HW95 / 98 MK1 barrel Myth or Fact?

[TonyL]

Yep; 'tis a beaut.

[premierpistol]

I am completely in the camp of the earlier the better, maybe not so much of a 95 barrel from one era is better than a 80 barrel from the same era. if that makes sense?
my logic behind this is the ealier barrels (none star nut type) would shoot well with most ammo and offer good grouping.
my old one, now owned by Rapidresponse1, would quickly condidtion to most brands and head sizes fed to it.
a newer version of the same rifle I had from around 2010/2012, would be as fussy as hell, only favouring 5.53 H&N FTT and requiring regular cleaning to get the best from it.
out of sheer curiosity, I once swapped over the barrels to see if it was the state of tune. Both barrels were just the same performance in regards to accuracy as before, on the other actions. I swapped them back and ended up making a .20 barrel fit for the newer rifle before swapping it for some tooling.

I also had the mispleasure of trying to tune a mates .177 95k and that was the same, would not group well at all. in the endm we tried to shorten it to remove the choke and it completely transformed the gun. It ruined it indefinately

Strangely, the 99S barrels with the starnut were all okay?

I put it down to a cheapening of the barrel manufacturing and maybe a bad batch, could be something like the barrel fit into the block was crimping the rifling? poor or too tight crowning or similar but one thing I have noticed is that all of the barrels in the 95 and 80 that pre dated the star nut, all shot well.

I have not owned a really fresh one so cant comment on really recent examples.

[PCPShooter]

My early 77k is one of my more pellet fussy HW's ........again right pellet in - laser

[evert]

Just a single observation, but the barrel on my 1988/89 HW85 does not seem to have any tight spots at the breech.
A a surprising number of my more recent HW breakbarrels have tight areas in the breech.

I guess slugging a large variety of HW barrels may give you some clue?