Hey guys, I'm building an spr ish upper for my ar. I just ordered a noveske 18 inch medium contour match barrel. What kind of accuracy should I expect with it? The barrel I'm changing out is a 16 inch bravo co. Thanks.
- Thread starter coach4christ
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I have the same barrel and get around 3/4" -1.25" from most factory match loads. With handloads, 3/4" groups are pretty normal. The Noveske barrels are well made and very reliable but if accuracy is your primary goal, there are better options IMO. Although, we aren't talking by much.
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What to expect from Noveske? About 20fps increase vs most other barrels, 1/2" - 3/4" group sizes depending if you go stainless or M249 chrome lined steel. I won't look at anything else if accuracy in an AR platform is a concern. Just look at Noveske shooting team 
On all my ARs, the ones that have given me the best accuracy is one I built with a Rainier Arms Ultramatch (.308) and a Noveske (14.5" Lo Pro).
Thanks guys, pretty new to ar accuracy. My bc barrel gave me around 1 inch on good days. Hoping to improve.
What to expect from Noveske? About 20fps increase vs most other barrels, 1/2" - 3/4" group sizes depending if you go stainless or M249 chrome lined steel. I won't look at anything else if accuracy in an AR platform is a concern. Just look at Noveske shooting team
riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight..
OP,
I'v had a few Noveske barrels back when they were cool, and i can't lie they look sharp and the fit and finish is nice. but the truth is i had a hard time getting lower then .75 MOA most of the time they were around 1-1.25 MOA and as much as i am ashamed to admit I have this barrel right now http://www.brownells.com/rifle-part...-18-5-56-mk12-barrel-ss-1-2-28-prod53448.aspx and it's a honest 1/2 MOA barrel ....WHO KNEW!!
My advise...return the Ske and get your $500 back, get on to Brownells and buy the White Oak SPR barrel they have 3 different types in stock, and they have some pretty good online coupons on now that will save you even more..Then take the left over $250 and buy a shit ton of ammo and then to your hearts content..
I'v had a few Noveske barrels back when they were cool, and i can't lie they look sharp and the fit and finish is nice. but the truth is i had a hard time getting lower then .75 MOA most of the time they were around 1-1.25 MOA and as much as i am ashamed to admit I have this barrel right now http://www.brownells.com/rifle-part...-18-5-56-mk12-barrel-ss-1-2-28-prod53448.aspx and it's a honest 1/2 MOA barrel ....WHO KNEW!!
My advise...return the Ske and get your $500 back, get on to Brownells and buy the White Oak SPR barrel they have 3 different types in stock, and they have some pretty good online coupons on now that will save you even more..Then take the left over $250 and buy a shit ton of ammo and then to your hearts content..
When was Noveske "cool"? No where near the fan club as LaRue but I digress.
Viht N140 & 77gr match kings are amazing in my Noveske. I've had some solid groups with Hornady 5.56 75gr TAP LE through my 14.5" noveske stainless Vltor VIS rifle as well. Sorry yours didn't perform but like all barrels, application, good glass & time working up the right loads is everything when cutting deep into sub moa territory. Recommending some DPMS barrel isn't necessarily helpful. I've owned DPMS ARs including the SASS and they are ok but not 1/2" moa. But I guess one can get lucky & get a good one. The few I have weren't so much. The only one DPMS I kept was the 762 SASS and it's decent. Probably will end up selling it though.
Viht N140 & 77gr match kings are amazing in my Noveske. I've had some solid groups with Hornady 5.56 75gr TAP LE through my 14.5" noveske stainless Vltor VIS rifle as well. Sorry yours didn't perform but like all barrels, application, good glass & time working up the right loads is everything when cutting deep into sub moa territory. Recommending some DPMS barrel isn't necessarily helpful. I've owned DPMS ARs including the SASS and they are ok but not 1/2" moa. But I guess one can get lucky & get a good one. The few I have weren't so much. The only one DPMS I kept was the 762 SASS and it's decent. Probably will end up selling it though.
Recommending some DPMS barrel isn't necessarily helpful NO SHIT!!!!!
In now way did I recommend a DPMS Barrel I just stated I bought some cheap shit barrel and the damn thing works.... What I DID recommend is the WOA SPR, If you had good luck with your Ske, Good ON Ya! The point I was making to the OP it that WOA is a top contender, and IMO will always out shoot a Ske.. You may get a couple good loeads to work out of your Ske , but I guarantee you i can get anything from a 55grn VMAX to a 77rgn SMK to shoot 1/2 b or better from a WOA..
