243 barrel chop advice please

[Oly]

I'm looking at chopping the barrel down on my Rem 700 VLS .243 Win with the standard 26" 1 in 9 1/8 twist barrel (well, until it burns out & I can justify a better barrel!) to make way for an ASE S5 mod (4.5" length ~600gm, cheers Alan!). As most chops, I'm not particularly wanting to lose to much velocity or accuracy, just want make the rifle more managable. But out of interest, how short could I go with what impact?

 

Cheers,

Oly

[Oly]

Come on lads, someoone must be able to point me in the right direction?

 

I know it's a question that comes up every now and again, but I've done some searches and can't find much specific to .243 Win. Any advice greatly appreciated.

 

Cheers, Oly

[baldie]

I wouldn,t reduce it below 22". the .243, is just like the 22-250.....overbored. They need plenty of barrel to burn in. If you are shooting woodland roe at 100 yards or less, it doesn,t matter as much, but if you want a 400/500 yard gun, then it does.

[Oly]

Cheers Baldie, much appreciated. Any idea of what velocity loss I'm going to see at 22"? And will muzzle flash be increased greatly? Or reduced because of the mod? Some of the light bullet/hot loads I'm alreay using have a good flash to them!

[Guest Scotland Rifles]

Cheers Baldie, much appreciated. Any idea of what velocity loss I'm going to see at 22"? And will muzzle flash be increased greatly? Or reduced because of the mod? Some of the light bullet/hot loads I'm already using have a good flash to them!

 

Morning OLY

 

your muzzle flash will be increased and the moderator will only remove a small amount of it, i also think the noise level will increase but your ears will not detect to much difference anyway.

 

And as baldie said.

 

the validity factor only comes into play when your looking at shoots out past 300 yards etc.

 

HTH

 

bob.

[Mack]

I have an old Tikka .243 which I use for Stalking/Foxes and comes as standard with a 22" barrel. I have always found it to be extremely accurate but did use to get the big muzzle flash/unburnt powder scenario when using max loads of Viht 160/75 grain V Max. I changed to Varget powder, which use a much smaller charge for the same velocity and have never looked back.

 

Regards

 

Mack

[Oly]

Thanks guys. Having never used Varget I always thought that it was quite a dirty, but fast, powder - but just had a look round on the web and it sounds like it's much cleaner than the H414 I'm using for my 55gn Nosler BT's at present.

[Vermincinerator]

I chopped and threaded the barrel of a mates 22-250 AI to 20 inches to make a compact package with his A-tec mod.

Velocity with 69grn SMKs out of the 1-9 twist was 3530fps and it printed 5 shot 3 inch groups on a 6" paper picnic plate @ 550yds.

 

Ian.

[baldie]

Oly, if you know someone with an up to date copy of quickload, i believe there is a barrel length/ calibre calculator on there. That will tell you exactly what you can expect from a given length.

[20Tac]

I would be tempted to go a bit shorter than 22" if you're shooting foxes.

 

For deer I believe you can go shorter on the lighter bullets under 100gr, than you can with the 100gr bullets, which need a bit more barrel length to meet the requirements.

 

Bruce Potts said he will be doing an article at some point on cutting down a .243.

 

 

Andrew

[griffshrek]

OLY

 

im shooting the girly .243 with a 20" barrel, i get the best results from Varget and RL19 powders i did try H414 but the gun didnt like it . my best results are from 85gr reloads (85gr TSX & 85gr gamekings hpbt) the rifle really likes them both and all deer shot (fallow)have taken less than three steps before going down at ranges from 100--200m+ .

 

i have reloads for 100gr giving 2930fps /1900ft/lbs energy but found the 85gr bullets put them down a bit quicker .

 

tonight i butchered two fallow bucks (50 & 55lbs skinned ) both shot at 120m (same bullet palcement ,bullet entered shoulder exit offside ribs)) one with TSX the other with HPBT both quarting to me. The TSX as you imagined fully penetrated 1.5" exit wound, the HPBT had total jacket core seperation i recovered the jacket all twisted up under the offside skin but the core exited giving a good 1+" exit wound.

 

i have had more trouble if you want to call it that with bullets having jacket core seperation on deer 100gr & 85gr sierra's than ever the 20" barrel on the gun not having enough knock down effect. as long as you stick to reasonable ranges you should be ok with the shorter barrel .

 

i was out some weeks back paper punching with a guy who had a 24" barrel .243 we shot side by side and neither of us could tell and noise diffrence between rifles .

 

i used to shot a Rem sps with a 24" barrel and the only diffrence is the 20" rifle im now using is far more accruate i have not noticed it killing deer,foxes,rabbits any less.

 

if you want some load data drop me a PM............neil

[Oly]

Thanks lads, much appreciated. Must admit, thinking 22" at present.

 

Might sound like a bit of an odd question, but thought I'd best ask it. I keep quite a few bits in my cabinet, just to make sure they are safe (regardless of the legal requirements e.g. powder) but is a sound mod required to be in the cabinet by law?

 

Neil what load are you using for the gamekings?

 

Cheers, Oly

[Laurie]

Oly, if you know someone with an up to date copy of quickload, i believe there is a barrel length/ calibre calculator on there. That will tell you exactly what you can expect from a given length.

 

 

Dave,

 

in my experience QuickLOAD exagerrates the effects of barrel length change. It appears the algorithm used in the program assumes the effect of changing length is linear - ie 1" = say 40 fps change and that will apply throughout when going from 20 to 26 inches = 240 fps difference. (That was with an early version - today's might have changed. I've just got a copy of V3.5, but haven't loaded it yet.)

 

In reality, the MV reduction on moving from 26" to 24" will likely be less than from 20" to 18" as the powder burn loses energy in any event at the far end of a long barrel.

 

I'd agree with your conclusion that somewhere around 22" is a sensible minimum for this cartridge. Even at 22-24" powder choice is a factor. When I was playing with an ex-police .243 Parker-Hale M87 a few years ago with a 24" heavy barrel, some powders produced a really vivid flash and horrendous muzzle blast with 90-100gn bullets, Viht N560 being the worst I tried.

 

Laurie