.223/5.56 - White Oak Armament 18" SPR Barrel Break-In and Accuracy Tests

you okay welcome back I decided to start this video with a reloading montage because that's all the reloading you're going to see this video is all about rain all about the range time because we are testing out a new barrel if you missed the last video I decided to put a new barrel into this Palmetto State Armory upper and I went with an 18 inch SPR barrel from White Oak armament always heard very very good things about white oak armament barrels I have no experience with them so I thought I would give them a try it is chambered in 2 to 3 wild this one has a mid length gas system and a one-in-eight twist the price is a little steep on these but this is a good quality barrels $275 plus $18 of shipping which I thought was a little bit of a ripoff but it was packaged well it was shipped quickly so I'm not going to complain too much about that they do offer a right rifle leaf gas system and a one-in-seven twist if that's more to your liking and what are you shooting this guy suppressed pretty much all the time I've got a Silencerco Omega suppressor it will be using most of the time and because of that I decided to go ahead and get an adjustable gas block away with the Wilson Combat sentry 7 adjustable gas block we're not going to talk a whole lot about it in this video maybe someday I'll make a video on it or something but I don't feel like I could do it justice here having never used it and not relieving note knowing how to properly adjust it and stuff so while we're out on the range I'll be making some references to and you know making adjustments to the gas block but don't worry about it other than to say the first 20 or 30 shots through the gun I was making some adjustments so the function issues at the very beginning were all about the adjustable gas block it was a little bit pricey at 120 dollars that kind of hurt but this is my first adjustable gas block and I know the cheap ones can be really crappy so I wanted to pick hopefully a nicer one I don't know we'll see we'll find out eventually but not really the subject up to video the barrel is going into a Palmetto state armory upper I bought this complete upper last fall in their Black Friday sales for two hundred and sixty dollars it was one of their five five six one in seven twist freedom uppers and it was a heck of a deal it shot pretty not that bad it shot oK we've got got videos of testing the original barrel but it just wasn't quite good enough for some of the bullet testing I do on the channel saw one of the nicer barrel that's hopefully going to shoot a little bit tighter groups and that's what today is all about is finding out for scope I've got a vortex Viper HST in four to sixteen by forty four it's in a Burris pepper mount we've got a Silencerco flash hider on here for my suppressor the bolt carrier group is just a crappy $75.00 semi-auto bolt carrier that I don't even remember where I picked it up I got it for my 16 inch 300 blackout and it's always done a good job over there and I used it in the Palmetto I want to use it today in this guy because I want to keep the comparison as fair as possible so when we were shooting the Palmetto Barrel I was using this bolt carrier so this bolt carrier group and that's what I'm going to use today with the white oak barrel as well if we give disappointing results I've got several other nicer bolt carrier groups that we can try maybe match up better all of the shooting will be done from my G G&G bipod and a rear bag from the prone so the lower is is actually from my 16 inch 300 blackout what I do with it where's it at where'd it go there it is there we go pretty standard Magpul UBR stock and a CMC three and a half pound trigger so decent trigger nice stock we should be able to get a nice rest so here's the basic outline for our testing I've picked out five different bullets and six different powders that I want to throw at this barrel a total of 125 rounds the brass is federal 223 brass range pickups a couple times this is the batch we've been using most recently in the other five five six videos on the channel seems to be doing pretty well this stuff is fully prepped ready to rock and already primed with CCI number 41 primers now the first test bullet I want to use is the 69 grain sierra matchking as you can see I keep around a bunch of them this is my favorite bullet this is my comfort bullet if I'm feeling down I want to go to the range into some nice groups I know I can always pull out some 69 grain massacre at match kings and shoot at least some respectable groups so I'm expecting outstanding performance in this new barrel if this barrel doesn't shoot these bullets well I'll be highly upset so this is our main test bullet and about half of our shots are going to be made with the 69 grade match King so anytime you're dealing with a new barrel the discussion about barrel break-in comes comes up and it's a discussion I really don't want half because I don't care everybody has strong opinions and I don't have enough knowledge to form a strong opinion so from where I'm sitting it just seems like a bunch of people yelling at each other I'm going to fall back and go by exactly what white oak armament recommends and luckily in they're frequently asked questions on their website they've got this little blurb here about barrel break in my personal break-in procedure is to take a new effort to the range zero the front sight