Proceedings of the First Scout Rifle Conference
Held at Gunsite Ranch, Arizona, on 6, 7,
8 December 1983,
under the auspices of the Ekeiboloi
Society
BARRELS
Barrels are now rifled in three general ways. The first is cut longitudinally in the antique manner. The second is "buttoned", or extruded, by forcing a tool longitudinally through the barrel in one motion. The third is hammer-forged from the outside by crushing the tube onto a mandrel within. The latter system is generally the best, but it is available only in the Mannlicher line. Both cut barrels and buttoned barrels are subject to imperfections in manufacturing technique, and thus highly affected by labor standards and quality control. A hammer-forged barrel cannot fail.
The quality of a cut or buttoned barrel depends upon the care and expense devoted to its manufacture. Herin lies a problem. The most accurate barrels available for the conference were hand-cut, in the same quality category as the hammer-forged Mannlicher barrels. The two most accurate scouts to be fired at Gunsite were the Mannlicher Model L and Gunsite Scout II, which is a Sako action coupled with a hand-cut Carnes barrel. it is only fair to say that these two tack-drivers are not really part of the scout concept, pleasant as they are to use.
The conference decided that "short is better than long". Twenty inches (50cm) may be considered a maximum for a true scout, though it is noted that if a scout is made up on a velocity cartridge (such as the 243) more length may be necessary to obtain the ballistic performance desired. In 18.5 inches a 150-grain spitzer flat-base bullet may be started at 2700 fps, which is the ballistic performance of the original 30-06 as used in Africa by Theodore Roosevelt and Stewart White. This performance is quite satisfactory for targets up to 500 pounds in weight, and upon occasion considerably more than that. Therefore a barrel 19 inches in length may be considered about optimum for the scout parameters.
The notion that the flash from a short barrel is distracting was tested. We fired six different sorts of ammunition after dark from an 18.5-inch barrel and found that it is the load used, rather than the barrel length, that determines the flash. Western Super X was the mildest, military hardball the brightest.
Clearly no sort of barrel extension, flash-suppresor, nor muzzle brake is appropriate to the scout concept.
The contour of the scout barrel should be slim, in order to save weight, and this poses a problem in that it offers no purchase for the forward mount of a properly situated telescope sight. On Scout II it was necessary to affix a barrel sleeve at the point where the forward telescope base is located. On future models it may be more efficient to contour this ring into the barrel when it is cut, so as to serve both as a recoil lug and a telescope base. On the very light barrels of the Remington 7 and the Ruger Ultra, as now issued, the collar will need to be slipped on from the outside. The Ruger Ultra may be fitted with the quarter rib of the Ruger Mark I, thus providing a telescope base forward of the barrel ring. In all cases a telescope base recoil lug, protruding upward at the base of the barrel in order to accept the stress of recoil in compression, is a very desirable feature. This comes standard on some, but not all, Remingtons. (Scope mount strength has always been a sore point in the proper sighting of scout rifles up to now.)
After discussion it was concluded that the barrel of a proper rifle should be made of stainless steel, for various reasons not necessarily involving its resistance to corrosion. Of the two alloys now being used for stainless barrels, both display a superior coefficient of friction, with attendant ballistic improvement.
It should be noted that hammer-forged barrels may be made with progressive-depth rifling--shallow at the chamber and deeper at the muzzle. This gives part of the effect of "free-boring" and thus can increase ballistic efficiency.
While regular steel may be Parkerized or given a non-glare finish by sandblasting before bluing, stainless steel cannot be either Parkerized or blued. The best answer to this seems to be Teflon, which can be applied to stainless barrels without difficulty. All metal parts on any scout rifle should be of a non-reflecting finish. Teflon is not only non-reflecting but may be had in a variety of colors in case a mottled finish is desired in order to break up the visual aspect of the barrel. (The straight black streak of the barrel is the most visible thing about a rifle seen quickly in dim light.)