I did a 20-round break in today and fired two 5-shot groups at 100 yards with some 175 grain FGMM. I was going to stop after the first sub-MOA group (0.810"/0.773 MOA) but I just had to try again and produced a sub 1/2 MOA (0.522"/0.498 MOA) group!

I had no failures at all. I used a Bassett low mount and my Leupold MK4 ER/T 4.5-14x50 scope. I am impressed!





I'll call that a very successful first range day! Round count=30.

Tony.

Very nice!

WOW.

Dig the custom cheek riser too!

Thanks!

After reviewing my records, this is officially the smallest group I've ever shot with an M14-type rifle that I've personally built. My previous record was 0.574 MOA at 200 yards with my M25 in the same chassis with the same scope with a Criterion 5R SS barrel.

I have only shot one group smaller with someone else's LRB M25/JAE-100 with a heavy Kreiger barrel. That group was 0.433" at 100 yards.

Hat's off to Lothar-Walther! Now I need to do some serious hand-loading to see what she really likes. I haven't even optimized the tuning on the JAE chassis.

Tony.

I had a short range day on Saturday. I had three rifles to test and only was able to squeeze off two test groups with the rifle again. I shot a cold-bore group that measured 0.634" with no warm up shots.


The shooter next to me had a loaded M1A in a coyote brown Archangel stock. I wanted him to see the difference between the Archangel and the JAE. In addition, I wanted him to see the difference between an off the shelf M1A versus a full-custom M14 with all the bells and whistles. I put 2 clicks right on the scope and let him have five shots.

He shot a 0.650" group with no dry firing or familiarity with the rifle at all.


I'll be making a summary video of the barrel this week.

Tony.

Nice shooting, but I think your measuring stick is off. Groups of .6" with a 30-bore pretty much have all rounds touching. I'm guessing 1" to 1.1"

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
Nice shooting, but I think your measuring stick is off. Groups of .6" with a 30-bore pretty much have all rounds touching. I'm guessing 1" to 1.1"

I measure center to center. I open the calipers to 0.308" and hit zero. Then I open them up and measure outside edge to edge.

Maybe if someone has that fancy software that measures group size, they can run the numbers. I run all MAC devices and AFAIK, that software is only available for PC/windows computers. I'd have bought that program long ago if I could have.

Tony.

I'm probably off, now that I'm looking at things more closely. Are your recent targets SR-1, like the earlier post? If so, the distance between circles in the black should be exactly 1". If so, I revise my estimates to about 3/4". Pretty good shooting with factory ammo in an auto loader.

Yes, all SR-1 targets. For some reason, I zoomed in quite a bit on these targets.

Tony.

I suspect you like the Lothar-Walther barrel. A lot. Do you think the L-W is more accurate than the other brands you've used? Or maybe this rifle just seems to "work".

Have you been able to see how the L-W performs at longer ranges?

When you tune handloads to a given barrel, what kind of accuracy improvement over FGMM do you generally see?

I'm very impressed by it, so far. As the saying goes; you never have a second chance to make a first impression...

I wanted to do the best I could to isolate the barrel performance, so I made sure that I used the best chassis system I had, the best trigger I had, the best scope I had, and that I used a match chamber (which was given to me by Nez Rongero, a TX stage Highpower shooter). It was his personal design and it's the first time I've ever used it. The good thing was that it's tighter than any other chamber reamer I have, so if it didn't work out, I could cut it with another reamer I have that's proven. I used an LRB forged, rear-lugged receiver and a Bula bolt, hand-lapped for 85% or better contact.

In addition, I wanted to use factory match ammo to remove any errors in my reloading technique.

This is going to be a progressive test and this is the initial phase. I have a McMillan fiberglass stock that I'm going to bed this action into, but the JAE, in my opinion, is the best for accuracy and it's quick to install.

I'm also busy trying to develop a load for my SOCOM-16 and that's where I'm focusing my handloading efforts right now. I may shelve that temporarily to get some good data on the LW barrel.

My initial evaluation is that this is a solid option for anyone looking for a premium barrel for their build.

I will be testing this later with some 130 grain, 155 grain and 168 grain bullets at 600 yards and perhaps 1,000 if I can find the time.

The down-side is that the barrel is in-the-white. It still needs to be park'd, nitrided or DLC'd. I'll probably DLC it.

There's literally zero data out there on the internet on LW M14 barrels in the US, so I'm reporting what I can, whenever I can. At this point, they are still imported form Germany, but if the volumes increase, they may turn the barrels in the US.

At this point, it's comparable in accuracy to a heavy Kreiger and the heaviest Criterion that's available (3/4-heavy). My 3/4 heavy Criterion in the same JAE chassis with the same scope and same trigger group held 7.25" for 10 shots at 600 yards. I expect this barrel to do the same or better.

With this kind of accuracy, the overall accuracy will be determine more by the overall quality of parts and craftsmanship of the builder.

Unfortunately, the last time I spent a good amount of time handloanding, I wasn't building rifles this accurate. I had a great load for 125 grain TNT's, and 168 grain SMK's but then I ran out of Winchester brass and I have to start all over with LC brass.

