i bet they are making similar barrel quality if you choose to pay the price   just my opinion   art

Pope's rifling was a refinement of George Schalck's rifling. Pope's rifling profile made his barrels well suited for muzzle loading which allowed dirty shooting (not cleaning between shots) with straight black powder and duplex loads. This was a perfect fit for the Schuetzen game back in the 1895-1915 era. By the time good smokeless powders became available, the golden years of Schuetzen had passed - therefore no real need for muzzle loading nor Pope's rifling profile.

Tom makes an excellent point. If you're selling almost exclusively to top shooters, then the results posted for your barrels will likely be better average than other barrels sold to anyone who wanted to order from another maker.
Pope barrels were great, and many still are. But not everything he did was proven to really make a significant advantage over others. The left hand twist for instance hasn't been proven to be better. If it was, every barrel maker would be offering left hand twist barrels. But almost all offer right hand twist, so doubt it makes a difference.
The shallow depth of rifling is something many barrel makers felt helped accuracy, as they felt it disturbed the bullet less than deep grooves did. How Pope and others designed the shape of their cutter was unique to each maker, but although each was a bit different, there were a number of them that worked great. But not all were as well known simply because they didn't all promote themselves as well.

In order to allow for the inability of having a perfect bullet start from stationary to over 1000 fps about instantly, and perfectly follow the turns of the rifling, and all of the other factors of launching a chunk of lead accurately (and repeatably) at a circle on a piece of paper at a distance of 40 rods, Pope, along with his contemporaries did everything as accurately as possible.  To get past the things he couldn’t overcome with accurate machinery he utilized Schalk style rifle grooves to hold the bullet and impart spin to it with as little upset and distortion as possible.  In addition he used gain twist so as the bullet went through the barrel and accelerated, it was distorted less.  Also he used left hand twist and a tapered bore to ensure that each bullet was made to go through the barrel and leave the muzzle as perfectly and consistently as possible. Supposedly he opined that if you eliminated as many variables and did everything as accurately and consistently as possible, you’d have an accurate shot each time. 

With current barrel steels and modern boring machinery, it would follow that if gain twist and a slight internal taper in the bore are utilized, you should be able to produce by machine what HMP did so laboriously by hand.  Of course all manufacturing has tolerances, so you will still get some good barrels, a few very good barrels and one or two outstanding barrels from each batch.  For best results, get one of those one or two! 

Froggie

PS  The jury is still out on RH vs LH twist… apparently it really doesn’t make that much difference or, as someone already observed, more barrel makers would be using it. 

I am familiar with Pope's methods and cutters and it took 5 to 10 times the number of passes vs cut rifling (balanced scrapers vs single point hook). What would that cost at todays labor prices? His method simply did not make duds. So statistically almost all of his barrels where good. You all remember the earlier days of button barrels which where cheaper but statistics where against you getting a good one. Now the technology has been improved so that the statistics are now really in your favor of getting a god one.

Charles

ssdave wrote on Sep 29^th, 2022 at 11:50am:


I'm another heretic and agree with you!

My dad, who was an extremely fine machinist, used to say that too many never learn how to fully use the tools they have.  Clearly he wasn't referring to Harry Pope.

Bill Lawrence