- Location
- Nova Scotia
Just shows that there is always improvement with a stock product, if you're willing to give it TLC.
How Good Are CZ Barrels? An Experiment (Pic Heavy)
- Thread starter Leuchtkafer
- Start date
So buy a gun and then a lathe with 30 years machinig experience to get a rim,fire where it needs to be? Dont really consider what hes done to be TLC. Thats considered MAJOR gunsmithing but Im sure your more than capable. Captain Incredible. PS Ignore
Waiting haha
- Location
- Nova Scotia
Why do you need to bring up stuff that has nothing to do with the thread? Def hold grudges. You spelled intresting, 1/4, that is, I'll, straighten wrong in your suck up post. Why dont you grow up and drop this childish BS. Wife not putting out so you gotta get your willy by beng an internet badazz?So buy a gun and then a lathe with 30 years machinig experience to get a rim,fire where it needs to be? Dont really consider what hes done to be TLC. Thats considered MAJOR gunsmithing but Im sure your more than capable. Captain Incredible. PS Ignore
If you are going to cast stones about spelling, better step out of the glass house first.
How does major machining have nothing too do with this thread? Just do ignore like ive suggested sooh many times before you. The machining has everything to do with this thread. You obviously cant read or comprehend. INTERESTING coming from someone that makes spelling mistakes every fifth word(being generous) fourth word. Anyway do you actually read what you scribble before posting> You can edit and change your spelling and grammar mistakes. I know itll take a while, thats why our gov is so great.Equal opportunity employer with cash for life. Im sure your following Cant wait for this one HAHA or are there gonna be NEW RULES YOU MAKE UP. JUST IGNORE
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You prefer that the chart information was not shown? Is it a secret? You didn't know? I'm certain that Leuchtkafer is fully aware that CZ makes its bores to CIP specs.
The chart has nothing to do with the work Leuchtkafer did, and is not a commentary on it. It's a reminder that CZ bores are not tighter than other bores produced by manufacturers in CIP countries, including Tikka, Sako, Bergara and many others.
My first post simply asked an ammo-related question. Don't read anything into it that's not there.
Leuchtkafer
Member
Cheers man, I'm glad I could bring something fresh to the forum. Hopefully the weather is good this weekend, I'm certainly itching to get out and continue the testing. I'll be away on vacation the following weekend so it'll drive me nuts if I have to wait that long to get out again
. I think it's good to show what happens with the different weights, there's no good information out there about how much weight any given barrel profile will need, and I can't think of any other way to figure it out other than by good old fashioned trial and error.Thanks, yeah it's a bit of a head scratcher to me. Why even bother to make a decent barrel blank just to cut corners on it during critical finishing steps?
It was nice to have a 1/2" challenge target show up without that even being the focused goal. I simply put up targets that would qualify for entry in case something special happened. You never know and it'd be a shame to be on a target that can't be entered. I don't think I'll be entering that one, I'll keep it tucked away but I have the feeling I'll be able to give it a better showing.
As for the barrel without mods, I'll refer you back to the two baseline targets I shot with it in it's factory condition. What was the primary axis of dispersion? What happens to bullets that pass through a chamber leade like that, what is the effect on the bullet's centre of gravity? One of the targets had the ammo note cut off in the scan, that one was Eley Team, same lot as I used after the mod. What do you think?
Now that I've established that it is capable of shooting a 1/2" challenge, it is certainly possible to do it without a tuner. I have enough of a selection of ammo that at least one of them should deliver. I'll keep it in mind for when I get to where I want to be with the tuner to then do a comparison with a few varieties of ammo with and without the tuner. That should be interesting.
Hey thanks! Yeah that would be a good contribution to the thread, some pics of your chamber with an example of how it shoots. Fits with the premise of the experiment, whether it's the quality of the barrel blanks themselves that lead to some not performing well or if it was just the finish machining.
Thanks. It's not so much about comparing to other mass produced barrels but seeing what level of quality is generally there in the blanks.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
Tell me something I don't know. Shocking I did not know I couldnt read or spell. Sad that an old man has to be a child. Hey wanna know a secret? I cannot speak either, I got a damaged Larynx, speak funny or not at all was my options. But hey I'm used to being called a retard or mocked because of my voice. Doesn't make me shoot any different, doesn't stop me from helping others, or be a good pistol shooter. Yup ill ignore if you do the same. What is your rambling on post #26? Edables or whisky kick in?
But I actually understand the tuner aspect a bit more than other posts. I actually love watching machining content. So this interest me.
Leuchtkafer
Member
Thank you. Unfortunately it seems nigh impossible to keep a thread on the rails on this forum these days
I updated my earlier response on this thread with pictures from my chamber and a link to the shooting results.
Here is the updated post
Here is the updated post
The RWS Rifle Match target was quite poor. That suggests ammo inconsistency that can produce results that range from quite poor to a few random acts of accuracy. That's why I would avoid relying on this kind of ammo for tuning. It's difficult to know when it's the ammo or the tuner.
Yes, that should indeed be interesting. I look forward to the results.
Very cool! Great work. I think at the price point that CZ offers these rifles, it's probably not reasonable to expect the degree of finish/precision that you've obtained doing it by hand. It would be nice if it was more consistent though and less of a "barrel lottery", especially the non-match varieties.
Out of curiosity, what did you use for a chamber reamer? Something more or less standard, or a match chamber reamer?
In my experience, it's impossible for a lead bullet to pass over a burr like the ones in your pics of the original leade without damaging the bullet. And that has to adversely affect accuracy.
It makes one wonder just how well these rifles would shoot if CZ would take the time and make the effort to get the machining right in the bore, where it matters the most.
In my experience, it's impossible for a lead bullet to pass over a burr like the ones in your pics of the original leade without damaging the bullet. And that has to adversely affect accuracy.
