I’ve been on this site since ‘09 iirc. Shooting since too long ago.
Lot of changes taking place. One that I notice is pre fit barrels. Seems no action is acceptable unless it accepts pre fits.
Has anyone compared accuracy of pre fits vs top notch custom work?
Are they equal or just “good enough”?
Would Tony Boyer compete with a pre fit or would
@Terry Cross build a rifle that way? Would
@Frank Green prefer a custom barreled rifle to one built as a pre fit?
Not looking for one off one group antidotes but real scientific testing.
Back to the original topic here:
Yes, I've done it. I did it a over decade ago and then proceeded to win a bunch of matches with them. Would Tony Boyer do it? Maybe, maybe not. The difference in me sitting down with a rifle to shoot against Tony has way more to do with the people sitting on the stool than the quality of the machine work. One of the things that folks at Tony's level do is get a bunch of barrels made "identical" and then test them to see which one shoots the tightest and that's the national match barrel. Everything else falls into various categories like fireforming, practice, local match, and "The One"... I'm pretty confident in saying that if Tony in his prime sat down and we shot head to head, then switched guns and did it again, he's still almost assuredly going to beat me.
The variability of the machine work and the blank itself factors into that. And the variability of the machine work for a "hand fit" or "custom fit" barrel will struggle to match the consistency that comes from my process using CNC's. Those OG bench rest gunsmiths can hand fit a barrel just great. Now I want to see them make 10 identical barrels within 2 tenths on every dimension and do it in less than a week. I'll start at 9am and be done by lunchtime.
On the comparison of the actions: Let's take this scenario
Take a TL3-SA that the action headspace is 0.9248 and the print says 0.9250 +/-0.0005" with a Class 3B tenon thread.
I cut a tenon for it that headspaces to 0.9240 +/-0.0005"
Against the prints the worst case is 0.9235 barrel headspace and 0.9255 action headspace.
That's 0.002" apart.
Tightest they get is 0.001" apart.
Thread fit: I cut to a Class 3 ring set. The fit is guaranteed to be Class 3 by both parties.
By all data driven metrics this barrel is just as tight as a standard BR install comes from any of the OG guys. Is it less somehow because it was done in a machine in 20 mins instead of 2+ hours? Hardly. The data says the fit is there and it's backed by the inspection process.
Let's talk about thread fit
When I started offering gunsmithing services to customers I was already building my own rifles and had rebarreled a number of them for local friends. Fun story: one time I'm threading a tennon and my buddy Josh is sitting in the garage talking to me and drinking beer. I screw up and take 5 thousandths off on a spring pass instead of a spring pass. That thread fit goes from a squeaky tight Class 3 to a middle of the road Class 2.
The look of horror on my face says it all to him and once I took a couple of deep breaths he goes "screw it, let's put it on and see how it shoots"
It was to that date, the best shooting rifle I'd seen out of the gate. So I decided to try it again with my own barrel on the next one.
I cut it tight so it barely threaded on without lapping (lapping threads is dumb but that's another discussion).
Take it to the range, all the bells and whistles work up and it shoots in the 0.2's consistently with a 6.5 creedmoor. Definitely a good rifle.
I bring it back, disassemble, put it back in the machine and proceed to wipe 5 thou off the pitch diameter. Put it back together and shoot the same ammo the same day. After 5 shots of settling in I get a group that's in the high 0.1's; then two more. It's a marked improvement on an already good gun.
Then I take it home, take another 5 off, so now it's 10 thou under the squeaky "thread to fit" it originally was. It shoots in the high teens again the next day.
Was the internet wrong? Is thread fit that important?
So I call AJ Goddard, the founder of Bighorn, and the guy who made the action I was using as a base. He goes "oh yeah, so I did the same thing by accident. I thought the barrel was gonna be junk but it turned out to be one of the best shooting guns I ever put together." So I call Mark Channlynn and tell him what I did and what AJ said and ask him if I was nuts. He tells me that he's been fitting threads somewhat loose on his own rifles for years.
Apparently this is the best kept secret on the internet because EVERY forum swears upside down and sideways that thread fit has to be tight.
So now what? I decide to quietly start experimenting with barrels for some of my close friends who will forgive me if I make a mistake. Turns out that a little thread "slop" AKA the natural space designed into the Class 3 fit, works well. It also shows that properly lubricating the threads and the mating shoulders has a lot to do with how a gun shoots, not so much if it's a squeaky tight thread or a standard Class 3 fit.
A little while goes by and I start offering gunsmithing work and call the business Patriot Valley Arms. When the doors open I offer a previously un-heard of option for folks. "We don't need your Bighorn to make you a sub 1/2 MOA barrel, no gunsmithing required when it shows up".
The Establishment predicts that I'll be under litigation within a year, someone will be maimed or worse, and this is a horrendous idea. Since then we now offer the broadest range of prefit options of anyone on the market that I'm aware of. I launched the Tikka barrels and it took 3 days before a big competitor decided they could advertise it too. Then I fixed problem barrels sent in from their customers for 6-8 months while they figured out where that window actually sat so they weren't making boomerangs and stuff that fails a headspace check. Guys still argue that the Tikka shouldered prefit shouldn't be available. With a 99.3% FTQ rate I continue to argue otherwise.
Now, over a decade later there are F class, BR and PRS matches being won with the unthinkable prefit barrel. The first BR match I'm aware of happened with a Zermatt Origin, PVA Prefit in 6BR on a Rock Creek blank in 2018.
Now, where I think the disconnect happens on "where's the data" comes from the fact that high ranking folks like Tony Boyer, Dave Tooley, Speedy Gonzalez, etc. made their BR Hall of Fame points with the old method. The guys currently winning the top of things came up under the old method. The old method works fine, why change it? Shooters are more superstitious than baseball players sometimes.
The Old Guard isn't inclined to change and so there will be a years-long lag time from guys that do it the old way and guys that do it the new way trading places at the top of the finish sheets. It will take time for the new guard to get established and gain the shooting skills to compete with the guys who've been doing it the old way since time immemorial.
It's the same reason why I knew there would be an uphill battle when I started my own barrel brand in 2021. Guys will point to the established brands and say "those guys won more than you, so they must be better". Being around before and for longer doesn't mean better, it means more chances to win. In 3 years we've delivered almost 10,000 barrels and the "dud" pile is still less than 30 deep. But each week I still have that conversation... Don't misconstrue that to be that I'm somehow talking down on the competition. They make great stuff. They stay busy and have long lead times because they make great stuff. Anyone that decides they're going to take stainless steel, drill a 100:1 hole down it with a super tight tolerance, then rifle it and turn it into something that places lead gumdrops on top of each other from hundreds of yards away has my respect.
If you don't want to use a prefit, you don't have to. That's the beauty of an open market.
