Psl barrel

[TATER313]

Where can I find a psl barrel thanks

[valley82]

I'm looking as well. Might have to have them custom made because I'm striking out big.

[valley82]

I stumbled upon this drawing for the specs of the psl barrel on another forum.

http://www.robertforbus.com/Barrels/romanian_psl_7,62x54r.pdf

I have contacted lothar concerning this and will update when I have more info.

[Richard Erichsen]

The majority of that barrel is .600" - quite ordinary and just as whippy as the originals. If you wanted something a bit heavier for looks, barrel harmonics or just thermal management (they get overheated fairly quickly) you could go heavier and modify the barrel mounted components to match.

We went through this exercise on Militaryfirearm.com here: http://www.militaryfirearm.com/Forum...s-for-7-62x54r

The three considerations were increasing average barrel diameter for improved heat and barrel harmonics, barrel rate of twist for using primarily ordinary 57-N-3xx type light ball without sacrificing accuracy and using a very high quality blank to start with.

Lilja: 1:10" 4 groove only
Krieger: 1:10"
Shilen: 1:10"
Pac Nor: 1:10"
Lothar-Walther: 1:9.4"

Green Mountain and several others make blanks in this caliber, but they are not of the true match grade the way the list above are. I suggested that a somewhat lesser barrel with somewhat better ammo (Czech Silvertip, Bulgarian, etc.) might bridge the gap and achieve similar accuracy potential, though that is all supposition on my part.

Review the thread. You might find it interesting.

R

[valley82]

Richard, thank you for the info it is a good read, the specs on the barrel link I posted should match the original psl. I am talking to lothar about keeping the barrel thicker through the gas block section of the barrel to eliminate some of the whip and then losing the front site so that it will stay thicker to the muzzle. They are going to get back to me with there findings.

[Richard Erichsen]

Richard, thank you for the info it is a good read, the specs on the barrel link I posted should match the original psl. I am talking to lothar about keeping the barrel thicker through the gas block section of the barrel to eliminate some of the whip and then losing the front site so that it will stay thicker to the muzzle. They are going to get back to me with there findings.

Lothar Walther will make a custom barrel if you can stand waiting for many weeks. Buying just the blank and having a local gunsmith chamber and profile the barrel may actually be both less costly and more timely. Lothar Walther was in the same camp as the other match-grade barrel blank makers in that they had 1:10" (maybe it was less) twist barrels. These are great for heavier ball, but it is not known if it will compromise accuracy for the lighter ball rounds. Some say it won't, some say it does, if only slightly. The original SVD and PSL rifles had 1:12.5" twist. This was reduced to permit use of API and tracer rounds which were very long and needed more spin to stabilize. Spin rate for the later barrels is 1:9.4". The most common twist for modern barrels is 1:9.5" and 1:10". The 1:10" may be the best compromise while still giving even stability to longer bullets, if they are at all practical to use in a given weapon is a separate question. Most folks who have gotten heavy ball to work still ended up with a shortened service life before having to repair the rifle, or build a new one. I'm nearly convinced it is caused by 1) overgassing, e.g. too large a gas port, not enough adjustment on the reduced end in an adjustable gas block) 2) Not enough reinforcement of the receiver under the trunnion and at the back receiver extension plates and rear trunnion 3) Not enough recoil spring rate to dampen the carrier to prevent smacking the rear trunnion. That said, doing all of what would be required to make it suitable for heavy ball is a lot of work if you end up mostly using ordinary light ball ammo @ $128 for 440 rounds.

R

[valley82]

Do you have any info on where to find a 1:12.5 twist blank? or have they gone away? I definitely do not want to shoot hotter loads through it or re-engineer the rifle to shoot the heavier loads. Also, I know that this is no true sniper rifle. Again thank you for your knowledge on this topic, I truly appreciate it!!! It would be great to get/find a supplier for this barrel or blank, I know from my searching and reading that there are a lot of people that would love to have a new barrel for these rifles.

[Richard Erichsen]

Do you have any info on where to find a 1:12.5 twist blank? or have they gone away? I definitely do not want to shoot hotter loads through it or re-engineer the rifle to shoot the heavier loads. Also, I know that this is no true sniper rifle. Again thank you for your knowledge on this topic, I truly appreciate it!!! It would be great to get/find a supplier for this barrel or blank, I know from my searching and reading that there are a lot of people that would love to have a new barrel for these rifles.

You'll see in the thread above - they aren't being made that way. If you want it, you're going to pay for the privilege of having a custom blank made, with added cost and time. Krieger will charge you about $300 (possibly more) for a custom twist, with an 18 week wait. I think you'll find that's about what the others will be asking as well, if they are willing and able to do it. Krieger is able to do this fairly easily because their equipment produces a single cut per pass. Button rifled barrels need a new button fabricated that may never be used again.

Reworking a bolt action barrel, say from an M30 sniper rifle, would be a lot of work to gain .030" of barrel diameter (.630" vs. .600") to obtain the specific twist you want and will require rechambering/finish reaming the chamber and throat.

There isn't much evidence to suggest a 1:10" twist barrel will harm accuracy relative to the 1:12.5" twist by much, if any, when we are comparing a true match grade barrel to a military barrel. Given the substantial precision with which the match-grade barrels are made, I'm pretty sure you won't get a "better" barrel recycling from an old war relic. There isn't a lot of talk of which barrels are being used in unusually accurate PSL builds. However, most folks are still in the ballpark of 1.5-2MOA, well within the original specs and not anything especially accurate.

Folks who have turned their old 91/30's into very capable long range shooters make reference to using the modern 1:10" barrels with good success. However, many of these shooters are not bound by any specific competition rules and the rifles themselves have little difficulty with heavy match ammo with very long low BC projectiles in the 200+ grain, 1.8"+ long lengths. I don't know what your accuracy expectations are, but may be different, or easier ways to get there. Let your budget be your guide.

