Just got one of these in the 26" heavy stainless. It is heavy! The finish overall is good, I think it's baked on. The outside taper cut on the recessed crown shows some chatter marks. The welds are excellent. Chamber finish is good. Rifling appears good, too. Throat/chamber/barrel alignment is excellent.
Fit to frame and headspace on my frame is excellent. Have not measured it, but it's tighter than my 25-06 PH barrel for sure.
This barrel does not taper as much as the PH fluted job. I had the original PH forend that came with the 25-06. I had "floated" it by sanding away the contact points. I laugh at the term "floating" when we're talking about forearms screwed to the barrel.
Anyway, I first set the barrel in that forend and it appeared I needed to get out the sandpaper again. While muttering to myself, I just squeezed hard and the good ol' plastic spread enough that the two came together! I think I'm on to something here. What's wrong with equal contact pressure along the barrel channel? You can't do this with wood. This might open up a whole new product line. Nobody makes a forearm barrel channel tension measuring device yet.
I screwed the forearm down tight and loaded up some new brass with 55 gr. v-maxes and bl-c(2), starting low, just for starters. The last 3 shots out of 14 at 50 yds.(the range was incredibly muddy) went into a tiny cloverleaf. I was sighting in, breaking in, and chronographing loads, and so not shooting for groups yet. Even so, this is encouraging. Velocity was a tad on the slow side vs. published data by 100 fps or so.
Fired brass does not extend above the chamber at all, which really surprised me. I think I just lucked out and ended up with a combo that is as tight as possible without interference on the firing pin bushing, and everything else matching up the way we wish they all did.
No chance to work up more loads or do range testing for another couple weeks. I'll report after that.
Walllypedal
