Sporter Barrel vs Micro-Groove rifling

gotloveforall

gotloveforall

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Hi everyone. Looking to purchase my first rifle, a .22
After soaking up as much info as I could from this wonderful forum I still cannot find an answer.

I am looking towards the Marlin XT-22 series and am stumped as to the difference between a Sporter barrel and a Micro-Grooved barrel.

According to their site: http://www.marlinfirearms.com/Firearms/xt/XT22.asp

XT-22R ----22" stainless steel sporter barrel
XT-22RO ---22" blued barrel with Micro-Groove® rifling (16 grooves)
XT-22RZ ---22" blued barrel with Micro-Groove® rifling (16 grooves).

I just want to get the basic 22R but would it make a difference to get the Micro-Grooved barrel instead?

I'm going to be using this mostly for plinking and target.
Help would be much appreciated. :D
 
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Marlin is one of the few (perhaps the only) manufacturer that uses micro-groove rifling. On their larger calibre firearms, they seem to be moving away from micro-groove rifling to a more traditional ballard type rifling.

So what to make of this? I don't think it matters much either way. I wouldn't be afraid of the micro-groove rifling, but I wouldn't go out of my way to have it either.

I have no personal experience with the marlin .22s, but I've heard that they are generally accurate (not match accurate mind you) and reliable. Mariln has had QC problems, since being taken over by Remington (5 years ago, or so), I would assume this has effected thier line of .22 rifles as well.
 
Sporter barrel usually just refers to the outer contour, and they typically have sights. Afaik, marlin uses microgroove rifling on all their .22's whether is says so or not. For what it's worth, microgroove barrels shoot very very well with .22lr. It is just many (16) shallow grooves rather than fewer deeper grooves, but for all intents and purposes it spins the bullet as Well as any other type of rifling. Don't worry too much about the rifling "type". Ive had old Enfield's with 2 groove broached rifling that shot excellent. It's not as important as you may think, but in any case... Any marlin I've ever owned has been much more accurate than it has any right to be for the money.
 
I have a Marlin 880 .22 from about 1992 or so and it's microgroove of course. Years ago I had some compliments at the rimfire range on how well it was shooting. I think the part that bothered the others was I was shooting unsorted mixed ammo :) Now I look back at it, it was kinda funny.

I have no complaints with that .22. Shoots well and nothing has ever gone wrong in maybe 3000 rounds over nearly 20 years.
 
In my experience, micro-groove is only a problem when shooting cast bullets in the bigger bores, never heard of any problem with that style of rifling in a .22.
 
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