Are some airgun barrels better than others?

by Harley Ayre

I'll answer the title question right off - some airgun barrels ARE better than others. Even among the top brands of barrels (Lothar Walther, Anschütz and Feinwerkbau) some barrels are better.

Barrel grades
What makes a great barrel? Accuracy! That's why the barrel is there to begin with. So, what I'm now telling you is that there are GRADES of barrels from most top makers. Not every barrelmaker has grades, but most airgun barrelmakers certainly do. Before I get into the grades, let's see what's desirable in an airgun barrel.

Rifling methods
For an airgun barrel to be most accurate, it must be as smooth as possible. When a barrel gets rifled, the cutter or button roughens the inside of the bore somewhat. Cut rifling is the worst for this, followed by hammer-forged rifling, with button rifling being the smoothest after the rifling is finished. A cut-rifled barrel does not need as much stress-relieving or straightening as the other types, so the maker has time to work on smoothing the inner surfaces. A hammer-forged barrel is quickest to make but has a lot of stress in the steel that needs to be relieved afterward. Then, it must be straightened. A button-rifled barrel is probably the best combination for making good barrels very quickly, which is why all the top airgun makers use it.

The pellet's path
The best barrels have very uniform bores. You can tell they are uniform by pushing a pellet down the barrel from the breech with a cleaning rod. The pellet won't hit loose spots along the way. Also, all good PCP barrels will be choked with a slight constriction at the muzzle. Usually, it's about half a thousandth, and it's there to make every pellet of uniform size before it leaves the muzzle. This is why a pellet sizer doesn't do any good.

Uniformity is where good barrels differ from better barrels. All the top makers start out with a steel tube of good machinable steel to make a barrel. However, the speed of the rifling button through that tube in part determines its uniformity afterward. Another step is gauging the barrels after manufacture and sorting them into the good and better piles. This is done while they are still blanks, because some gun manufacturers are willing to pay more for premium barrels.

Lothar Walther
Now I'll get specific. Lothar Walther is a barrelmaker with a reputation known around the world. They make some of the finest airgun barrels today. They also make their barrels in grades. A company can choose to buy a good barrel or a better barrel. A better barrel costs more, so you need to know how manufacturing costs drive retail prices. For anything that is made, a multiplier of five is approximately correct to determine the retail price. A barrel that Lothar Walther sells wholesale for $20 should add about $100 to the retail price of a gun. If the barrel costs $30, it adds about $150 to the retail price. These are ballpark estimates, not exact figures.

Market strategy
If a manufacturer wants to be priced on the lower side of the market, the only way he can afford to do so is to use the lowest cost materials and components in his gun that still deliver a product of acceptable quality. If a manufacturer wants to be priced at the premium end of the market, he has to deliver more value and must use components, like barrels, that deliver a little extra - and also cost extra.

Where does that take us?
That takes us to the Talon SS, which groups about an inch or a little less at 50 yards on a good day when shot by a good shooter from a solid rest. Then, there is the Prairie Falcon, which shoots even smaller groups under the same circumstances. However - and this you have to understand - the difference between the accuracy of a Talon SS and a Prairie Falcon is very small, because the Talon SS is already very accurate. It's the difference between either of these rifles and, say, a Gamo 1250 or a Beeman R1 that you get when you buy either one of these. The Prairie Falcon has a premium Lothar Walther barrel - that better barrel mentioned earlier. The Talon SS has a good Lothar Walther barrel that will out-shoot almost all spring-air rifles and right alongside some quality PCPs.

In my next post, I'll discuss what happens to the barrel after it's made and some things YOU can do to make it as good as it can be!