]

Hello, I ordered a barrel from Pacnor 30 cal, heavy varmint, 1-6.5 twist. Itshould be ready to ship in about 4-5 weeks. Has anyone had any experience with a twist rate faster than the usual 1-8 twist. The blank I ordered will finish up to 26" length. Has anyone had any experiencce with the barrel longer than 16" I was thinking the longer barrel would be quieter with a suppresor because it would take less powder to get up to the speed of sound.

[Cornholio]

My 300W bolt gun has a 23" barrel. My can isn't terribly efficient, so I wanted to make up for it with barrel length. If I could do it over again though, I would have cut it to 18". I'd also have gone with the 6.5" twist over the 8", if I would have had the choice. Douglas didn't have anything other than 8 or 10".

[WhisperFan]

I just got a call from PacNor today about my barrel. They had a question about one of the dimensions that I specified. By the time they trued up the blank, they were 10 thou under what I asked for - I told them "not critical". They said it was going off to fitting soon - should be about a week or ten days.

I have nothing to contribute as to performance, but I went with the 5-groove 1 in 7 twist at 18"

I'll certainly post some results when I know them.

[Quarterbore]

I tried to figure out where I read this but I could swear I read somewhere that the 300 Whisper only requires a barrel of about 13-inches to use up all of it's powder. This is why the 300 Whisper is such an excellent choice for the hand rifles like the T/C Contender.

I looked through the info I got from JD Jones as well as a couple books I have and I could not find it...

I would not build a 300 Whisper in anything over 20 or 22-inches and as I said in another thread I wish I had my Remington 700 LTR built with an 18-inch barrel instead of the 21-inches it is as with the Gem-Tech Bi-Lock on the barrel the barrel is just too long.

I will be curious how well you make out if you go with a long tube but that tube sounds like it was made for something like a 308 and some monster heavy bullets shooting at 1000-yards. The 300 Whisper just doesn't need that much runway to get the job done.

[crowminator]

The barrel I have on order from Pacnor is unchambered at 28" it can be a finishened length up to 26". I was just wondering if there was an advantage of a longer barrel or an optimum length of barrel for the 300 whisper. Mickey at Coleman rifles will be doing the chamber job and can shorten the barrel then. After I figure out how long it needs to be. I read that some folks were having trouble with the 240mk's in the 1-8 twist barrels so I chose the 1-6.5

[lemmethink]

Over on the savageshooter.com forum I remember reading that 16" is ideal for a 300/221.

I haven't got a chance to shoot it yet but I got a PacNor 17", 3 groove, 1 in 6.5" twist, stainless super match, 1.055" straight cylinder, and pre-fit for a stevens 200 action. I finally got the barrel swapped out today and mounted a super sniper scope on it. I loaded up a few rounds tonight so hopefully if it isn's snowing or too cold I might get to sneak out and shoot it tomorrow.

[kurtz]

This may not help much for sub-sonic suppressed loads but over the last couple weeks I experimented with the same 300 whisper load in two different rifles…..223 brass formed in Hornady dies 18gr of H110 and a Speer 125 TNT…the first rifle is a SSK AR 16” 1:8 barrel, the round goes through the chrony at 2050fps……the other rifle is a CZ 527 with a 24” 1:11 PacNor barrel, the same round goes through the chrony at 2340fps…don’t know if this helps but I was surprised to see 300fps difference…..Kurtz

[encoreman]

I found the best luck with a encore bull barrel, was 18 inches. It is the best all around length barrel.

[320pf]

Kurtz,

Is load #3299 listed over on eloadersnest.com yours? It sure sounds like it. You should also post your 16 in barrel AR15 data. Where is the gas port on your AR15? The AR15 loses about 100 fps because it used the gas to run the action. Do you have any 150 gr load data for the 24 in. barrel?

Thanks for the load data.

320pf

[kurtz]

320pf,

I only have one 150gr load so far, it is a 150gr Nosler with 16.3gr of A1680 it produces 1750fps average.....16.3gr of A1680 under a 125gr TNT comes out at around 1770fps average....

over the last couple days I loaded a bunch of super-sonic small game loads with 125gr TNT, 150 Nosler, 130 Hawk, and 150 Hawk using, H110 and A1680.....I should get to chrony them this weekend.....

I can't say enough good about the barrel that PacNor cut for me....I received it in the white from them and put about 300 rounds through it to see how it was going to work out before I went through the time of coating and bedding it....

un-bedded it would shoot around 1" groups at 100yds....about three weeks ago I coated the barrel and receiver with dura-coat and bedded the action and barrel.....I have made two weekends at the range with it shooting two different H110 loads under 125gr TNT....3 and 4 leaf clovers are the norm for 5 shot groups at 100 yds...I have fired a few 10 round groups that could be covered with a penny....

PacNor 24" 1:11 chrome moly match freebore reduced for shorter bullets:
17.1gr H110 125gr. TNT = 2195fps avg.
18.0gr H110 125gr. TNT = 2300fps avg.

I will post the other super-sonic loads as I get the data together...

kurtz....