SAKO claims ?

Here is a picture of the ugly pig...

Sako-S20.png

You said it. Ugly as the south end of a pig facing north.
 
Hammer forging starts out cold I believe but the process heats the steel up... All this discussion however is pointless, the factories are making rifles as cheaply as they can so they can sell them and make money.

The process of how a factory barrel is made matters not at all to me...

Hammer forging is a very old process requiring a huge initial expense and produces fine barrels in a few minutes... no after market hammer forging because of the cost...

Button rifling produces fine barrels.

Cut rifling produces fine barrels.


That’s a really good info there. Solid points you made.
 
With hammer forged, the bore will only be as good as the finish of the of the reamed hole the started with, and/or the finish of the mandrel that they hammer it around.

Start off with a rough-reamed hole, the finish won't get any better after hammering.
 
My experience has been hammer forged barres in sniper rifles shoot a wide variety of ammo accurately and much more accurately than cut rifling but cut rifling can dial in tighter than hammer forging making them more accurate for the hand loader who finds the load. Hammer forged barrels also don’t really need any breakin as there is no burring left in the board after tha manufacturing process like can be on cut rifles that aren’t hand lapped. There are reasons for the differences but that takes us into a molecular discussion.

My preference is European hammer forged barrels.
 
Hammer forging makes for a smooth barrel surface, Savage, Remington, Mossberg, Browning still use button/cut rifle barrels, Howa, Sako, Zastava and many others use hammer forged. Both can be very accurate or both can shoot like ####, still boils down to individual rifle/barrel/ammo.
Here is a hammer forged Vanguard bore and a button swaged Savage bore, both shoot just fine, but one is pretty ugly.
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Most of the time, Howa 1500. Second time I’ve come across marks like these. Any idea what they’re from?
D888-EE94-E36-B-4-D78-9-D90-07-D368430127.png
 
With hammer forged, the bore will only be as good as the finish of the of the reamed hole the started with, and/or the finish of the mandrel that they hammer it around.

Start off with a rough-reamed hole, the finish won't get any better after hammering.

In the '70's, Sako used to advertise that their barrels were 'diamond lapped' and said that this contributed to their 'MOA' accuracy. I presume this was done before they hammer forged the rifling .. but dont know. It may be that what they were really doing is diamond 'honing' which I see PacNor now does. http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/tag/button-rifling/

As for ejection issues with Sako's -- I have multiple models of Sako that predate the Model 75 and none of them suffer from ejection 'problems' nor do my Model 75's. Apparently (as I have read) some Model 85's may have had ejection issues ... but the only Model 85 I recall with this issue appeared (from the pics provided) to have a scope with very tall target style elevation and windage knobs on it. The windage knob protruded quite a bit and this may have interfered with the spent casing being thrown clear.... IDK for sure.

FWIW when people like Cliff LaBounty were offering to 'rebore and/or re-rifle' existing barrels -- they excluded (specifically) Sako barrels from this service.
 
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Most of the time, Howa 1500. Second time I’ve come across marks like these. Any idea what they’re from?
D888-EE94-E36-B-4-D78-9-D90-07-D368430127.png

Would be nice if there was a barrel mfr who could answer the question ... but I am 'guessing' it could be chatter from a 'Button' when being rifled or it could be that the bore was not properly lapped after being drilled .. and prior to being rifled.
 
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