Round bottom grooves vs flat

[thelongrifle]

I have both round and square rifles and can't really tell the difference in accuracy or cleaning in either. Both work well for me. Both load easy all day and both clean easy. I win matches and kill game with both.

[heelerau]

Ditto to the above.

[Scota4570]

For my next barrel I'd like to try narrow lands.  What non custom maker, makes barrels with the widest grooves and narrow lands.

[smylee grouch]

Green Mountain used to make narrow lands and they were good shooters that cleaned up nice and easy too.

[Standing Bear]

I just had Hoyt re-bore and rifle a barrel. Went thru the round bottom vs square bottom question before hand.  Requested .010”-.012” deep square bottom rifling. Around the 100 or so shots down the tube and pleased w the results.
TC

[Daryl]

For my next barrel I'd like to try narrow lands.  What non custom maker, makes barrels with the widest grooves and narrow lands.

Trackofthewolf used to sell Goodoien "match" barrels. They had quite wide grooves and narrow lands, but not as narrow as this one.
Jason at Rice or Bobby Hoyte should be able to make you a true Forsyth-type barrel, like the one on the bottom, if you like by  R.J.Renner. I have no further info on Renner.







This is my .40 Goodoien barrel's muzzle.

[rich pierce]

GRRW barrels had very narrow lands. Well, at least one of them did.

[hanshi]

The barrel on my .40 is a swamped GM barrel.  The grooves are square and about twice as wide as the lands.  The other square groove barrels have grooves and lands about equal in width.

[smylee grouch]

Jim Goodoien told me he likes to make them with 70% of the circumfrence  as grove and 30% as lands.

[Daryl]

I would really like to ring out one of these barrels, in 14 to 16 bore, with about a 90" to 100" rate of twist.
The rifle should weigh 9 1/2 to 11 pounds.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

There you go Hugh...a new challenge!

[Vomitus]

   My pistol barrel looks like Forsyth rifling...if that's what it's called. Narrow lands and larger grooves.

[Scota4570]

NM sorry

[stubshaft]

I just sent one of my .32 barrels  to Bobby to punch out to a .40 and asked him to rifle it similar to a Forsyth.  I'll know in a couple of months how it does...

[hanshi]

Do post photos and how well it loads.

[Daryl]

Now if I had a .62 through to .66 in the Forsyth style on a straight sided 1 1/8" bl. 31" long, I would put it on my English gun just to test it - to about 200yards would be far enough.

I suspect with 94" to 104" rate of twist, it would need 150gr. to 165gr. 2F and then, would make a nice hunting rifle for moose, elk and bear.

[Eric Krewson]

I have two very accurate barrels, one is a standard square bottom rifling GM, the other is a Bill Large, the Large barrel is accurate with whatever load you put in it, it is also choke bored.

Here is the land/groove rifling in the Bill Large barrel;

[smart dog]

Hi,
The first photo shows test shots from a mechanical rest for several 10" pistol barrels by Hugh Toenjes. His rifling has more to it than just radiused bottomed grooves but the targets indicate there is no accuracy problem inherent with rounded bottom grooves. 

The next photo shows a sighting in target at 50 yards for my English rifle with a 62 cal Rice barrel with round bottomed grooves.  Only the shots in numbered groups were from the rifle, the rest were from a smoothbore I was also testing. Most shots were from a bench, however, the large amount of drop in the stock makes bench shooting a little awkward so some of the shots were offhand. You can see how my sighting in progression went from low-right to centered but a little left. Group 4, the last group, is 8 shots, 5 from the bench and 3 offhand.

I don't find round-bottomed grooves to have any accuracy issues compared to my rifles with square grooves.

dave

[Frank]

Hi,
The first photo shows test shots from a mechanical rest for several 10" pistol barrels by Hugh Toenjes. His rifling has more to it than just radiused bottomed grooves but the targets indicate there is no accuracy problem inherent with rounded bottom grooves. 

The next photo shows a sighting in target at 50 yards for my English rifle with a 62 cal Rice barrel with round bottomed grooves.  Only the shots in numbered groups were from the rifle, the rest were from a smoothbore I was also testing. Most shots were from a bench, however, the large amount of drop in the stock makes bench shooting a little awkward so some of the shots were offhand. You can see how my sighting in progression went from low-right to centered but a little left. Group 4, the last group, is 8 shots, 5 from the bench and 3 offhand.

I don't find round-bottomed grooves to have any accuracy issues compared to my rifles with square grooves.

dave

What is your patch/ball combination and powder charge on the Rice 62 caliber rifle barrel?

[Bob Roller]

If I had my choice of any rifling style, twist, and depth, it would be (depending on caliber of course) slow, not much over twelve thousandths deep, wide square bottomed grooves with narrow lands.
 I shot an old Hawken .54 cal. Fullstock with a Bill Large barrel in this configuration, and it was deadly accurate. With the right shooter, nobody in our area could outshoot this rifle, including some with Large’s  standard rifling.

  Hungry Horse

HH,
In 1962 I shot against Bill Large and his best match rifle and consistently beat him
I was using a pristine Whitworth with Alex Henry rifling,very wide grooves and very
narrow lands.Bill unbreeched the Henry and took a long look at it.It was basically a
a system used by Harry Pope later with 8 grooves.He made tooling for this and made
8 groove barrels that were hard to beat and I think you have one.
Bob Roller