Barrel and slug comparison STX VS Superior

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biohazardman

biohazardman

Member
Jul 3, 2019
5,451
299
Herriman, UT United States
Well FEDX brought me my new 500mm FX Superior .22 barrel liner today. 

It looks like this. Looks like someone had some troubles and just shipped it anyway. Anybody else have one to show?







Here is my original STX barrel it looks much better.





Shoved a pellet through each of them STX on the left and superior on the right. Superior looks very nice even with the mangled end on the barrel.



So what do you think? Should I even try to use it?






 
Hi,

What you are seeing is the newer crowning process, the old liners would form a pentagonal impression on the pellets while the newer one results in a rounder pellet, also choke dimensions are probably a little different. Generally, I have found the newer crown to result in better overall performance when using pellets.
Click to expand...

Do you have manufacturing timelines for these changes? This is very interesting.
 
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Hi,

What you are seeing is the newer crowning process, the old liners would form a pentagonal impression on the pellets while the newer one results in a rounder pellet, also choke dimensions are probably a little different. Generally, I have found the newer crown to result in better overall performance when using pellets.
Click to expand...


Although what you say may be true I would doubt very much that this was purposely done, to this individual barrel, as there is nothing symmetrical about the other crush mark lines at all. It looks very much like a mangled mess the indentations are not parallel to the rifling either and sometimes even cross them. They are not as deep as the rifling marks though, so I will try it out. My SK-19 barrel was far worse and shot decent, but not stellar like my Impact, nor did the replacement barrel for that matter.
 
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This change was made a long time ago, perhaps up to a year. The striations that are not parallel to the rifle pressing are done to provide a more consistently round choke. Lets not even get into what happens to planar vs round, rotating, subsonic projectiles...

From my experience, all I can say is that in my humble opinion "slug a" and later should carry this type of crown. This newer crown has been in "circulation" from about the end of 2019. I have a number of older STX liners in .22 with the old crown, I will gladly swap them with you if you are unhappy with the newer one!

Have a look at the crown itself, if you are lucky enough to be somewhere when a shipment arrives from FX, and have the opportunity to pick your liner, you will sometimes find some liners with some blue gaffer tape on them, they won't let you have those barrels but if you look at those crowns they are round and immaculate, amongst other things...

I don't want to infer anything, but my "slug a" was handpicked by the dealer, to best match those blue gaffer tape liners that they wouldn't sell me...
 
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Yup the crown looks good from what I can tell but the stampings on the barrel are very uneven and not concentric at all. So I have my doubts this was done this way on a regular basis. I can see it if there were a pattern or some kind of concentrically to it but there plainly is not. Unevenly spaced stampings at irregular angles they are.

I am off to shoot it shortly so we will see if the looks matter any or not.
 
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The one on the left looks pretty gnarly to me. Uneven engraving visible on the skirt. Smeared lead fins trailing behind the head. My guess is that will be no bueno.
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Dirty nasty, bent old STX liner I traded a lightly used .25 barrel for on the classifieds. The shroud was messed up too. That's why I bought the new Superior liner and made my own shroud for it. The ugly bent up old STX barrel outshoots the new one with all the pellets I tried.
 
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