New ART barrel from Daystate

I haven’t shot the RD Monsters at greater than 100 yards, but they are totally stable out to 100 yards from a 1:16” LW barrel at 910 FPS. 

Mike I agree they are stable at that speed but I know also that when Ken tunes a RedWolf he likes to raise the speed slightly from the stock setting. He says it just slightly tightens the groups at 100y My RedWolf on the stock setting shoots around 925fps and is also stable out to 100y. There is a bit of take and give in there I’m sure. I just chose 940 in my example because I think that’s around the speed (spin rate)they are probably targeting. 

How does your Edgun shoot the 18g JSB’s??

I haven’t tried it yet with the 18s but I’ll let you know when I do. I’m trying to decide on the .22 Eddy R3L or the .30 FX Bobcat Mk2 for the 75/100 yard events at RMAC...

But is the Art Barrel new for .22 or just .25. It sounded like the .22 already had the ART Barrel and they added it to their .25 lineup.

I got to look through the ART barrel at IWA and it looks very good. I have not had any experience with it, but I have with STX barrels because of all the work I’ve done in the FX factory. I’ve also studied the 12-groove and Polygonal LW barrels a lot (difficult to do, because every single one is different). To my eyes the ART looks exactly like an STX, with smaller groove diameter than the polygon, 5 lands instead of 6. Land width looks the same and choke looks the same.

The big question mark for me is quality control. I know for a fact that quality control is a big problem with LW because I have spoken to manufacturers and visited various factories. I know that LW struggles with their choking - I have 6 LW barrels and every single barrel has a different choke. The choke can vary by 0.05mm even if everything else remains the same. This is very surprising to me because FX barrels have a tolerance 5x tighter than this. Maybe this explains why head diameter is so important when picking pellets for LW barrels. I know that FX stopped buying barrels from LW because almost 50% of them had issues and had to be rejected. Smaller companies buy big batches of LW barrels, install the best barrels on their guns and sell the bad ones to other companies. That’s why there were so many good RAWs being made. Daystate probably keeps the good barrels and gives the no-so-good ones to Brocock. The good ones are GOOD, hence so many podium finishes. But we won’t even talk about the bad ones. There are big issues to sort out and LW is too proud to admit it because they have such a good reputation for all their other barrels (unchoked firearm barrels - Much easier to produce).

I’m reading a lot about twist rates but I’m not sure if I agree... In my experience, there is ZERO difference between performance of 1:17” and 1:16” when shooting with pellets. I have tested everything from 1:9” to 1:60”, and you won’t even see a difference by changing the twist rate by 5”. Pellets hardly require any twist to stabilize, even the Monsters. Even slugs are way less twist-rate fussy than you think. A 25gr slug will stabilize perfectly fine out a 1:20” barrel at subsonic speeds - Why then would a 25gr pellet need a faster twist than this? I can say this because I have tested about 200 different barrels in an underground range with a barreled action clamped in a vice. It is all about smoothness of the interior finish, land/groove diameter, leade, choke and crown. If the ART barrel shoots better, my guess is that it is 90% due to the land/groove diameter being better suited to the projectile, and 10% everything else combined. You can probably change the twist rate dramatically and see very little difference. Remember, it is the spin rate with respect to the oncoming airflow that matters, and that ratio is changing all the time as the pellet slows down. So you have to consider the spin rate at the muzzle AND the spin rate at the target. I am still not convinced that LW is able to consistently produce high quality barrels with the same land-groove dimension at the muzzle every single time, but I hope I’m wrong!

PS I am not trying to bash LW in any way. My most accurate 25m gun is still a Daystate with a LW barrel. I am just concerned that so many gun reviewers are having so many issues with LW barrels recently and the public aren’t hearing about it.

Matt

Mmm, I have to be honest and say I doubt your objectivity...

Very interesting Matt, I think we all realise you have been mucking about with this stuff for a long while and more in depth than most anyone else.

I don't think anybody needs to lose confidence in Walther, in all fairness the way that FX has handled the new liners has been downright awful and confusing.

I received liners then inspected twist rates and chokes and some of it was just not what we had been led to believe we would be getting, who was responsible for that information though?

I spoke with Fred JR at the show and to be honest I came away more confused than before about the liners and I have not seen masses of confidence shown in the results, by people who have bought them already either.

Mark, which liners did you receive and what about them was different to what you expected?

None of the twist rates, land/groove dimensions and chokes have been published, so I don’t see how you could have been “led to believe” anything.

If you need any questions answered, I’d probably be able to help you. I’m not sure who you mean by Fred Jr (maybe Johan?)

I’m sorry if I came across as negative. It just frustrates me a bit when I hear first-hand from other airgun reviewers that their guns (no brand mentioned, but a big manufacturer that uses LW Poly and 12 Groove) can’t even hold a 2” group at 50 yards, and when they contact the manufacturer to tell them that the gun they received is too bad to review, they get sent another one that is just as bad... And then they get told that there ARE major issues but they are not allowed to tell anyone about them. That to me is just wrong.