Cheers.
If you're going to build a SPR use a barrel and chamber that was designed to be a SPR. Noveske chamber is designed to maintain as much accuracy as possible for MK262 ammo doing mag dumps. I never understood this chamber on a stainless barrel. On their carbine barrels I fully understand this and recommend Noveske to others.
If you stack 10 WOA barrels against 10 Noveske barrels WOA going to hand Noveske their ass in the accuracy department. Noveske will hand WOA their ass in running mag dumps, or longevity of hot ammo.
If precision is the name of your game get a WOA or equivalent. I'm personally have good luck with BCMs 18" ss410 barrel. Although I don't believe it will be as accurate as my WOA.
If you stack 10 WOA barrels against 10 Noveske barrels WOA going to hand Noveske their ass in the accuracy department. Noveske will hand WOA their ass in running mag dumps, or longevity of hot ammo.
If precision is the name of your game get a WOA or equivalent. I'm personally have good luck with BCMs 18" ss410 barrel. Although I don't believe it will be as accurate as my WOA.
G
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Guest
+1 for the WOA. The WOA 16" SS 1:7 Match barrel on my Recce rifle shoots sub half moa all day with factory 77gr smk ammo.
There are a bunch of threads in the semi auto sub forum labeled something like "100yd accuracy - semi auto" where the "1/2 MOA all day" claims are put to the test. 6 groups of 5 shots per target sheet. If you really want to shoot for groups on paper then look to those threads and see what shooters are getting out of their ARs and what barrels/techniques they're using.
I'll give White Oak a good review. I've got one and it'll do .75-.5 with Mk262. I've seen an incredible amount of barrels come through my SPR courses and every Noveske performs very well; in both the accuracy department and reliability. AR accuracy has a lot to do with the operating system of the weapon and how well it's tuned to a particular ammunition. Things such as premature unlocking will have a devastating effect on accuracy and sometimes this can be very misleading to the shooter who's looking for those small group sizes. Another thing to consider is the amount of bipod load you're putting on the rail, especially if the rail comes into contact with the barrel nut.
Proof Research barrels are incredible also. I have a 16" that will clover leaf at 100 with little effort on my behalf.
Someone mentioned a Mk262 chamber and I wanted to throw out there that the Mk262 chamber isn't anything special; it's a 5.56 NATO chamber. The Proof Research barrel I mentioned above is chambered in 5.56 NATO and it's stainless. The Mk262 ammunition was developed for a 5.56 NATO chamber, nothing special.
Proof Research barrels are incredible also. I have a 16" that will clover leaf at 100 with little effort on my behalf.
Someone mentioned a Mk262 chamber and I wanted to throw out there that the Mk262 chamber isn't anything special; it's a 5.56 NATO chamber. The Proof Research barrel I mentioned above is chambered in 5.56 NATO and it's stainless. The Mk262 ammunition was developed for a 5.56 NATO chamber, nothing special.
I've seen great accuracy out of Noveske tubes with their Mod 0 chambers. Like Caylen said, it's a 5.56 chamber. It's pretty common to see Wylde chambers on your SPRish rifles. WOA uses the Wylde chamber quite often - as does JP, NorthTech, and others. WOA is also extremely accurate. If I shot my Noveske and my WOA side by side with the same match grade ammo I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference between the two from an accuracy perspective. They are both very, very accurate barrels.
Boone's comment around MK262 and the design intent of Noveske's Mod 0 chamber sounds like it's coming from the interview David did with the late John Noveske a few years back. Actually, it's a pretty interesting read and gives you incredibly detailed insight into what makes Noveske's barrels differnent. Here's the link Noveske Rifleworks N4 Light Recce Carbine: John Noveske Interview, Part One | DefenseReview.com (DR): An online tactical technology and military defense technology magazine with particular focus on the latest and greatest tactical firearms news (tact and here's an excerpt that speaks directly to the differentiators related to their barrels:
Noveske: Here is the thing I hate doing, which is the used car sales pitch, o.k., ’cause I pretty much don’t really do it very often. But, what separates my product from the rest of the products out there, is…the obvious thing’s the barrel, and, from start to finish, the barrel goes through more inspection and testing than any other barrel out there that I’m aware of. From the point we pull the steel of the trailer in 12-foot bars, we instantly hardness test and serialize each bar. Then, every bar throughout the entire production process is numbered accordingly to its parent bar. And then, like I said, we designed all the tooling so the diameters on the drills, the bore reamers, the hand-lapping process, the button that does the button-rifling is our design, and it’s an improvement over conventional polygonal [rifling] in that you get an extended barrel life over conventional polygonal [rifling]. In fact, I’ve never heard of one of our new barrels shooting out. In a year and two months, there’s never been a report of one of my new buttons…the new types of rifling types [barrels] shooting out.
