its luck of the draw. buy the one you like. or you could get a sporter and put a green mountain heavy taper on it, they have them in 17" and 19" and they are tack drivers. mine shoots groups in the .2s at 50y. mine is a blued 17", on the right

 

looking through my collection (if I don't count the "Black Rifles") I have about a 50/50 mix of stainless vs. blued

most of my collectable/unfired stuff is walnut/blued and most of my working guns are laminate/stainless

pick the one you like the looks of best...just remember stainless is easier to take care of



and I also like the suggestion of building your own using the GM HT barrels, I have 17's in both stainless and blue, and a 19" stainless...they all shoot nice tight groups

 

Second on the GM HT barrel in stainless. Shoots well and looks great. Plus, it works with any ammo I have fired through it. Currently is used as my sage rat rifle and sits in a Magpul stock. You will not be disappointed with the GM barrel.

 

Stainless is painless. But blue is what you do! No one answered the ops question. Is stainless more accurate? And I can’t answer it. So I guess the answer is probably not more accurate. I chose blue because that’s what Rimfire Sports had. And I ,too am very happy with my GM HVT .

 

The general consensus is that stainless and blue factory 10/22's have the same accuracy potential. For example - in Flysalot tale of 2 10/22's - one was stainless and one was blue. They both ended up at about the same place.

That said - stainless doesn't rust. Not sure if that's a problem in your climate or not..

 

Stainless may not rust in your environment but if one does not care for a stainless barrel as well as one would with a blued carbon steel.....well, it is your gun you risk, I guess. Ya pays yer money and takes yer chances. Maybe aerospace stainless is rustless but the commonly used gun stainless has not been, ime.
I have never found a definitive answer regarding potential accuracy of one barrel steel over the other.

 

While stainless seems to require maintence somewhat less often than blued in the storage mode, in line with what gcrank1 said, the Navy had a different term for it that helps put things into perspective - they refer to it as CRES, not stainless. That stands for Corrosion Resistant Steel, resistant being the key word, obviously.

Just a thought on the metallurgy side of the discussion.

 

Quality of the barrel is more important than what it is made of.

 

An old adage is,"given a decently bored and rifled barrel the quality of the reamer and the care taken in reaming will make or break it for accuracy".

 

i generally lean to the blued but bought a stainless international a decade ago and have never regretted it

 

I have both. And I agree it’s whats inside that counts most.

 

Like the rest have said, it's all about the rifling inside. Buy the one you want because you're the one spending the money & shooting it.

Welcome to the LVT club.