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Another barrel question fo MSH

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Another barrel question fo MSH was created by Scaup58

What's your opinion on chromoly vs. stainless for barrel steel and why?
15 years 4 days ago #1331

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Replied by a Guest on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

Always use stainless because buy the time you park or blue the CM you have the same money invested. Black paint is cheep. SS has the CM barrels beat in all areas of barrel topics. You might get lucky on a non name barrel maker and get a shooter with the ss also. Its vage but I'm on the fly. Hope that helps.
15 years 4 days ago #1334

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Replied by Scaup58 on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

Thanks again for the info & quick response. I just wondered if the ability to harden chromo more was any advantage. Price wise there's not that great a difference.
15 years 3 days ago #1336

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Replied by a Guest on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

All these barrel steals are not as hard as you think. They are in the low to mid C-30 range. Car wheels are somewhat close in hardness. A file is C-64 65 for example. Real hard barrels would explode or split in more situations than you might expect.MSH
15 years 3 days ago #1337

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Replied by Scaup58 on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

That makes sense as with hardness comes brittleness and I believe stainless has an advantage where toughness is concerned.
15 years 2 days ago #1339

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Replied by crux on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

So here's a question, would Inconel be a poor material for a barrel (beyond the difficulty of fabrication)?
15 years 1 day ago #1347

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Replied by weshowe on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

Gents,

My barrel of choice is generally make from stainless steel. You generally get a bit longer barrel life...dependent entirely on caliber, chambering, and how you fire the tube (rapid or slow). You'll get the benefits of corrosion resistance, of course. Practically, there really isn't a lot of difference between the two steels.
Interestingly, as the barrels wear out chrome moly tends to have accuracy to degrade slowly where stainless will have accuracy degrade in a rapid, sometimes dramatic manner. Under a bore scope chrome moly will get a classic "alligator" skin pattern from heat and erosion in the bore. Stainless will have a similar pattern, but will have "chunks" blown out of the pattern. Very interesting when seen with a bore scope.

The above info was from barrel maker Boot's Obermeyer. I use his barrels exclusively when I can get them. He is the developer of the 5R rifling that is so popular today.

Interestingly, you can expect 10-15K round barrel life from a SS .308 match barrel if you shoot it reasonably and care for it. A reason the .308 is so popular with the military and LE. Practice burns barrels. Calibers like the .260 Rem (6.5/08) will give somewhere around 6-7K rounds of barrel life. Hotter cartriges, smaller bore diameters all are rough on barrel life. I real consideration with the cost of re-barreling being about $600.00 for a premium barrel and installation. With the price of ammo rising dramatically that's not good news.

Hope this answers your questions. Personally, I think the cost of SS is worth it. I also think for the one gun shooter the .308 is the way to go...unless you have the back door keey to Ft. Knox.

Wes
15 years 1 day ago #1349

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Replied by a Guest on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

A barrel could be made out of Inconel using the hammer forge prosess but material cost is high. It would be a good question on barrel life. It took me 10 years to find a place that could TiNg coat a bore.MSH
15 years 1 day ago #1351

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Replied by Scaup58 on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

Hey, that's very interesting, how did the TiNg coated barrel shoot? I haven't seen any mention of it on the BR / long range comp sites so I am guessing that there are some issues. A couple more questions, what is 5r rifling? Also, what class thread fit is used on the Armalite barrel breech end for the extension?
14 years 11 months ago #1360

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Replied by a Guest on topic Re:Another barrel question fo MSH

The nitrate coated barrel worked fine bue the cost was higher and the life gained wasn't worth the cost. It aint many people know what I was running on equiptment, that was half the fun of shooting high power. I would arrive at some matches and one guy that also shot Salsbury would stomp his hat and cuss a blue streak. He couldn't win a match if everyone decided to throw in his favor and that was always sporting. 5R rifling in short has an acute angle on the front and aft land to groove area finished with a 25% radius into the groove to relieve stress on the bullet jacket with tall .002 high lands. The class of thread on the barrel aint a fair question. The broach cut through the lug area has been rough at times where they drag badly through the threaded area. Fit it as close as possible. Use an .815 dia 16 TPI and a grip length of .625 for a ballpark fit. Armalite may not do their own barrels, don't know but suspect they farm it out. A few years ago they didn't have the equiptment to do it. I have one with a Rock barrel on it. When they moved the new building fell in under snow as it was being built and that set them back time wise. So I'm not on speeking terms with them now because of some issues so I aint got a clue any more what their doing.MSH
14 years 11 months ago #1363

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