I'll keep you all updated as I find what works well with this rifle and other handloads.

Tony.

Good shooting. Obviously, it is a nice rifle, but shooting under a MOA takes good shooting. Most shooters just can't do it, even with the best of equipment.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Good shooting. Obviously, it is a nice rifle, but shooting under a MOA takes good shooting. Most shooters just can't do it, even with the best of equipment.

Thanks for the kind words! It's appreciated.

Tony.

quote:

Originally posted by fritz:
I'm probably off, now that I'm looking at things more closely. Are your recent targets SR-1, like the earlier post? If so, the distance between circles in the black should be exactly 1". If so, I revise my estimates to about 3/4". Pretty good shooting with factory ammo in an auto loader.

I will go with Tony's calipers on the actual target, center to center, over your 3/4" estimate.

OK, let’s talk calipers, which is a game of its own.

The attached Shoot-N-C target is from 8/26/12, back in my early days of precision shooting, when I tried to document just about everything. This was shot at 300 yards at a public range, using my 6.5 Creedmoor bolt action, with its first Bartlein barrel, using Hornady factory 140 Amax ammo. Light & intermittent breezes from my 9 o’clock. Shot from prone. Challenging mirage from the dirt & gravel ground, which is almost perfectly flat from the shooting position to the target, which was at waist height.



Bartlein states their 6.5 barrels have a .264 groove diameter and a .256 bore diameter. Which means some of the bullet gets squeezed to a smaller diameter than stated specs. FWIW, my Bartlein .308 barrel is listed as .308 groove and .300 bore.

Bullets generally leave four distinct marks in a Shoot-N-C paster, from smallest to largest:
• The inner most clean hole.
• A generally distinct “grease mark”.
• Less distinct breaks in the paper, indicated by a dent in the paper, with very small radial cracks in the paper.
• The large exterior mark, where the outer black stuff has been peeled away from the yellow inner stuff.

I use decent backing material behind paper targets – backers of cardboard or coroplast. This leaves more distinct holes in paper media, including Shoot-N-C. However, we really don’t get consistent holes from pointy rifle bullets. Wadcutters in a .38 Special make great holes; rifles not so much.

In the attached target, the holes vary as follows:
• The inner most holes are .07” to .09”.
• The grease marks aren’t always exactly circular. They vary from .21” to .22”.
• The less distinct breaks aren’t always circular, either. I measure from .23” to .25”.
• The outer marks are in the ballpark of .34” to .41”

The extreme spread is from the high shot at 1 o’clock to the farthest right shot at 3 o’clock. The edge-to-edge distance for the breaks in paper is 1.972”. Using .24” as the average size of breaks in the paper, the center-to-center distance is 1.732”.

If I used the same edge-to-edge distance for breaks in paper, then subtracted the nominal bullet diameter of .264”, the center-to-center distance is 1.708”.

The extreme spread on the inner most holes is 1.789”. Subtract an average of .08” for these holes and I get 1.709” center to center.

If I put the calipers on the center of the inner holes, my best measurement is 1.72” center-to-center.

The extreme spread of the grease marks is 1.953”. Subtracting the nominal bullet diameter of .264”, the center-to-center distance is 1.689”.

All this assumes my eye-hand coordination matches my digital caliber’s readings of .001”. Maybe on some days, maybe not on others.

So what is the best guess on this target? My original notes list 1.715”. If I’m a conservative it comes out to 1.732”. Or if I’m aggressive it comes to 1.689”. Right now I think 1.72” is probably a good answer.

Granted, these variations aren’t huge in the overall scheme of things -- .043” maximum. But I’m pretty careful when measuring my targets, and this target is a little easier to analyze that some of mine. If I really wanted to get crazy about paper target measuring, I’d have a perfectly white target, made of really thick & stiff paper, with no marks other than a small aiming point. I’d probably use software, too.

Nice shooting, Fritz! Thanks for your explanation on group measuring.

My intention with this thread or my posts isn't to get wrapped up in the minutiae, but simply convey to those interested, my experiences with a barrel that's a newcomer to the M14 market. As stated earlier, there's no data out there on these that I can find on M14's/M1A's because they just started selling them in the US and very few people even knew about them.

I only found out because they started following me on instagram and I checked out their instagram page and saw M14 barrels. I called them and asked if they were available in the US, and one thing led to another and next thing you know, I've got a heavy profile LW M14 barrel on my doorstep!

Tony.

That’s a good looking gun. There was a fella on the far opposite point at my range this past weekend tuning in a similar rifle but in 6.5CM. He had some equally impressive groups.

Nice rifle and great shooting.

I’m kicking myself for not picking up a G3 JAE-100 chassis.

quote:

Bartlein states their 6.5 barrels have a .264 groove diameter and a .256 bore diameter. Which means some of the bullet gets squeezed to a smaller diameter than stated specs. FWIW, my Bartlein .308 barrel is listed as .308 groove and .300 bore.

I don't understand, those are the nominal groove and bore diameters for those calibers. The SAAMI tolerance is all plus, but a match barrel is going to hold close to nominal/minimum.

Great looking rifle!