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  1. #1
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    Accuracy Evaluation of a Noveske 18” SPR Barrel

    Accuracy Evaluation of a Noveske 18” SPR Barrel







    Noveske’s 18” SPR barrel is a stainless-steel barrel that has a medium contour and a 0.750” diameter gas block journal. The gas block journal for this barrel is designed for Noveske’s low profile gas block and the journal is only one inch in length; standard length gas blocks will not work with this barrel. Fortunately, Noveske’s pinned and set-screwed low profile gas block is included with the barrel (as well as an intermediate length gas tube.)
















    The Noveske SPR barrel employs an intermediate length gas system which eliminates the short-stroke issues that are sometimes encountered in cold weather with some 18” barrels that utilize a rifle length gas system. The barrel extension has “M4” feed-ramps. The barrel has a 1:7” twist rate and polygonal rifling (not a polygonal bore.)














    The chamber found in this barrel is Noveske’s proprietary Noveske Match mod 0 chamber that “was developed to fire MK262 Mod 1 on AUTO in hot environments." I installed the SPR barrel in a Colt M4 upper receiver and free-floated the barrel with a LaRue Tactical 12” handguard.











    I conducted an accuracy (technically, precision) evaluation of the Noveske 18” SPR barrel from my bench-rest set-up following my usual protocol. This accuracy evaluation used statistically significant shot-group sizes and every single shot in a fired group was included in the measurements. There was absolutely no use of any group reduction techniques (e.g. fliers, target movement, Butterfly Shots).

    The shooting set-up will be described in detail below. As many of the significant variables as was practicable were controlled for. Pictures of shot-groups are posted for documentation.

    All shooting was conducted from a concrete bench-rest from a distance of 100 yards (confirmed with a laser rangefinder.) The free-float hand-guard of the rifle rested in a Sinclair Windage Benchrest, while the stock of the rifle rested in a Protektor bunny-ear rear bag. Sighting was accomplished via a Leupold VARI-X III set at 25X magnification and adjusted to be parallax-free at 100 yards. A mirage shade was attached to the objective-bell of the scope. Wind conditions on the shooting range were continuously monitored using a Wind Probe. The set-up was very similar to that pictured below.














    For this evaluation, I used one of my standard match-grade hand-loads topped with Sierra 55 grain BlitzKings. When fired from my Krieger barreled AR-15s, this load has produced ˝ MOA 10-shot groups at 100 yards.








    Three, 10-shot groups were fired in a row from the Noveske SPR barrel from a distance of 100 yards with the resulting extreme spreads:

    0.812”
    0.732”
    0.873”

    for an average 10-shot group extreme spread of 0.81”. The three, 10-shot groups were over-layed on each other using RSI Shooting Lab to form a 30-shot composite group. The mean radius of the 30-shot composite group was 0.28”



    The smallest 10-shot group . . .







    The 30-shot composite group . . .





    ….

  2. #2
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    Great write up and groupings.

    Something confuses me about the barrel design, though. This barrel is intentionally configured mid length gas to reduce cold weather stoppages but also has a chamber designed for hot weather function. Just seems like they'd go one way or the other instead of both. Sorry for the thread drift

  3. #3
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    Great write up, and an interesting test.

    Did you try any other rounds through the barrel?

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Former11B View Post
    Great write up and groupings.

    Something confuses me about the barrel design, though. This barrel is intentionally configured mid length gas to reduce cold weather stoppages but also has a chamber designed for hot weather function. Just seems like they'd go one way or the other instead of both. Sorry for the thread drift
    http://www.defensereview.com/noveske...view-part-one/

    "Noveske: ...........And then, when we go to chambering, it’s a chambering process that I developed as an employee of Pac-Nor, and I looked at how they were chambering barrels, and I saw the logic in it, and I found ways to improve it. The reamers are all custom-made for me as far as the grind, the angles, the number of flutes. The way we chamber, you never get any scoring on the lands forward of the throat like most other people have to deal with, because our chips are forced out the back. The end result is a beautiful, highly polished chamber. Every barrel is individually inspected to ensure against or prevent reamer wear and have an undersized chamber. They all get gauged on every point, and the design of the chamber is a design I developed after many different evolutions. This was designed to work…to do full-auto mag dumps with [Black Hills] MK 262 Mod 1 [77gr Open-Tip Match (OTM) 5.56x45mm ammo], and now you can sit there and pour as much ammo as you can through the gun on full-auto, and the thing that’s gonna’ fail is the gas tube. We haven’t had any stuck chambers since I came up with the recent chamber, which is called the Noveske…the acronym, which we write on the barrel is "NMm0", and that stands for Noveske Match Mod 0. It’s a chamber that gives you 100% reliability with as much retained accuracy as possible. You can have a more accurate chamber design, but you sacrifice battle-grade reliability. You can get stuck cases and other things with different chambers. "

    My take away from that is the chamber is designed for hot weather but will have reliability under extreme use in any weather. Hot=expansion of metal so if you put hot on hot you could get stuck cases? I'm guessing here that's the logic.

    But from the sounds of it since this is a stainless barrel it seems like a bit of overkill. But my thinking is if it's worth killing it's worth over killing :)

    Stainless barrel that can do 1/2" groups with a chamber designed to do full auto mag dumps....
    Last edited by alamo5000; 20 May 2015 at 17:10.

  5. #5
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    Very good write up as always Molon...

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Former11B View Post
    Great write up and groupings.

    Something confuses me about the barrel design, though. This barrel is intentionally configured mid length gas to reduce cold weather stoppages but also has a chamber designed for hot weather function. Just seems like they'd go one way or the other instead of both. Sorry for the thread drift
    It's intermediate gas, not mid. Sits between mid and rifle.

    I happen to have one of these barrels. Shoots wonderfully.
    Will - Owner of Arisaka LLC - http://www.arisakadefense.com

  7. #7
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    whoa, truly a quality post. good read, thanks for sharing!
    IG: Sexual_Meatball

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mecha_Arms View Post

    Did you try any other rounds through the barrel?
    I tested several different factory loads and hand-loads. This barrel mostly liked the 55 grain BlitzKings. Mostly.

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