shoot a group or two this will take about 15 to 20 rounds then I bring it back to the shop clean it good with shooters and a good quality brush check it with a borescope blah blah blah depending on how it looks I may hit the throat lightly with some JB that's it it's not broken in so he likes to keep it simple and that's what we'll do so 15 will to go out and take 15 or 20 shots to basically zero the rifle check function make sure it's not going to blow up and then we'll do a nice thorough cleaning so these first 20 rounds you might already guess are going to be 69 grade match Kings for powder I want to use CFE 223 we're going to use 25 grains of CFE 223 our overall length is going to be two point two six zero so if you can already tell for my weird use of mixed tenses I have already shot these we're already done my original plan for this video was going to end up being about thirty hours long so I'm trying to condense this a little bit you wouldn't think so with as much as I'm running my mouth but I'm trying to condense this a little bit so this will be our first little trip to the range is the first 20 shots through the gun so let's go do that so we're going to start out here at 50 yards we may need to bring it in I don't know we'll just try 50 first I've got the suppressor off the gun right now just in case something crazy happens the adjustable gas block I set up in the middle of the range that the instruction said would probably work I'm hoping to just not really worry about that guy yet so let's get this first shot out of the way see if it's on paper see if the gun explodes see what the brass looks like alright we're on the paper nothing seems to have exploded let me chase down this brass all right the brass looks really good no problems to speak of primer a little bit flattened so I probably got this load just a touch hotter than I would have liked but it's nothing terrible it's definitely nothing terrible alright I'll tell you what let's shoot two more and we'll see if we can put a little three shot group together before we make any scope adjustments all right so I've gone down three clicks on the adjustable gas block because it's looking very over gassed the brass is getting really hard on the sides not really hard but it's dentin a bit so I think it's smacking the crap out of the brass deflector so a little bit less gas I've thrown the suppressor on and let's go ahead and make some scope adjustments I did draw out a four inch grid on the paper we are 50 yards so each one of those four inch increments is about eight minutes so let's go left eight and a half minutes and let's go down two minutes all right five more shots in a magazine see what happens shooting at the center dot by the way I'll have been the whole time I probably should have specified that all right our scope adjustment was perfect but it looks like I did not leave us with enough gas that did not operate so weapon on safe let me go back to clicks all right there we go all right looking good so now we got our function back let's go ahead and move left half a minute and now I'll move the target out to 100 yards and we'll finish getting this guy's side it in ok our target is at 100 yards now I'm going to go back down one adjustment on the adjustable gas block five rounds of the magazine let's go ahead and shoot for that Center dot again okay when he jested just about perfect because it hit the camera you guys get bounced around it looks like about a minute high so let's uh yep let's go down a minute go down another half minute all right running well seems to be grouping okay now that we've got the scope just about where we want it let's shoot one more group before we kind of do the initial cleaning on this guy if we do seven shots that'll make it perfect twenty rounds fired so let's do that alright I'll move you guys over there so you're out of the way of the brass seven shot group at the top dot let's see what it does all right we did not lock the boat back so I mean need to go back up one sitting on that adjustable gas block group looks pretty good from here all right let's get some let's get some cleaning done on this guy all right so that first group of seven shots ended up being an 851 not bad couple little guys high and then pile them all right down there at six o'clock needless to say at this point I am very happy things are looking good and it's time for that initial cleaning now back to white oaks barrel break-in he said to clean it good with shooters and a good quality brush so here's some shooters choice I patched and brushed the boar very very well and nothing surprising came out it got a little bit muddy so I did I picked up a nice fresh brush you notice I had a nice new brush I may need to switch to the plastic ones or whatever because you know these bronze brushes they yeah the solvents attacked the brush a little bit especially when they're brand new so I got a lot of blue on my patches and stuff but I think most of it was from this I don't I don't I didn't see any anything that led me to believe there was major copper fouling in the barrel especially like my first patches before I used the brush they didn't have any bling on them at all so that went well I also needed a new 22 caliber jag my old one was looking a little bit dusty I ended up getting one of these pcs oring Jags just kind of on a whim they've got these they've got kind of a rounded tip and then these o-rings I had to trim my patches a little