R

[valley82]

Hmmm...so I guess I'll talk to duncans and see what they can do with a blank 1:10 twist while I'm waiting on lothar. I'll report any info I get here. Again thank you, Richard

[Richard Erichsen]

Hmmm...so I guess I'll talk to duncans and see what they can do with a blank 1:10 twist while I'm waiting on lothar. I'll report any info I get here. Again thank you, Richard

I'd be very interested in your results. Please keep us posted.

Take care,

R

[Holescreek]

I finally got a response from Dennis at Green Mountain Barrels today on my inquiry for a blank, he basically wanted to know if their standard AK blank would be good enough. (reference the militaryfirearm .com thread above) I just replied to him that I wanted 1:12.5" and at least a 25" blank. Hopefully with a little digging around on the net they'll see that there is an opportunity for sales of many blanks and finished barrels if they'd just make them.

[Richard Erichsen]

I finally got a response from Dennis at Green Mountain Barrels today on my inquiry for a blank, he basically wanted to know if their standard AK blank would be good enough. (reference the militaryfirearm .com thread above) I just replied to him that I wanted 1:12.5" and at least a 25" blank. Hopefully with a little digging around on the net they'll see that there is an opportunity for sales of many blanks and finished barrels if they'd just make them.

Dennis P. may or may not give you the answer you are after. GM is one of those production shops that makes acceptable barrels, but by no means are they in the same league with the Liljas, Kriegers and Lothar Walthers. I wouldn't be too surprised if Dennis tells you about the min order commitment, which I'm pretty sure is 100 barrels (in one email he told me 1000 barrels, probably just added too many zeros). I got that response after asking if their batch RPK/AK barrels that was finally available earlier this year could include some other options, including being undrilled and un-notched. Any deviation seems to demand a separate order entirely, with a min order to make it worth their while. Hopefully they will be a bit more reasonable for a raw barrel blank.

I think if you wanted to make your unusually accurate PSL go, you're probably going to need a true match-grade barrel blank. I have one other source I like to check for "weird stuff" (unusual calibers, stuff that is usually not in stock anywhere else) and I'll let you know if they have anything that might work handy.

R

[valley82]

I will definitely post when/if I get more info. Keep digging Holescreek, we should be able to talk someone into making a barrel to get all of these kits back into action! There is deffinitely a gap in the market right now. NODAK responded that they are taking names for another run of receivers.

[valley82]

OK, went by Duncan's Gunworks today, and talked with there in house barrel guy. I brought the printed out drawing of the original PSL barrel with me so he would have a reference. Asked about bringing in a blank and having them profile it...his response was "find someone with a CNC machine to do the work because he would have hundreds and hundreds of dollars in lathe time into it". Asked him about sourcing a blank with a 1:12.5 twist..."check with some of the barrel manufacturers (pacnor, lothar, etc)". Asked about a 1:10 or 1:9.5 blank..."same response". Let him know that there are quite a few people that would be interested in this, I would be in for three..."I'm not interested in the job". So Duncan's is out... I will post when I hear from Lothar.

[Richard Erichsen]

OK, went by Duncan's Gunworks today, and talked with there in house barrel guy. I brought the printed out drawing of the original PSL barrel with me so he would have a reference. Asked about bringing in a blank and having them profile it...his response was "find someone with a CNC machine to do the work because he would have hundreds and hundreds of dollars in lathe time into it". Asked him about sourcing a blank with a 1:12.5 twist..."check with some of the barrel manufacturers (pacnor, lothar, etc)". Asked about a 1:10 or 1:9.5 blank..."same response". Let him know that there are quite a few people that would be interested in this, I would be in for three..."I'm not interested in the job". So Duncan's is out... I will post when I hear from Lothar.

A few on that list above will make a custom rifling twist rate with a suitably higher price to match. Rather than trying to re-create the Russian design, maybe we need someone who has built a rifle in this twist and compare the accuracy they are getting using the more common 1:10" twists.

Light bullets are happy performing fairly well with a slower twist, so by rights the AK and most rifles in this bore shooting loads under 150 grain lead core, having a short ogive, should be fine with 1:15" twist ("keyholing" is usually the result of a compound spec problem, such as bore and groove diameter more so than just twist rate). However, it seems very common in this caliber to significantly overspin them, but this doesn't seem to cause much trouble for them. None of the common bolt guns in the caliber are using the slow twists they could, probably because the available barrel blanks being sourced are not available in the slow twists and it doesn't appear to harm performance enough to bother changing it to something else.

I picked up the following information on rifles in 7.62x39, still trying to find 7.62x54r rifles in the form of modern, commonly available bolt guns.

Zastava LK M85:
20" barrel, 1:9.45" twist

CZ 527 Carbine
18.5" barrel, 1:9" twist (even faster than nominal, or they rounded off?)

Savage 10 FCM Scout
20.5" barrel, 1:10" twist

These rifles all reportedly achieve 1MOA or sub-MOA groups at 100 yards using pretty ordinary ammunition. Part of this could be attributed to the nature of any decent bolt action in the consistency with which rounds load into the chamber with the bullet concentric with the bore and fairly decent barrel consistency end to end.

One of the few modern precision bolt action rifles from Izhmash in 7.62x54r is the SV-98 and it is the only one bucking the trend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-98

Rate of twist: 1:12.6" 4 groove, right hand twist.

The rifle is frequently used with loads up to 170 grain and this rate of twist is adequate, if barely, for the length of bullet and velocity at this bullet weight. This supports the notion the faster twist rates were for the very long, low mass tracer and reasonably long API bullets, not for use with more practical bullets that were a lot shorter.

R