Preferred Barrel Blanks Pre-Fit (2024)

Kmccord said:

I noticed they are button rifled barrels and 5R, never had a 5R, cannot imagine it being much different than traditional, I own a Bergara that I believe is button rifled and it is very accurate, lots of people bad-mouth Button versus Cut rifles, but can someone really see a difference? I cannot imagine Hart would be in business if they were that bad.

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Both cut and button barrels can shoot extremely well. The only real advantages to a cut barrel is cut rifling doesn't induce stress when rifling, and with modern CNC rifling machines you can cut rifle a barrel with a twist rate to the fourth decimal place, rifle it right or left hand, add a gain twist, and control groove depth very very precisely. With button rifling you have to have a new button made for any change to the rifling geometry and dimensions. With that being said 99% of shooters couldn't tell the difference if you gave them a rifle with a button barrel from Hart, Broughton, Benchmark, etc. and an identical rifle with a cut rifled barrel from Bartlein, Krieger, Brux, etc. Today's barrel making technology is amazing and I wouldn't be afraid of owning either a cut or button barrel, as long as both were manufactured correctly.

@Jud96 said it well. And even with the one concern about stress, proper button rifled barrels are stress relieved so even the induced stress becomes a non-issue. Josh from PVA discusses this on his website if you want to read about it. https://patriotvalleyarms.com/barrels-cut-rifling-vs-button-rifling/ You could also call and talk to the guy at Keystone, he offers both and would tell you depending on the caliber the cut rifling may last longer, I get the impression he knows his stuff when I talked to him.

You'd be surprised how many of the "top" barrel makers do button rifled barrels only. The strange thing is, based on my reading it seems there is a pretty much universal agreement that button rifling is cheaper and easier to do, yet some of the barrel makers who use button rifling charge just as much as say Bartlein and Krieger. Anyways, I have had both, and I currently am shooting a button rifled barrel for one very simple reason, cost. If you look at patriot valley you'll see you get a Rock Creek barrel that PVA contours. If you want cut rifling it's $125 extra. Same idea at Keystone although with Keystone it's 2 different brands (Green mtn button rifling and Krieger cut rifling), so might not be a fair comparison, at PVA it's Rock Creek vs Rock Creek.