I also have friends that have worked for this unnamed company who have done work on the barrels (re-crowning, polishing) and have managed to shrink the groups about 5x smaller. I hope that explains my skepticism.

Matt

The LW on by .25 Condor is the most versital barrel I own both for pellets and bullets. I have’t found a pellet it doesn’t like. It shoots a far wider variety well than my .25 Marauder. My .308 Texan SS LE barrel is also very versatile, shooting all three commercial .300 pellets well. 

I can’t speak for any LW barrels on non-Airforce guns. 

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your feedback.

Why don’t the reviewers call out the issues? Is it fear they will never get another rifle to review because in the end it hurts the consumers and are their reviews then genuine. Technically they are contributing to the issue.

Also what I read the ART barrel shows good promise in .25 but the delta between .22 before and after is minor but a competitor would invest in. Sad if they don’t make them backwards compatible. 

I think the reason you don’t see negative reviews is because people don’t like making negative videos. Most of the guys I know that have had messed-up guns have politely sent them back and decided not to review them. One or two have asked for a new gun that has been test-fired already and then made a positive review, giving them the benefit of the doubt. I am happy to give benefit of the doubt if I think it’s a once-off thing, but I wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt of knowing that somebody might have bought a problem gun on my reccommendation.

I have a policy of not reviewing a gun unless I am 95% sure I’m going to like it. Even if you call yourself unbiased, you’ll always feel the pressure of knowing that if you come across as negative, you probably won’t hear from that company again. The solution for me is to only use guns I really love.

I did actually ask to review a gun made by the company in question but they refused to send me one, so I left it at that.

Anyway, I’m keen to see what comes of the ART barrel because I think they’ve got a lot of the design features right - Almost certainly an improvement on the previous generation LW barrels. But I’ll try not to make assumptions before I actually get to shoot with one

Matt

Thanks Matt. 

You have built a great reputation over the years for being honest about things. Appreciate your input

Michael

I hear what’s being said regarding LW barrels, and understand the experience gained in testing both LW and the FX barrels, both ST and STX. However, statistically based on the input above, I should have gotten at least a couple bad barrels in the 9 or 10 I’ve had in the past couple of years. But each one I’ve owned has shot into a penny at 50 yards, and half have shot into a dime. Brocock, Daystate, EDGun, Cricket, RAW to name a few. So either I’m the luckiest shooter in the world, or maybe LW’s QC problem isn’t as bad as reported? Not saying that there isn’t a problem, I just haven’t experienced it... PS., I have some FX also, and their accuracy both ST and STX is excellent, but no better than my LW barreled guns’.

I have found this to be true with all my LW-poly barrels!, the 12 groove even, but not to the extent of the poly’s! even the Crown .22 liner liked to have quite a few pellets through it before it wanted to shoot consistently! I come from a center fire varmint,target shooting background and cleaned often, sometimes every group if that’s what the barrel liked! And so this is what I did when I started shooting airguns!, big mistake... I was getting very frustrated to say the least!

So I learnt last night that if you really clean , and I mean really clean the barrel it takes 50 plus shots to come back on song . I had given a light clean after every use and that worked . Sunday I gave it a proper clean and this I shan’t do again for sure !! I thought I had broken it !!! Took an age to get back to accurate !! She’s back now and working amazingly well , super accurate with the 25’s and 34’s which is great news . I want to get out this weekend some time and push the distances a bit assuming this wind goes away . 



So far ... so good

Riog

Click to expand...

Yip, this is my experience too. Some barrels don’t like to be cleaned at all! I’ve found that my 12 groove LW and CZ barrels have to be cleaned regularly, but my Poly and STX barrels prefer to be left “dirty”. They take about 100 shots to be broken in from new, and then just get better and better the more shots are put through them. I think in the beginning the lead tends to stick to the micro-cracks in the steel, but the more they are used the more the cracks smooth out until the barrels don’t foul up at all anymore.

I haven’t had extensive experience with my Poly barrels (I don’t shoot them much because they are very pellet fussy) but I can tell you that my STX barrels (which are also a form of Poly barrel) don’t foul up at ALL after around 100 shots, even when shooting slugs. Each successive shot cleans out any loose lead.

Conventional rifling on the other hand is very prone to fouling issues, especially the 12 groove LW because the grooves are significantly deeper than the pellet diameter, so any lead that gets lodged in the grooves it stays there.

Matt

Thanks for all the info guys, learning about barrels, great!

Can you pick the smooth X and ART bores?

Matt, what I was referring to was how many rnds it took for the 12 groove to come back after a good cleaning, it was actually less rnds to settle out..., but would shoot very accurately for a good many shots then will shoot like a shotgun until u clean it again!, now if I use only JSB’s usually all I need is about 3 tight fitting cotton patches, the poly’s shoot so long w/o cleaning that when accuracy starts to drop off I forget it might be because they need to be cleaned...now keeping in mind that all my LW barrels EXCEPT my Redwolf barrel has gone through Martin Rutterford’s hands first & attached to RAW’s, And if anyone knows LW barrels I suppose it’s him!