Douglas Barrels Still Hammer

Last Friday I received a barrel from Douglas Barrels. I can't really say it was long awaited, because it didn't take that long for Douglas to "spin" this barrel up. It came as a prefit for my Impact Precision 737R action that I use for PRS, plinking, steel killing and rock busting.

Dimensionally it is 30 inches long and tapered to one inch at the threaded muzzle. Don't ask me what the contour is - I don't know. The thick end is chambered in 6MMBR4EVER! And the other end fits AB Suppressor's Raptor 8 direct thread mount.

The usual check for figuring out my COL by finding the stick point came first. Load a dummy round long. Drop it into the chamber. Pop it out with your pinky fingernail. Shorten it a thou at a time until it doesn't stick in the lands.

2.425" with a 105.

Screw the barrel to the Impact. Install that old stainless Bix'n Andy TacSport Pro swapped from Mr. Machinegun Webster a couple years ago. Stock it. Scope it. Go shoot.

I made a batch of 20 with 34 grains of Winchester StaBALL 6.5 to zero with, to see if the BR would consume it without complaint. It did. Floating the dot in the diamond, and "ripping" ten into a group I didn't measure, satisfied me as to the accuracy potential of the barrel/powder combination.

Returning to the BR's upstairs laboratory. I took ThorroClean and scrubbed the barrel to pristine clean in a couple minutes, and loaded 20 more with 34.5 grains of the same powder/bullet combination.

The Gray Ops box carried the new pills back to the short grass strip, I proned myself and ripped a few more, finishing with 10 in a group formed by the same "floating" the Razor's dot in the diamond lazyman's technique copied from the first go around.

This attempt showed a bit more speed than the first time. I'd been trying to get in the 2850 fps range. The first trip gave me in the neighborhood of 2810 fps. The second averaged 2862 fps. Good enough for this part of the project.

The Douglas barrel was proving it could deliver pills on point @100 yards. Time to quit doing burpees and move on.

After loading another 20 Berger 105 Hybrids with 34.5 grains of StaBALL 6.5 a trip to Whiskey Creek Precision was in order. My wife wanted a new burn barrel and Dean's Barrels-R-Us doesn't just mean he chambers accurate barrels - he also supplies my wife with 55 gallon drums to burn burnables in.

Setting up on Dean's spool I took a couple of shots at his 12" steel at 500 yards. Then, pointed Douglas at the 500 yards 6" steel and it peppered that little bugger with 105s until the cash register said, "You've proved your point!"

Does Douglas Barrels make accurate barrels? History says so. This exercise validates it. Mr. Rodney, Douglas' owner of the last 2.5 years, can be confident that the machines creating Douglas barrels are as accurate as the company's 47+ year legend.

This barrel has a few more thousand bullets to guide and I have zero worries about taking it anywhere that a 6mmBR is useful!

More to come. Douglas has a few road trips to make . . .