I've had some learning experiences with this stinker barrel in the last few days.
I first installed it on my USFT to shoot it as-is, for a baseline. Easy peasy on a USFT, two Phillips screws to remove the wood block under the gun, then loosen the four breech bolts that go all the way through the baseplate, air tube, and breech block. The two on the side of the slit in the breech need loosened the most. Slide out my barrel, slide in Larry's barrel, tighten everything back up.
Larry had done some extensive indexing tests and documented them all, right on the barrel. His "witness" attachments can be seen in the above photo. With his prior testing, I was able to get the impact point within 4, 1/8moa clicks on the horizontal turret and within 5 clicks on the vertical, from the scope zero with my barrel. I'll deal with the slightly higher impact point, and run with the 4 horizontal clicks while I test this barrel, to aide in getting back to good with my own barrel when this experiment is over.
In the first shooting session I saw exactly what Larry described: couple good shots going going into nearly the same hole, then a couple flyers spraying around erratically, then another couple good shots.
Decided to pull the barrel for closer inspection. Pellets pushed through felt good, no catchy grabby mixed with loose, just a little bit of resistance felt through the entire length. It seems to have the typical Lothar tight spot at the breech end, although not as bad as some. And the good here was that the pellet doesn't free fall after that initial tight spot. And then it has a choke at the normal 3/4-1" in from the muzzle. Choke isn't overly aggressive. It felt quite similar to how pellets pushed through my 1:36 barrel feel, which made me optimistic for this project.
Inspection of the crown showed that it was slightly off-center. Bore itself seems centered to the blank, but the angle of the crown was deeper on one side. I decided this would be the first thing to try: new crown. I consulted
@Arzrover and he had a great suggestion on how to remove the old crown while keeping everything square. Followed his recommendation and got down to virgin bore, ie took off about 1/8" of barrel to omit the offset crown.
The recrown was accomplished with the brass screw trick, although it is only a very minimal bevel.
Pushed a bunch more pellets through my magic barrel and this stinker bareel and compared them. Pushed to the choke and then back out the breech end, also all the way through, etc. Concluded that with my barrel the heads only slightly contact the grooves, leaving a defined edge on the widest part of the head of the pellet, but with Larry's barrel there was a wide ring of contact visible on the head of the pellet, ie even the rifling grooves were displacing lead. Conclusion there was that Larry's barrel was slightly tighter than mine. Got his permission to open it up with some lapping compound and then did so, also focusing on that tight spot at the breech. After that process pellets pushed through both barrels look very similar.
Reinstalled in the gun and shot these 24, 10 shot groups; 15 @ 30 yards and 9 @ 55 yards. The number next to the group is the order in which they were shot. Rings are 1".
These were taken from a bumbag, not a bench, so there is some human error in there. Also moved a few clicks here and there between groups. Also, shot the 240+ shots in less than an hour. I was really cranking them off at times. When I'd slow down and really focus id have a pretty tight group. I star'd the best ten shot groups, #10 @ 30 yards measured 3/8" CTC and # 9 @ 55 yards measured 13/16."
The seeming "flyers" correlate pretty well with pulled shots.
I've been trying to get my 80cf SCUBA down low enough to empty it and do an inspection, so I had it sitting next to me to refill every 40-45 shots. USFT uses such little air though that I'm still up around 2400psi, having started at a smidge over 2500 before these 250ish shots. Guess that mean I need to shoot some more.
I'm glad this little project came up. I was recently eye balling a really good deal in the classifieds but getting the USFT out and shooting it made me realize I've already got too many amazing guns that I still really enjoy and that I don't have time to shoot. Last thing I need is another one!
Awesome gun, these USFTs. Sublime trigger. Quite literally built to shoot from a bumbag. Chill shot cycle. Easy as pie to swap barrels when the need arises. Just overall high level of performance that makes me smile when I shoot it.
So what's next with Larry's barrel? Well I feel like it's competitive now. I sure would not have tried to shoot it in a match with how it shot before. I think there might be some gains in accuracy from a different batch....these today were 7th run of this die. And I was using a 3d printed moderator that hasn't fully earned my trust. So I think I'll try some other pellet batches and a different moderator and see how it shoots. I'm seriously considering running my USFT with Larry's barrel at the next Airgunners of AZ match 9 days from now. And I want to shoot it on a windy day to get a feel for how wind resistant pellets fired from it are, a comparison to what I call my "magic" barrel of the same specs.