bit to get something to fit just right but once I had the right sighs patch man I really kind of dug this there are $9 I got this from Brownells I think it was $9.99 so a little bit more expensive or a whole lot more expensive than a normal jag but I thought it would be worth a try the main question I've got is how long these o-rings are going to last you know whether the solvents will attack the o-rings and make it junk they do sell replacement o-rings but I didn't get any of those so we'll see how that works out so far I'm kind of digging it I'll leave I'll leave a link down in the description in case you're interested or if you've tried these and you love them or if you've tried these and you hate them let me know in the comments because I'm kind of digging it so far also for rods I do use a nice dewey rod so just like they recommended pretty much following exactly what they prescribed now what I can't follow he mentions that he checks it with a borescope and then hits the the throat with some lightly with some JB if necessary I don't have a borescope and for those of you who aren't familiar with JB it's an abrasive cleaner so we're not screwing with any JB anytime soon I did look around at some of the the cheap little USB borescopes that people are using both Muslims seem to be five and a half millimeters the small ones and I don't think that will fit in a 223 so if you know of a good cheap or they call them into scopes like eBay or Amazon or whatever that will fit inside of a 223 bore let me know I'm certainly not going to spend hundreds of dollars on a proper borescope but a cheap little USB might be better than nothing all right that's enough cleaning discussion for time being so once our gun was clean and everything looked okay now it's time to really start shooting some groups see what this guy's capable of and I want to continue working with the 69 grain match King the three powders I decided to test first of all I am are 8208 xbr this has been a really good powder for me in 6.5 Grindal I'm I'm loving it more and more every time I shoot it it seems to shoot well and it's quickly becoming one of my favorite powders you guys on the other hand I'm are 4166 it's a still a reasonably new powder it's only been out a couple years back during all of the powder shortages I've managed to get a hold of an eight pound jug of this stuff the problem is that it has been completely mediocre in everything I've tried it in it's not bad it's not bad enough to call it crappy but it's certainly not good enough to call it good it's just it's just kind of right in the not exciting at all range and everything I've tried it in so we're going to try it in this guy and see maybe we can see how it does in the white over I'm also going to shoot CFE 223 some more so what I want to shoot are three five shot groups with each powder nine total shot nine total groups or forty five shots 8208 xbr we're shooting from twenty two and a half to twenty three and a half same charged weight with IMR 4166 twenty two and a half to twenty three and a half and CFE to twenty three we're shooting twenty four and a half to twenty five and a half so that's it that's right this is our first target setting ourselves up for success hopefully it's going to shoot well so let's get back out there alright so we are not going to shoot any fouling shots or anything so this gun is 100% clean first powder we're going to start with is 8208 XBR with our 69 green match kings so we'll have to keep an eye out these first groups after we clean what's the impact and if there is an impact how bad is it okay twenty two point five grains that's why i normally keep my zero out of the orange i can't spot those holes very well i think they're all in the orange the brass looks okay primers are a little bit flat but it's just like the other loads we were shooting with CFE 223 so that might just be might just be a thing here I don't know but we are moving on to 23.0 grains of 8208 XBR holy crap I like it I like it a lot at this point I think we'd have to say the barrel still shoots okay when it's clean let's see if it shoots okay when it's hot because these first two groups I've shot reasonably fast like not crazy fast but seven or eight minutes maybe something like that so let's uh let's go ahead and shoot this 23.5 grain charge try to keep this guy heating up see if we get any drift this thing's warm up alright so next up is IMR 4166 and we're not cleaning we're not doing anything we're just going to keep on shooting 22.5 grains all right the brass on those guys look just fine so let's move ahead to 23.0 brass looks good moving on to 23.5 [Music] all right so I guess IMR 4156 will shoot after all that last group I finally started seeing just the slightest little bit of Mirage every once in a while from my suppressor I didn't bring my suppressor cover out here so that should give you an idea about how hot the gun is it's still cool I mean it's taken me about 20 minutes to shoot those six groups so that's a little bit faster than it would be if I was trying to be careful about heat but not exactly a mag dump here okay so I gave it a couple minutes to cool down just hopefully I can get rid of that Mirage next up is CFE 223 first up is twenty four point five grains we've already shot 25.0 those were our ciders so we should be good here with twenty four point five let's see if it'll group twenty five point zero okay last up is twenty five point five grains [Music] all right I'd have to say that's not half bad for a first target very pleased so far all right I need to swap out targets I think what we'll do is we'll shoot the 75 grain Hornady next yep I think that's what we'll do and before we do that I want to run a few more patches down the barrel with just some Hoppe's number 9 let this guy cool down a bit and then yeah we'll move on all right looking pretty good right looking pretty good before we have a close look at these groups I want to show you one more set of groups so from the 69 grade match King I want to jump up to the 75 grain Hornady match boat tail hollow point this is their 75 Graner we are going to shoot Alliant ar comp we're going to shoot from twenty point five to twenty one point five grains and we're going to shoot a two point two six zero inch overall length so let's go look at that target real quick then we'll come back and look at all the groups all right so we got the bore clean again with just some Hoppy's didn't find anything weird I did take a little break let my eyes rest let the gun cool off it's uh yeah it's completely cool now so let's move on to the 75 grain Hornady match boat tail hollow points with AR comp our first charge is going to be twenty point five grains all right so I guess our one and eight twist barrel is going to be okay with the 75 that was a pretty good start so we are moving along to 21.0 grains you know it's funny that that last group I have several shots in that group where I didn't feel like your trigger didn't break exactly when I wanted or I was kind of floating around I kind of had some bad shots in that last group still sent them right in there all right last up 21.5 grains very good stuff very good stuff now I would say the real test begins because the gun has shot the bullets that it was supposed to shoot well 69 grain match Kings are supposed to shoot well same with the Hornady now these next three bullets not so much alright so at this point this is just incredible here's the 75 grain or yeah the 75 Green Hornet II groups first group was a 491 a 712 and a 504 really happy to see that the 75 stabilized no problem and shot freak lights out the 69 grain freakin target is just a thing of beauty absolutely a thing of beauty our best group was this second guy here with a 502 there was only one group on the sheet that was over an inch it was this dude with a one point zero seven nine he had that one little guy down there screwed us but looking at it I think what was going on you see there were no scope adjustments here so this started out down here at six o'clock and then ended up here just about right so I think we were kind of going through a bit of a point of impact transition here that's why we lost that one guy low so that's our biggest group but it's an explainable group I can see exactly why it would do that there is no doubt that 8208 xbr was the best shooter these the 382 LAX be our groups were the three best groups on the sheet CFE 223 was not bad pretty consistent there right you know between point seven and point eight so once again I'm our 4166 disappoints me a little bit but disappointment is a pretty harsh word when you're looking at groups that are this good so at this point you got to wonder if this gun is even capable of missing maybe it'll shoot anything so there's no point even watching my channel so these were the easy ones these are the bullets that was supposed to shoot well these are the bullets that I would be upset if they didn't shoot well so the next target are going to be the crappy bullets I want to set this guy up to fail so these are also lighter options so I'll go in with lighter bullets that have shot pretty crappy for me in the past the first is the varmint nightmare from mid-south shooter supply these are budget-minded bullets get them nice and cheap flat base off point varmint bullet these haven't shot well so far they didn't shoot that great in in the Palmetto Barrel so want to try them here with this guy the powder is going to be Ram shot tack and I want to shoot 23.5 up to twenty four point five and an overall length of two point one seventy-five these I hold out hope form there's a lot of people out there that say they shoot well I just have haven't had luck with them yet next are the 62-grain ss109 military surplus type bullets like the steel core ones that attract a magnet and all that crap the bullet for your m855 stuff these shoot awful I haven't found anything they'll shoot well in yet and when I say awful to 3/4 inch groups well three or four inch groups probably something like that at a hundred yards that is and the powder for this guy is going to be Ram shot X Terminator going to shoot twenty two point five up to took twenty three point five add an overall length of two point two six zero full magazine length with these guys the last bullet is the sixty-four grain Nosler bonded solid base bonded performance these are nice bullets these are expensive bullets but this is the bullet that finally made me decide to get a new barrel these shot oh so terrible in my Palmetto Barrel it was awful so looking forward to that I'm going to use CFE 223 with this guy again because nod were on their load data labels it is the most accurate powder they tested so my god here we go again 25 to 26 grains is what we're going to shoot so we basically just set up a gauntlet here and things might get ugly so let's get out there and see okay first up on this target is going to