Barrel lengths? .338 Lapua Magnum?

thunderflash

thunderflash

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Anyone know if/what rifles are available in Canada with Bbl. lengths better than 24 inches for the "poor man's .50"------ The .338 Lapua Magnum???:sniper:
 
I think you're going to be sadly disappointed if you think any .338 chambering is going to be a "poor man's .50 cal.".
 
I am currently in a .338 LM Build. I spoke to the guys at ATRS last week. It seems to be the consensus there that longer is better (> 28" not including muzzle brake). That being said I ended up going with my own gunsmith's advice (not because ATRS is wrong) but because he pointed out that a >28" bbl+MB is really unwieldy and doesn't fit well into a guncase. Velocity is good but doing a little homework I noticed that the common length for military rifles is 27" (AI, McMillan, and SAKO) while the "new" M24SWS is 29" (but I suspect that almost 2" is MB but can't confirm this). If your MB is 2" long you are looking at 29" bbl Assembly (don't know the techy term for this) which is still pretty darn long vs a 30-32" bbl assembly which is really long. Depending on what you want to use it for (i.e. hunting vs LR Shooting) will determine if you need that extra 2-3" of barrel.
 
I was wondering how much of an effect the shorter barrell will have on velocity and range.

It has been written on here that the LTR (20" barrell) will do aswell as a 26" barrell with about a 100 feet per second velocity difference.

Not much at all was implied.

Good point about rifle case fit, Glock 4 Ever.
 
6" reduction in a .308 barrel resulting in only a loss of 100fps? That seems a bit low. LTRs do hold their own at short and medium ranges, not sure what happens at long range.
For a range rifle, barrel length isn't all that great a consideration. For hunting, it would depend on the type of hunting.
 
Max: I have owned both an LTR and Police and there is a big difference to POI for the two - is one better then another? That is a tricky question, Ballistically, a 20" bbl is inferior to at 26" bbl (more velocity = more range; all else being the same) BUT a 26" bbl is sure as hell a lot more unwieldy vs a 20" bbl. Having spent a large amount of time researching this .338 LM build - for me I am happy with a 28-29" bbl Assembly (27" bbl). While a >28" bbl will be better ballistically, I am content in knowing that a 27" bbl will easily get out to 1500m; it may be dicey at the extreme end of the range where a >28" tube will shine but realistically I don't have very many places where I am going to really stretch this caliber's legs. It is also the reason why I didn't go with the .338 Edge or .338 LM AI. Extra velocity is nice but for the number of times I am going to shoot at the distance where the extra velocity will pay dividends - I will have to pay that much in bbl wear. At the end of the day, it really depends on what you want; me I want a rifle that I can shoot out to 12-1500m with good bbl life, as this is my first real LR rifle I don't want to have the bbl shot out before I have really learned to shoot at these ranges.
 
Roughly 25 fps per inch of barrel, but even that is just a generalization. My Sako in 338 LM has a 26" barrel, but I agree with Rick et al, more barrel is better. 28" or 30" will really wring out the velocity from this round. With a 26" barrel and 250 gr bullets, I barely break 2960 fps, not very much faster then my 340 Wby, in spite of a much larger case. FWIW - dan
 
I feel that the 24" barrel Remington elected to use is too short to get the full potential of what the 338 Lapua is capable of.
26" of actual barrel would have been better in my opinion, given what the rifle is and the market it was aimed at.
On my custom rifles I try to suggest to clients that 28" is better as the really slow powders like US869 can get the 300 gr SMKs doing very respectable velocity, and have a better long range effectiveness than the 250s do.
 
Glock4ever said:
Max: I have owned both an LTR and Police and there is a big difference to POI for the two - is one better then another? That is a tricky question, Ballistically, a 20" bbl is inferior to at 26" bbl (more velocity = more range; all else being the same) BUT a 26" bbl is sure as hell a lot more unwieldy vs a 20" bbl. Having spent a large amount of time researching this .338 LM build - for me I am happy with a 28-29" bbl Assembly (27" bbl). While a >28" bbl will be better ballistically, I am content in knowing that a 27" bbl will easily get out to 1500m; it may be dicey at the extreme end of the range where a >28" tube will shine but realistically I don't have very many places where I am going to really stretch this caliber's legs. It is also the reason why I didn't go with the .338 Edge or .338 LM AI. Extra velocity is nice but for the number of times I am going to shoot at the distance where the extra velocity will pay dividends - I will have to pay that much in bbl wear. At the end of the day, it really depends on what you want; me I want a rifle that I can shoot out to 12-1500m with good bbl life, as this is my first real LR rifle I don't want to have the bbl shot out before I have really learned to shoot at these ranges.
Click to expand...

If you are staying with the SAAMI 338 lapua cartridge I would agree with Lyles thinking, same with 338 Edge, as both typically perform best with just under 100 gr of powder, the Improved that we are so high on, has a 12% case capacity increase and we have found that 112 to 117 grains of powder is where they really start to work. With a 26" or 27" barrel you get a pretty impressive fireball in the brake. 28" to 29" of barrel and then the brake seems to remove 99% of said fireball which indicates that as much powder as possible is being used effectively.
I can not speak for life expectancy of your Bartlain barrel, not having built a 338LAI with 1, but the Rock creeks we are using show extremely little wear/firecracking/throat erosion at 1500 rnds , which surprised me in fact.
I can not wait for Mystics shoot next spring as I am sure my old LAI will attend and I can see what the borescope has to say knowing it has seen a fair bit more usesince selling it.
With the 700Ps we found H4831, H1000, RL22 and RL25 seemed to work pretty well, but would not develop the velocities that the LAI chambering does. Getting a 300 gr Scenar out the pipe at 3090 and maintaining accuracy I find impressive, not to metion that the brass life of the AI chamber is greatly increased.
My 1st 338LAI had 15 reloadings on the original brass before I sold it to another CGN friend, I am not sure how many reloading he has added to the original 15 I got.

Another surprise we found with the 308s we built for the BCRA shoot is that not always do you loose velocity with shorter barrels. All 10 of these rifles are sporting 22" barrels and all launch 175 gr SMKs at over 2750 fps with the norm being 2850 fps. Last weekend I tried 190 gr SMKs and got a great group with velocity of 2790 fps, best of all NO pressure signs.:D
 
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