We designed that new rifling for our Extreme Duty Machine Gun Barrel Project for the M249 and the Mk46, and we had so much success with that new design that I quickly applied it to all of our M4/M16-type rifles. So, the new rifling is 1-in-7 twist. It appears, when you look down the barrel, as a 6-land-and-groove, and what we did was we adjusted the angles on the sides of the land to give us the optimal performance. After rifling, there’s a stress-relief process that is designed to pull out all the stress without losing any hardness. The barrels are then trued-up so that when we put ‘em in our CNC-contouring lathe, the contour is 100% concentric to the bore, so that you don’t have an strange harmonics when the bullet travels down the barrel, and that’s part of the process of…the contouring process is…I’m pretty protective of it, so that’s about all I want to say is that it’s very accurate.
And then, when we go to chambering, it’s a chambering process that I developed as an employee of Pac-Nor, and I looked at how they were chambering barrels, and I saw the logic in it, and I found ways to improve it. The reamers are all custom-made for me as far as the grind, the angles, the number of flutes. The way we chamber, you never get any scoring on the lands forward of the throat like most other people have to deal with, because our chips are forced out the back. The end result is a beautiful, highly polished chamber. Every barrel is individually inspected to ensure against or prevent reamer wear and have an undersized chamber. They all get gauged on every point, and the design of the chamber is a design I developed after many different evolutions. This was designed to work…to do full-auto mag dumps with [Black Hills] MK 262 Mod 1 [77gr Open-Tip Match (OTM) 5.56x45mm ammo], and now you can sit there and pour as much ammo as you can through the gun on full-auto, and the thing that’s gonna’ fail is the gas tube. We haven’t had any stuck chambers since I came up with the recent chamber, which is called the Noveske…the acronym, which we write on the barrel is "NMm0", and that stands for Noveske Match Mod 0. It’s a chamber that gives you 100% reliability with as much retained accuracy as possible. You can have a more accurate chamber design, but you sacrifice battle-grade reliability. You can get stuck cases and other things with different chambers.
So, from the chamber, our barrel is hardness-tested again, just to make sure we didn’t lose any hardness in the heat-treating process, and every barrel is serial-numbered at that point. So, now, all the information about the barrel, the heat-treat lot, the packing slip number, the bar number, all that information is now attached to the barrel with a 6-digit serial number, and it goes through the rest of the process with all the information attached to it by that number. And, we keep a log book with every end-user and every bit of information, just in case there was a problem with one customer’s barrel, we can track down all the related barrels and pull ‘em in in an efficient manner. And we’ve never had to do that, but I can if I need to.
Crane: And all the barrels are polygonal-rifled, right?
Noveske: All the stainless barrels have…that button that we designed, I call "Improved Polygonal". The polygonal that I used in the past and that some other people are using has one shortcoming, which is an unpredictable end-of-service life. It goes from shooting great to tumbling bullets. Our barrel now gives you a predictable end-of-service life. As it’s shooting out, it’s going to open up in group before the bullets tumble.
Crane: And how many rounds are you gonna’ get out of that?
Noveske: I don’t know. I know of barrels that are over 15,000 rounds still in service. So, I don’t know how long they’ll go, but I know that they’re going quite a ways.
Crane: What about the chrome-lined barrels? Are those polygonal, too?
Noveske: Those are strictly made to the TDP for the M249, so they’re a 6-land-and-groove MILSPEC conventional land-and-groove with a 5.56 NATO chamber.
Crane: If you’re settin’ up an AR carbine for somebody, most of the time, are you gonna’ recommend the stainless polygonal?
Noveske: Well, it depends. I ask them what they’re gonna’ do with it. The stainless-barreled uppers and rifles that we sell are a precision carbine. The chrome-lined light carbines are…for the guy that says he’s gonna’ beat it up, he’s gonna’ abuse it, he’s gonna’ train hard, he’s gonna’ do full-auto mag dumps, that’s the gun for that kind of treatment. The guy that’s gonna’ be sniper, counter-sniper, or anything precision…
Crane: What if you’re doin’ a lot of…let’s say you’re gonna’ compete in 3-gun with it on semi-auto, and you’re just gonna’ do a lot of rapid fire semi-auto shooting and stuff like that, then what?
