I have had a 14.5" 308 POF for about a year and have put less than 50 rounds thru it. I have never really tried to shoot groups with it during this time. I was actually trying to decide whether i should sell the POF and get an OBR. Before dropping some serious coin i decided to do a side by side comparison. I called my good friend Chris Costa and he let me borrow his 16" OBR. He states that he has roughly 200 rounds thru this. He has a 18" as well but i wanted to compare it to the 16".
I figured i make this a two fold test and tested both with Federal Gold 175g factory and my own hand loads which are SMK 175, Varget 44.0g loaded to 2.810". These were loaded using full body size and seated using Redding competition seater.
The ammo was tested blind as in i did not know what i was shooting. My buddy basically loaded the 5 rounds of an unknown ammo (to me) and loaded the rifle. I shot the rifles not knowing whether they had factory or hand loads in them. I could not do a blind test on the rifles since my POF has a NPR-2 reticle and Costa's OBR has the Horus H58.
I did a few dry fire tests and then shot 5 rounds with OBR, then 5 shots with POF, then five shots with OBR and another 5 shots with POF. Each 5 shot group was shot with about 20-30sec between each shot. The rifles each got about a 15 min cool down between each 5 shot group. My friend revealed after all 4 groups were shot which were the factory rounds and which were my hand loads. All shots were shot prone, from bipod and sand bag in the rear.
OBR Federal Gold 175
POF Federal Gold 175
OBR 16" hand loads
POF 14.5" hand loads
I guess what surprised me is the deviation between factory match and my hand loads. It is almost undisputable that both OBR and POF shot significantly better with the hand loads. The POF and OBR shot really well and were hammers. The POF really impressed me keeping a sub 1/2MOA group. The OBR was right there.
This is not to say that the POF is better or more accurate than OBR. I am sure i can do this test three other times and we might have even closer results. Neither had any hiccups and are absolute hammers. I measured both barrel profiles and at the muzzle and the OBR is 0.75" and POF is 0.78" so pretty much identical.
Here they are side by side:
I figured i make this a two fold test and tested both with Federal Gold 175g factory and my own hand loads which are SMK 175, Varget 44.0g loaded to 2.810". These were loaded using full body size and seated using Redding competition seater.
The ammo was tested blind as in i did not know what i was shooting. My buddy basically loaded the 5 rounds of an unknown ammo (to me) and loaded the rifle. I shot the rifles not knowing whether they had factory or hand loads in them. I could not do a blind test on the rifles since my POF has a NPR-2 reticle and Costa's OBR has the Horus H58.
I did a few dry fire tests and then shot 5 rounds with OBR, then 5 shots with POF, then five shots with OBR and another 5 shots with POF. Each 5 shot group was shot with about 20-30sec between each shot. The rifles each got about a 15 min cool down between each 5 shot group. My friend revealed after all 4 groups were shot which were the factory rounds and which were my hand loads. All shots were shot prone, from bipod and sand bag in the rear.
OBR Federal Gold 175
POF Federal Gold 175
OBR 16" hand loads
POF 14.5" hand loads
I guess what surprised me is the deviation between factory match and my hand loads. It is almost undisputable that both OBR and POF shot significantly better with the hand loads. The POF and OBR shot really well and were hammers. The POF really impressed me keeping a sub 1/2MOA group. The OBR was right there.
This is not to say that the POF is better or more accurate than OBR. I am sure i can do this test three other times and we might have even closer results. Neither had any hiccups and are absolute hammers. I measured both barrel profiles and at the muzzle and the OBR is 0.75" and POF is 0.78" so pretty much identical.
Here they are side by side:
