The Douglas-made M40 barrel for a clone-correct USMC sniper rifle build — pre-fit, chambered, and contoured for a Remington 700 short action.
The M40 is the United States Marine Corps' bolt-action sniper rifle, built on a Remington 700 short action and fielded in successive variants — the M40A1, A3, and A5 — from Vietnam through the global war on terror. The barrel is the heart of the rifle, and the Corps profiled its M40 barrels at the RTE shop at Quantico, Virginia in a distinctive heavy contour that is close to a Remington Varmint profile but slightly heavier and cut to a specific taper.
Douglas Barrels has been a long-time supplier of military and precision barrels, and Douglas has produced barrels for the M40, the Mk12 SPR, and other programs for decades. This barrel is cut from a Douglas stainless match blank, chambered in 7.62 NATO, contoured to the M40 profile, crowned at 11 degrees, and pre-fit to a Remington 700 short action. It is 25" of barrel total with the final inch threaded into the receiver for a 24" overall installed length, with a 1.21" diameter straight-tapered profile and a 3" full-width throat.
The rifling is button-cut: a carbide button larger than the reamed hole is pulled through, displacing steel to form the lands and grooves. The button-pulling mechanism is matched to the button's helix to hold twist-rate uniformity to a tight tolerance, and the barrel is then stress-relieved on a specific time-and-temperature profile before lapping and final contouring. The result is a hardened bore with a uniform surface and a 1:12 twist — the M40 standard for 175-grain class match ammunition.
This barrel ships standard thread and profile, cut to accept a SOCOM Surefire flash hider or other 7.62 flash hider / suppressor mount. The threaded version is not cut for the over-the-barrel Surefire flash hider used on the original M40A5, because the matching over-the-barrel suppressor is not in the commercial supply chain. Schneider Barrels remains the more clone-correct M40 barrel option; Charlie's offers both, and Dan Ross — designer of the M40A3 — has gone on record using Douglas barrels for years for their accuracy and availability.
We're barrel snobs at Charlie's, and we stock Douglas and Schneider M40 blanks so you can build the rifle the right way on your timeline. If you want the pure clone-correct option, grab the Schneider M40 stainless barrel blank. If you want a drop-in Douglas with match accuracy and a shorter lead time, this is the one. Order yours today — we'll get it on a truck to your gunsmith fast.
Badger Ordnance
Badger Ordnance