Noveske: Either one’s fine. They’re both very accurate. I’ve got groups that people have sent me with both barrels under half an inch at 100 yards, so it’s kind of like I’m competing with myself.
Crane: If you’re looking at both the stainless barrel and the chrome-lined barrel, what’s standard MOA on these guns, on these barrels.
Noveske: Stainless barrels–and I’m not sayin’ this from what I’ve shot. This is reports from customers—The typical end-user report on my stainless barrels is about .6 MOA, and the Light Carbine barrels, most everything I hear is sub-MOA, and that means it can be three quarters of an inch [3/4" MOA] or half an inch [1/2" MOA].
Boone's comment around MK262 and the design intent of Noveske's Mod 0 chamber sounds like it's coming from the interview David did with the late John Noveske a few years back. Actually, it's a pretty interesting read and gives you incredibly detailed insight into what makes Noveske's barrels differnent. Here's the link Noveske Rifleworks N4 Light Recce Carbine: John Noveske Interview, Part One | DefenseReview.com (DR): An online tactical technology and military defense technology magazine with particular focus on the latest and greatest tactical firearms news (tact and here's an excerpt that speaks directly to the differentiators related to their barrels:
Noveske: Here is the thing I hate doing, which is the used car sales pitch, o.k., ’cause I pretty much don’t really do it very often. But, what separates my product from the rest of the products out there, is…the obvious thing’s the barrel, and, from start to finish, the barrel goes through more inspection and testing than any other barrel out there that I’m aware of. From the point we pull the steel of the trailer in 12-foot bars, we instantly hardness test and serialize each bar. Then, every bar throughout the entire production process is numbered accordingly to its parent bar. And then, like I said, we designed all the tooling so the diameters on the drills, the bore reamers, the hand-lapping process, the button that does the button-rifling is our design, and it’s an improvement over conventional polygonal [rifling] in that you get an extended barrel life over conventional polygonal [rifling]. In fact, I’ve never heard of one of our new barrels shooting out. In a year and two months, there’s never been a report of one of my new buttons…the new types of rifling types [barrels] shooting out.
We designed that new rifling for our Extreme Duty Machine Gun Barrel Project for the M249 and the Mk46, and we had so much success with that new design that I quickly applied it to all of our M4/M16-type rifles. So, the new rifling is 1-in-7 twist. It appears, when you look down the barrel, as a 6-land-and-groove, and what we did was we adjusted the angles on the sides of the land to give us the optimal performance. After rifling, there’s a stress-relief process that is designed to pull out all the stress without losing any hardness. The barrels are then trued-up so that when we put ‘em in our CNC-contouring lathe, the contour is 100% concentric to the bore, so that you don’t have an strange harmonics when the bullet travels down the barrel, and that’s part of the process of…the contouring process is…I’m pretty protective of it, so that’s about all I want to say is that it’s very accurate.
And then, when we go to chambering, it’s a chambering process that I developed as an employee of Pac-Nor, and I looked at how they were chambering barrels, and I saw the logic in it, and I found ways to improve it. The reamers are all custom-made for me as far as the grind, the angles, the number of flutes. The way we chamber, you never get any scoring on the lands forward of the throat like most other people have to deal with, because our chips are forced out the back. The end result is a beautiful, highly polished chamber. Every barrel is individually inspected to ensure against or prevent reamer wear and have an undersized chamber. They all get gauged on every point, and the design of the chamber is a design I developed after many different evolutions. This was designed to work…to do full-auto mag dumps with [Black Hills] MK 262 Mod 1 [77gr Open-Tip Match (OTM) 5.56x45mm ammo], and now you can sit there and pour as much ammo as you can through the gun on full-auto, and the thing that’s gonna’ fail is the gas tube. We haven’t had any stuck chambers since I came up with the recent chamber, which is called the Noveske…the acronym, which we write on the barrel is "NMm0", and that stands for Noveske Match Mod 0. It’s a chamber that gives you 100% reliability with as much retained accuracy as possible. You can have a more accurate chamber design, but you sacrifice battle-grade reliability. You can get stuck cases and other things with different chambers.
