TargetTalk

I was going to replace the barrel in my Colt Gold Cup and was wondering what's the "hot" barrel manufacturer these days. I was looking at Kart and Nowlin but was wondering if there are any other manufactures that I may be overlooking that have quality match barrels.

Kirmdog

I am under the impression that for lead bullets-Kart barrels are preferred. For copper covered bullets Bar-Sto barrels are favored.

I mostly shoot lead. With the barrel on my GC the lower lugs are about .040 to short to lock up and the hood is another .010-.012 too narrow on both side (around .020 or more total). Tough time trying to get this thing to shoot groups instead of pattern. everything else is tight so time for a better fitting barrel. The gun will be used for bullseye only

Thanks for the info.
Kirmdog

Just a tip if you havent considered this part of the issue. Take a close look at your barrel bushing. It must also be zero tollerence around the front end of the barrel if you are to achieve match grade accuracy. If it is zero tollerance when the slide is out of battery you may have functioning problems caused by the friction as the pistol cycles. Next the bushing also must be tight where it fits into the slide. So tight that a bushing wrench has to be used to rotate the bushing for disasembly/ Good Shooting Bill Horton

Hi Bill;

I relpaced the bushing that came with the GC (series 80) because of a very loose bushing to slide fit/bushing to barrel fit and it did help some but not enough to make this GC competitive even for 50 foot gallery couses When in lock-up I could take the old bushing and move it from side to side in the slide with my finger and the barrel was same in the bushing (both fits wear very loose) . It was so bad I didn't even bother measure it I have the new bushing fit well with no barrel spring or barrel binding in lock-up but with no vertical lock-up at the rear of the barrel (lower lugs) accuracy has been tough to come by. If I push on the back of the barrel down while in lock-up I can push it down easily and it's noticable visualy no matter what barrel link lenght I put in. I did this as an experiment just to see if a longer link wouldhold the barrel up. Not a fix but just done out of curiosity.

Kirmdog:

May I offer the following: If your pistol has not been accurized "from the ground up" yet by a comeptent match-grade gunsmith . . . and it appears from your description that it most certainly has not . . .

the issue of "which barrel is better" is not even on the radar screen.

The best barrel in the world- if it is pointed in a different place every time, because the pistol as a whole isn't locking up the same exact way every time- isn't going to make any difference whatsoever.

Does this make sense?

Who built your gun? Are you using an out of the box Gold Cup for competition?

A match grade barrel and bushing (oversized) must be purchased as a kit and "hand fitted" to the lugs . . . the frame-slide fit must be tightened . . . the receiver pin (slide stop/slide release) must be purchased over-sized and hand fitted . . . etc.

To add to Steve's comments - I think that the GC's require an eccentric 1911 barrel. IIRC there's something about the dimensions of the hood that's odd. But there have been several generations of GC's, so I may be wrong regarding yours.

BTW if your lower lug is floating, your barrel is effectively sprung - it's going to have a similar effect.

I'd contact a good BE gunsmith and ask them for some advice. A post to Bullseye-L could be helpful as well.

The Gold Cup is stock right out of the box and has been since 1989 and has always shot terrible. The reason I ask about the barrel is because I'm going to have it rebuilt, slide and frame fit togetther, trigger work, ect as Steve and Solomon have suggested. Barrels are one of the few options that I have to make a choice of which one I want to be put in my GC. All the other things being done are machining issuse that are going to be left to the gunsmith. At times it's difficult to get certain brand name barrels and I don't want the gunsmith to start the work and then have the fitted frame sit in a box for a lenght of time waiting for the barrel to be delivered. Case in point, a fellow shooter had to have a new barrel put on his long slide Clark and ended up waiting for 4 months before the gunsmith could locate a 6" Kart barrel to replace it with. I wouldn't have the work started until I have parts in hand. The guy that is going to do the work has built many of the guns that are in use by shooters in my league and has a very happy following of BE shooters.

If I could end up with a GC that could hold 4" @ 50 yards from a machine rest I would be happy.

Kirmdog

I, like you, started out my centerfire bullseye shooting with a Gold Cup (a series 70 in my case). Not too far into the Sharpshooter class, I discovered that my slow fire shots weren't nearly on call. In my case, I sold the GC and went with a customized Colt Government model. I think I came out better financially by selling the GC and using the Government model as a base gun.

