Some of the myths are that the barrel is easy on break in, it is easier to clean, it creates more speed, and it is less affected by the wind.

The Shilen Ratchet Rifled (or as I call it, the Ratchet Twist) barrel has a radical rifling design that has little publicity or little known about it.

From a bit of research on the internet I found that Shilen is not the only company that makes profiled land barrels.

In fact, I found several barrel makers that have made profile land designs throughout the years.

Many individuals give credit to the design of profiled land barrels to Boots Obermeyer from his development of the Obermeyer 5R barrel.

Broughton calls their barrel the 5C or the Canted Land rifling, and Schneider calls theirs the P5 or Polygon Form rifling.

The Broughton barrel has been reported in comparison to have more of a slant on the face of the lands, where the Shilen barrel has a more defined edge.

All three companies offer similar caliber and twist choices on these barrels.

One thing that stands sure with the aforementioned is that they all have a reputation for being match winning, record setting barrels.

I contacted Wade Hall at Shilen Barrels and he excitedly told me more about this barrel.

Wade gave him the go ahead, and thus the Ratchet 4 groove rifling was born.

The project was tested and they found that while the barrels shot very well, they didnt shoot any better than the standard six groove Shilen barrels.

The project was almost scrapped due to the added cost of manufacturing the ratchet rifle barrel, but then they started getting feedback from customers that they handled the wind better than their standard rifled barrels.

The new Ratchet twist barrel took several world titles in the rimfire 22 category and a theory was developed as to why the world title fell into the hands of this new Ratchet twist barrel.

As the bullet then travels down range, the square-edge marks left by the rifling gives a surface for the wind to react on.

The ratchet rifled barrel leaves a different style of mark and therefore leaves less of a surface for the wind to catch.

I received the barrel from Shilen and took it to Sharp Shooters Supply where Fred Moreo inspected the bore with a bore-scope.

Fred described it as The profile of the bore and rifling looks like a circular saw blade, as compared to standard rifling looking like a timing belt pulley.

I found that there were many different theories located all over the internet; with all the theories of this style of rifling it elevates this type of barrel to Superman status.

Most of the theories make sense, but some sound outlandish, for example, I saw one claim that the barrel creates a lighter bolt lift.

A question that I have is, Why are there all of these theories to this style of rifling My thoughts are that this barrel style must shoot well enough to keep people talking about it.

The problem with testing all the found theories is that there are too many variables, and no two identical barrels are the same as each barrel has a personality of its own.

I hope that with these tests I can come up with enough evidence to suggest that the theories are either confirmed or plausible.

Shilen Barrel Break In