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How Much Velocity Do You Really Lose Per Inch of Barrel? A 5.56 Chrono Study
Key points: Much Velocity Do You
- Single test barrel eliminates barrel-to-barrel variance entirely
- Ten-shot strings, three loads (55gr, 62gr, 77gr) at every length
- Average loss ran 25–40 fps per inch — but far from linear
- The steepest drop-off starts below 12.5 inches
- Raw chronograph CSV published for independent analysis
About this Ballistics Focu video
One barrel, cut down an inch at a time from 20 to 10.5, re-crowned at every step, with ten-shot chronograph strings at each length across three loads. It's the cleanest publicly available dataset on 5.56 velocity loss — no barrel-to-barrel variables, no extrapolation. The per-inch numbers are not what the forum wisdom says, and the knee in the curve lands where few expect it.
Transcript: Much Velocity Do
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Transcript on file — indexed for site search. Excerpt not published for this video.