Hello all, I decided to build a .350 Legend. Had a barrel made by a company called Deadshot Barrels. After receiving the barrel it looked well done. Until I start assembling it and I saw that they removed the bottom center lug completely away when they did the feed ramp. i don’t know how I didn’t see that when I first looked at it. My question is was the extension milled correctly and is it safe to fire. I’ve never seen a barrel extension missing lugs. Thanks for any advice.
New 350 L barrel
- Thread starter HellraiserHarris
- Start date
Sorry, not much help here. Mine isn't built yet.
FWIW here is a picture of my 350L built by X-Caliber. The lug is still there. We'll see how it feeds when I get it going.
FWIW here is a picture of my 350L built by X-Caliber. The lug is still there. We'll see how it feeds when I get it going.
X-caliber is who I normally use. But a buddy told me that this Deadshot Barrels company was good. But I don’t think the feed ramp on mine was done correctly.
You're going to have LEGENDARY fatigue life on 1 or 2 of your bolt lugs.
ETA: on a serious note, that barrel extension is effectively the same thing as grinding away a lug on a standard .223/5.56 bolt. I'd bitch to the Mfg. 350 Legend peak pressure is still 55ksi if I recall.
ETA: on a serious note, that barrel extension is effectively the same thing as grinding away a lug on a standard .223/5.56 bolt. I'd bitch to the Mfg. 350 Legend peak pressure is still 55ksi if I recall.
Well the mfg. just messaged me and said they have built many 350 L barrel like this with no issues.
I responded with: I don’t feel safe firing this barrel and will he replace it with a barrel with a better cut fed ramp or refund that barrel? I will see what is said.
I responded with: I don’t feel safe firing this barrel and will he replace it with a barrel with a better cut fed ramp or refund that barrel? I will see what is said.
I'll say this and leave it be. I bet the way the barrel extension was done will probably help feeding 350L a lot. I had to adjust the feed lips on my mags to avoid jams caused by nose high malfunctions. Having that lug lower being filed down would help the bullet go straighter in without be bumped up nose high and also help avoid the bolt siding over the rim at the rear of the case. This is how my upper malfunctions.
If you reload, keeping the pressures down, I think this can be a solution.
If you reload, keeping the pressures down, I think this can be a solution.
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The barrel mfg got back with me today. Told me even though they have made hundreds of these barrels with no issues. To send it back for a refund. My thinking this is not a 556 round and probably will take several years to have 5000 rounds put thru it. And the 350 L is relatively new to ar’s. How does he know there won’t be any issues. So I mailed it back to them. I’ll be ordering a barrel from x-caliber. The normal barrel maker and who I should have ordered it from to begin with.
Thanks all for your input!
Thanks all for your input!
I would assume they know what they are doing. maybe they have run thousands and thousands of rounds though them? Hard to say, Im with you though, I do not like the way that BBL looked, And also good on them for the refund!!
I think they'd be naive and fucking plain stupid to have NOT shot more than a few barrels to absolute failure.
Not to mention they use proof rounds that are WAY hotter than anything you'd ever load and they have to stand up to a few of those.
That's just barrel making 101.
Do bolts maybe have a shorter life? Maybe. But if it's a trade off for better feeding and still has a decent life, isn't that a good thing? Legend ain't my thing, don't have a use for it, but I don't have any use for any weapon that jams.
I think you'd be really surprised to find out the truth then. I definitely would NOT assume a small manufacturer knows what they're doing and properly tests everything. I'm a test engineer myself, and in my experience most companies, even large ones, do not test their products as much or as thoroughly as you'd hope or expect. There are certainly some who do a good job of this, but you'd be fooling yourself to think everyone does.
That barrel lug removal is completely unnecessary for feeding, which I know for a fact from personal experience, and obviously does nothing to improve bolt life vs the standard setup. I'd have sent that barrel back too. It's not a single feed 45 cal and doesn't need to have the feed ramps set up that way; that's a stupid setup for this cartridge IMO.
Even for very large flat nose bullets, leaving the center lug in place and just opening up the feed ramps is adequate. Also, the long straight case of 350 L has enough feeding challenges without removing that center lug; that lug is actually helpful in bumping the rear of the case upward into the bolt face during feeding.
I don't know why some companies are adopting the single feed 45 caliber feed ramp style, but it's not ideal for the 350 Legend.
I don't have good pics of my Legend handy, but it's similar to this below (my own wildcat 358 Herrett AR). This feed ramp shape handles large flat noses and everything else, while retaining most of the bottom center lug's integrity and feeding benefits. Note that this barrel doesn't even need as much radius into the chamber to feed well. I've only built 4 of these in 358, but set up my Legend the same way, and all of them handle up to a .290" meplat which is pretty big for a 35 cal.
At the risk of harping on this too much, I'd like to point out a particular polymer AR15 lower manufacturer I dealt with because of issues with their lowers. As I dug in further, talking to them and figuring out how every example had the same problem, it turned out that they had ONE AR15 test rifle, rather than the wide selection you'd expect and most of us have in our closets, and the service tech didn't even understand some really basic stuff about AR15s.
Don't assume small companies know what they're doing or are building a good product.