be the 55 grain varmint nightmare for mid-south shooter supply Ram shot TAC we're starting with twenty-three point five grains I've heard good things about this bullet so I expect the good groups to continue with this one there's our first flyer of the day all right so our brass looked okay moving on to twenty four point zero twenty four point five all right so our 55 grain varmint nightmare is going to need a little bit of load work up next up is the 62-grain ss109 bullet I freaking hate this bullet we're really looking forward to seeing how it shoots so let's get to it [Music] okay that's not a bad start for this bullet it's actually one of the better groups I've seen it shoot all right moving on 23 grains of ram shot exterminator okay last up twenty three point five grains of X Terminator [Music] alright so crappy bullets still shoot a little bit crappy that's okay but we're moving on to a bullet that isn't it shouldn't be crappy this is a Nosler you know 64 grain Nosler bonded solid but my Palmetto barrel shot horrific ly terrible groups with these like four or five inches so let's find out what the wide oak armament barrel can do so we're back to CFE 223 the first charge is 25 grains all right we're out five tried to group there's currently a bird sitting on top of the target camera that people are wife hopefully he didn't move it that would be just my luck I'm getting a little bit of Mariah's off of the suppressor so this guy's gotten a little bit warm so I'm gonna take a break let it cool down a little bit before I fire these last two groups all right 25.5 grains of CFP 223 okay last stop 26 grains all right that's a pretty drastic change right our varmint nightmare shot between one point six eight inches and two point zero four three inches our SS 109 shot between one point seven one four and two point two nine six and the old 64 grain Nosler shot between one point four seven five and one point nine seven six so crappy bullets still shoot crappy pretty interesting I'm not ready to give up on the varmint nightmare yet I want to continue to try different powders with this bullet and hopefully we'll be able to find one that shoots really well none of these are awful and this is like on average this is these are better groups with these bullets than I've seen in the other guns but still kind of crappy right and you just see it like none of these were trying to group type none of them work they're just generally inaccurate so that was very very interesting I don't know if this is going to make an interesting video but it made for an interesting test for me and I feel like now by God where to go there it is I feel like we've got a gun that'll shoot my god one thing I forgot to mention here on the bench I may have mentioned it in my range footage I don't know see this is a very confusing video I screwed this all up the way I filmed it and everything so I'm a little bit confused myself I can't recall if I mentioned or not after that first target of ceará match kings so we had shot 20 rounds cleaned the gun shot 45 rounds on that target I also ran a couple patches down the gun with just with just Hoppe's number 9 yep just some good old Hoppe's number 9 on some patches just to get most of the powder fouling out of there but after that I didn't clean anymore so it's going to take time to learn how this gun behaves you know when it's clean when it's dirty when accuracy maybe starts to degrade weren't really able to come up with anything in this video that would point to that same thing with barrel heat hopefully it'll shoot tight groups until it melts but I'm sure that's probably not the case so we'll have to figure out how hard we can push it that is another thing right I mean this is an AR if I feel like doing a 30 round mag dump from the hip I'm going to do it I'm not going to worry about you know throat erosion or whatever this is an AR I'm going to treat it like an AR don't want some fancy barrel that you can't even shoot right so is that pretty much it have we covered it I'm very very pleased I am totally pleased those are some of the best targets I've ever shot so I cannot wait to start throwing bullets at this thing and test them different stuff I think it's going to be an awesome platform for us here on the channel going forward but like we showed crappy billet bullets still shoot crappy so should still be pretty easy to differentiate the good ones from the bad ones hopefully so before I let you go give you a quick sneak peek of what's probably coming next with this guy we tested the 55 grain Lehi defense controlled chaos in the Palmetto upper and they shot really well and I've got more of those 55 I want to try them in this done and see how they shooting this gun as well but I went ahead and ordered the 62-grain copper controlled chaos a little bit heavier all copper so looking forward to trying these guys out and this will probably be our next 223 video will be these 62-grain Lehigh's looking forward to them so all those gel tests for these over on the Iraq veteran 8888 Channel and yeah like last week and that was pretty impressive so looking forward to trying those alright I think that'll wrap it up and I will see you guys next time

Channel: Johnny's Reloading Bench

Views: 117,371

Rating: 4.8885016 out of 5

Keywords: guns, shooting, reloading, .223 Remington, 5.56x45mm NATO, AR-15

Id: AUgsgUEPDGI

Length: 41min 57sec (2517 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2017