So, from the chamber, our barrel is hardness-tested again, just to make sure we didn’t lose any hardness in the heat-treating process, and every barrel is serial-numbered at that point. So, now, all the information about the barrel, the heat-treat lot, the packing slip number, the bar number, all that information is now attached to the barrel with a 6-digit serial number, and it goes through the rest of the process with all the information attached to it by that number. And, we keep a log book with every end-user and every bit of information, just in case there was a problem with one customer’s barrel, we can track down all the related barrels and pull ‘em in in an efficient manner. And we’ve never had to do that, but I can if I need to.
Crane: And all the barrels are polygonal-rifled, right?
Noveske: All the stainless barrels have…that button that we designed, I call "Improved Polygonal". The polygonal that I used in the past and that some other people are using has one shortcoming, which is an unpredictable end-of-service life. It goes from shooting great to tumbling bullets. Our barrel now gives you a predictable end-of-service life. As it’s shooting out, it’s going to open up in group before the bullets tumble.
Crane: And how many rounds are you gonna’ get out of that?
Noveske: I don’t know. I know of barrels that are over 15,000 rounds still in service. So, I don’t know how long they’ll go, but I know that they’re going quite a ways.
Crane: What about the chrome-lined barrels? Are those polygonal, too?
Noveske: Those are strictly made to the TDP for the M249, so they’re a 6-land-and-groove MILSPEC conventional land-and-groove with a 5.56 NATO chamber.
Crane: If you’re settin’ up an AR carbine for somebody, most of the time, are you gonna’ recommend the stainless polygonal?
Noveske: Well, it depends. I ask them what they’re gonna’ do with it. The stainless-barreled uppers and rifles that we sell are a precision carbine. The chrome-lined light carbines are…for the guy that says he’s gonna’ beat it up, he’s gonna’ abuse it, he’s gonna’ train hard, he’s gonna’ do full-auto mag dumps, that’s the gun for that kind of treatment. The guy that’s gonna’ be sniper, counter-sniper, or anything precision…
Crane: What if you’re doin’ a lot of…let’s say you’re gonna’ compete in 3-gun with it on semi-auto, and you’re just gonna’ do a lot of rapid fire semi-auto shooting and stuff like that, then what?
Noveske: Either one’s fine. They’re both very accurate. I’ve got groups that people have sent me with both barrels under half an inch at 100 yards, so it’s kind of like I’m competing with myself.
Crane: If you’re looking at both the stainless barrel and the chrome-lined barrel, what’s standard MOA on these guns, on these barrels.
Noveske: Stainless barrels–and I’m not sayin’ this from what I’ve shot. This is reports from customers—The typical end-user report on my stainless barrels is about .6 MOA, and the Light Carbine barrels, most everything I hear is sub-MOA, and that means it can be three quarters of an inch [3/4" MOA] or half an inch [1/2" MOA].
I can't doubt Caylen's, Jason's, or anybody who's has great luck with Noveske. I can only speak for what I've seen. Noveske is a company that stands behind their product and does offer great CS if it's needed.
As a general rule of thumb, jamming isn't advisable for a rifle that's going to see practical use. If you're planning on going to a school or a match, most rules will state that if you have to discharge the rifle in order to extract the cartridge your rifle is deemed unsafe.
As for the groups, they're virtually all the same size due to the fact that unless you're shooting secant ogive bullets .020" isn't much of an adjustment. This is just what I've found in my experience. When I adjust seating depth for accuracy I usually run in .040" increments. That number has seemed to get the best results. I generally start at .020" off the lands to find the powder charge, then start working back in .040" increments to find the accuracy.
As for the groups, they're virtually all the same size due to the fact that unless you're shooting secant ogive bullets .020" isn't much of an adjustment. This is just what I've found in my experience. When I adjust seating depth for accuracy I usually run in .040" increments. That number has seemed to get the best results. I generally start at .020" off the lands to find the powder charge, then start working back in .040" increments to find the accuracy.
Jason, that's an awesome read and yes we did lose a good one when he died. Always liked their barrels but didn't know quite that much testing, measuring and double checking of every one went on. I've had great luck with my N4 and MSTN LMT matched bolt. Always runs flawlessly and is very accurate with a wide range of ammo. I've got a 10.5" Noveske 300 Blackout SS barrel as the base for my next build and look forward to testing it out.
Noveske makes very good barrels but you can get other brands that shoot as good for less money.
https://www.rainierarms.com/?page=shop/detail&product_id=815
https://www.rainierarms.com/?page=shop/detail&product_id=815
Satern also makes good barrels...