It makes one wonder just how well these rifles would shoot if CZ would take the time and make the effort to get the machining right in the bore, where it matters the most.
I have seen bore scope pics that are like a horror movie but the targets shot with these brutally terrible barrels just don’t coincide. It’s not possible but it is and these guns shoot extremely well. Part of the mystery!!
Leuchtkafer
Member
Excellent, thank you. Your chamber looks good and the rifle shoots good to go along with it.
I used a match chamber, 0.2255" diameter with 2 degree leade. Yeah whether the burr actually shaves metal off the bullet or just displaces it, each burr is a different shape so the resultant deformation of the bullet is uneven. CZ could probably get themselves a notch behind Anschutz if they took better care of the finish machining.
Leuchtkafer
Member
A note about realistic expectations. When I started this project, the goal was to gain experience and learn things. I was fully prepared to have an outcome that was a complete flop, or if a critical error was made at least it'd be on a barrel I wouldn't cry about. This barrel has teased me with some moments of brilliance, but at the end of the day it's still born of mass produced hammer forged stock. Wishful thinking won't transform it into a finely crafted custom barrel. I've plateaued in my results, if there is any more to be squeezed out of it, it is not going to give it up easily. I put together a chart of the better entries of CZ rifles in the 1/2" challenge thread. While it is not known what efforts each shooter put towards their success or how repeatable it would be for them, it gives a useful insight into what kind of performance can be expected out of a CZ barrel.
All but 4 shooters had at least one group in the 0.4's, often a high 0.4. Those without any 0.4's, three of them were high 0.3's. Everyone had at least one group in the 0.2's or better, a majority had two groups in the 0.2's, but only two had three groups in the 0.2's. CZ barrels don't seems to be able to deliver a performance in the 0.2's and low to mid 0.3's for a full target, or to be able to do so reliably and repeatably if a shooter does manage to achieve that here and there.
There's nothing exceptional about my results thus far, they are squarely average. When a barrel blank is made, it's potential is set. No chamber will increase the potential of the barrel, the quality of the chamber only determines how much of the barrel's potential is unlocked. Neither will a tuner magically transform a barrel into something that it is not. When a barrel does not perform at a high level, it makes it very difficult to detect the benefits that a tuner offers. There's too much variance in the groupings to tell when the weight and setting are good with a limited data set. This really complicates the testing process when flying blind on a certain barrel profile with no idea what weight and setting range I should be focusing on. To shoot just the rough course of 25 click intervals between settings with 5 groups at each setting would take 500 rounds. Now do finer testing. Now repeat with 5 different weight combinations. It doesn't take much imagination to see how this can get very time consuming and expensive. I think what I will do for the next range trip is take the tuner off and shoot the Midas and Eley that I've used at the end of each session thus far.
I do like how the POI has become more stable across settings with the medium and heavy weights, though now that I've seen how much group size variation can occur at a single setting over multiple groups, the testing method I've employed offers little else other than insight into POI stability.
Midas almost delivered a respectable performance, but for one bad flier yet again. I'm not getting reliable success at 1/2" challenge level shooting, 1 out of 8. There would have been 2, but for knocking my scope knob on the last shot during my day 2 testing. Failures the result of literally one bad round out of 25, or a group or two just over 1/2". It's not far off, the question of exactly why it's not holding together for all 25 shots, I'm afraid I don't have an answer for.
I'll be working late again tomorrow then leaving early Wednesday for my trip. I'll catch up on things at some point next week.
All but 4 shooters had at least one group in the 0.4's, often a high 0.4. Those without any 0.4's, three of them were high 0.3's. Everyone had at least one group in the 0.2's or better, a majority had two groups in the 0.2's, but only two had three groups in the 0.2's. CZ barrels don't seems to be able to deliver a performance in the 0.2's and low to mid 0.3's for a full target, or to be able to do so reliably and repeatably if a shooter does manage to achieve that here and there.
There's nothing exceptional about my results thus far, they are squarely average. When a barrel blank is made, it's potential is set. No chamber will increase the potential of the barrel, the quality of the chamber only determines how much of the barrel's potential is unlocked. Neither will a tuner magically transform a barrel into something that it is not. When a barrel does not perform at a high level, it makes it very difficult to detect the benefits that a tuner offers. There's too much variance in the groupings to tell when the weight and setting are good with a limited data set. This really complicates the testing process when flying blind on a certain barrel profile with no idea what weight and setting range I should be focusing on. To shoot just the rough course of 25 click intervals between settings with 5 groups at each setting would take 500 rounds. Now do finer testing. Now repeat with 5 different weight combinations. It doesn't take much imagination to see how this can get very time consuming and expensive. I think what I will do for the next range trip is take the tuner off and shoot the Midas and Eley that I've used at the end of each session thus far.
I do like how the POI has become more stable across settings with the medium and heavy weights, though now that I've seen how much group size variation can occur at a single setting over multiple groups, the testing method I've employed offers little else other than insight into POI stability.
Midas almost delivered a respectable performance, but for one bad flier yet again. I'm not getting reliable success at 1/2" challenge level shooting, 1 out of 8. There would have been 2, but for knocking my scope knob on the last shot during my day 2 testing. Failures the result of literally one bad round out of 25, or a group or two just over 1/2". It's not far off, the question of exactly why it's not holding together for all 25 shots, I'm afraid I don't have an answer for.
I'll be working late again tomorrow then leaving early Wednesday for my trip. I'll catch up on things at some point next week.
This noteworthy observation is very sound, especially the part that's been put in bold type. Shooters would do well to keep all of it in mind when thinking of barrel performance and testing with tuners, regardless whether it's at 50 as it is here or further beyond.
