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Barrel Weights

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If you have a TOTW catalog - or just go to their Website and look under gun parts, then barrels, they give you a good description as well as the weights of many different barrel profiles. It's very useful.

Rick
 
A,B,C,D pertains to outside dimensions and profiles of swamped barrels. The term "weight" refers to that. The actual weight is just that. For instance, a B weight barrel can be bored in any caliber up to about 50. The smaller the caliber hole, the more metal will be left, and of course, the heavier the barrel. The reason they don't go bigger than 50 is because the walls would be getting too thin, and potentially unsafe under certain pressure conditions, as well as becoming unacceptably flexible and whippy for most shooters.
 
Can someone explain barrel "weights" to me. The difference between a C weight, B Weight and so on. Thanks
Barrel weights are a method of describing the size of the outside octagon on swamped barrels. It is similar to the 3/4, 13/16", 7/8", 15/16" and 1" used to describe the size of a straight octagon barrel.

Because a swamped barrels outside dimensions change from the breech to the muzzle a simple number like a fraction of an inch can't be used so the idea of using a letter to describe the sizes was chosen.

For those of you who don't know what a swamped barrel is, the outside size of the octagon changes as you move from the breech to the muzzle. The breech area will be large and it will taper down to a small size about half way to 3/4 of the way up the barrel towards the muzzle. It will then begin to get larger again as it approaches and reaches the muzzle.
For instance a Colerain B sized barrel starts off at 1" at the rear of the barrel. It taperes down to .850" 13 inches up the barrel to the muzzle. When it is 27" from the rear the octagon size is .750". In the next 9 inches the octagon will still be .750". It then increases to .812 at the muzzle on the 42" long barrel.
 
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