Back to the point. I have used Kart barrels (bushings too) on my guns and like them a lot. Your gun should be able to shoot sub 3" groups at 50 yards with good ammo, once your GC is properly accurized. Don't forget the value of a good trigger job. Another item that is commonly overlooked are the sights. Make sure that your factory sights make repeatable settings. You may have to replace them.

Misny;

I had my heart set on a Rock River Arms .45 BE gun but I didn't get my order in before they suspended making them. For now the GC will have to do but being older and smarter (I hope) I now realize that the GC wasn't the way to go and the money would have been better spent for something else. Hindsite is once again 20/20.

Kirmdog

I built up an Essex frame and slide using a Kart e-z fit barrel.
With bullsye loads - 200g swc from a rest it puts all the shots in one hole at 50 feet.

I believe Kart barrels are one of the most popular in bullseye competetion and I've read Kart makes the barrels for Baer.

Kart created the E-Z fit barrel for those who want to fit the barrel themselves - he sells a tool kit for the installation.

The hood on the GC is narrower but I've never heard of an eccentric barrel.

The hood on the GC is narrower but I've never heard of an eccentric barrel.

That's what I'd meant - poor choice of words on my part. It's not eccentric in the sense of having an eccentric radius.

Rumor has it that Karts are better for lead bullets (e.g. wadguns) while Bar-Sto's and KKMs are better for FMJ. Karts are often recommended as a better all-around barrel. But I don't test these myself, so I'm just reflecting the 'conventional wisdom' I've received. You'll often see claims to the contrary - e.g. that Bar-Sto's are better for lead.

My RRA and Marvel hardball pistols have Kart barrels, and the Marvel is capable of 1.44" at 50yds w/ custom ball ammo. That's pretty good for any bullet.

I suspect that what keeps this controversy, regarding the best barrel for a given bullet, alive is that these barrels are actually very close in their performance, and that the variability among barrels by the same maker is significant enough to create a margin of overlap among them. So you can always find examples that contradict a given claim.

Are barrels made by Stormlake, EFK, Fusion (likely made by someone else), Schuemann and a host of others really not in the league of Kart and Bar-Sto? Or is this a matter of shooters wanting a particular brand because it is perceived to be better than another?

I own a Fusion match barrel and find it hard to imagine a barrel shooting significantly better out to 50 yards. I will admit to not having not used a ransom rest, but I've shot 187/200 iron sights with factory ammo, which is not amazing, but more than acceptable for the average shooter.

Brian

There are a lot of good barrels out there, but Kart and BarSto have gained a reputation over many years as being accurate, of high consistent quality, available and reasonably priced. The top bullseye smiths have tested these barrels and like to use them. Nuff said.

I think that Misny's right + I think that these companies are willing to work closely with gun builders, so they've developed a good rep for high-end support.

For instance, David Sams had told me that he'd worked closely with KKM to improve the accuracy of his M9 ball gun. So that's the barrel he uses for these, and I think that he uses KKMs in his other pistols as well.

Back in the day, Jacky Best told me the stock Colt barrels were pretty damn good.

As one poster said, it's probably the last thing you need to look at.

Rover wrote:Back in the day, Jacky Best told me the stock Colt barrels were pretty damn good.

As one poster said, it's probably the last thing you need to look at.

I'm sure that Mr. Best didn't mean that the Colt barrels didn't have to be modified. The first custom 1911 I bought in 1978 had a Colt barrel. This Colt barrel was built up by Clark and fitted. It shot ok, like sub 3 1/2". I later had a Kart barrel installed and the machine rest groups tightened up considerably (as in an inch or so better). When Mr. Best was building his pistols, the pistolsmiths had no other option than to take a stock barrel and modify it to make it shoot. Fortunately, bullseye smiths today have a choice of custom barrels that can easily be fitted to a gun.

"Back in the day", the smiths had no other option than to beat the heck out of the rails of the frame and fit it to the slide. The tolerances of stock Colt autos were pretty sloppy. Thankfully with CNC machining the slide-to-frame fit is a lot closer "out of the box" for stock guns. This also is a lot less work for the bullseye smiths.

Back when Jacky built my gun, I had already installed a Bar-Sto in my Gold Cup. While discussing the job, he mentioned the quality of the Colt barrels and said he wasn't pushing aftermarket.

You're right about the slop. The first thing he did was to toss the bushing and start pounding the slide.

It shot about 2" @ 50 yards when he finished with it. I sold it this year and the new owner is absolutely delighted with the accuracy.