Bsf barrels: the good, the bad, and the ugly

[crich4254]

Who has a BSF barrel? Pros and cons of yours. I have one on my short action 6.8 western and it will hammer .5” or better 5 shot groups all day long with factory ammo BUT I could not get a good reload worked up for it. I tried 4 different powders and 2 different bullets and have up. I’m happy either way. Anyone got one in 22 creed?

 

[scaast]

Running an 18” on my suppressed 300 WM. Very happy with it. It does extremely well with 165 grain Federal. Shoots the heavier bullets okay, but 165 seems to be the sweet spot.

 

[Pilsner]

Had/have a couple.
My 6.5-284 Norma built on a Howa long action put its first 5 shots ever into 0.22" using ELD-Ms in handloads.
With handloads my 6.5 PRC will do 5 shots in 0.5" on the regular and 10 shot groups in the 0.7-ish range, again with ELD-Ms
My recently sold 300 PRC would do much the same as the 6.5 PRC with Hornady ELD-M's from the factory box.
Already planning my next build and it will have a BSF barrel on it.
N=3 is a small sample size but I'm batting a thousand with them so far.

Only downside has been the wait times which went longer than they said on 2 out of the 3 barrels. Their veterans' discount more than made up for the wait time though.

 

[Willie IV]

I have one on a Tikka in 6CM. Chambered by my GS. After about 200 rounds I couldn't get anything Hornady to shoot - factory or hand loads. Just went to the range Saturday with some 107 TMK's. Brought 2 different loads and this was my best group of 5 shots. I have some 116 TMK's that will get loaded this week.

 

[hoooogan]

I have a pair of Springfields with BSF's. A 20" 6.5CM and 24" 7RM. Both have shot hand loads sub MOA beyond 600y. Can't ask for more than that. I have no reason to switch barrel companies so I now have an 18" 6GT on order to replace the 6.5CM.

My buddy put me onto these rifles. He has numerous 300WM loads that are sub 1/2 MOA.

BUT, being that they are essentially a pencil barrel tensioned by a carbon tube, we don't do high sustained volume. That's not what they are made for. 10 shots max out of the 6.5. 5 shots out of the 7.

 

[Pilsner]

Just picked up a Springfield 6 creed with a BSF barrel. Only 50 or so rounds down the tube but it is well under the 3/4 MOA gurantee. Waiting on some 116 TMKs to show up to see how it likes those. So far it has shot ELD-M's and X's equally well. 20" barrel and getting 2880 FPS out of it. Dunno if it is gonna speed up as it breaks in or not.

 

[hoooogan]

Just picked up a Springfield 6 creed with a BSF barrel. Only 50 or so rounds down the tube but it is well under the 3/4 MOA gurantee. Waiting on some 116 TMKs to show up to see how it likes those. So far it has shot ELD-M's and X's equally well. 20" barrel and getting 2880 FPS out of it. Dunno if it is gonna speed up as it breaks in or not.

It'll speed up a bit. My 7RM and my friends 300WM sped up a little over 100fps with factory Norma whitetail.

I only have a few overlapping data points from my early load dev on my 6.5CM, but I saw ~40-50fps increase on some duplicate loads.