One word Brux I have two and have taken deer and Elk and Moose from 642Yards out to 986 yards one shot on each, and shoot five shot groups of 5" at 1000 yards..
Barrels, which manufacturer??
- Thread starter Kmccord
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Clucknmoan
Well-Known Member
Two words....pop corn. Wait. That's one word...popcorn. I need more popcorn.
Here is my info knowledge dump on nitrocarborizing qpq treatment on barrels:
It should have zero effect on accuracy or any dimensions of the barrel. What it is at its core is basically a very good form of case hardening but with an added benefit of changing the friction co of the surface of the metal. Its only microns thick in its peak effect and then metal gets back to its original hardness quickly as you go deeper into the metal. Its positive effects are as follows:
* Surface treatment that is better than chromelining at preventing errosion as well as rust prevention inside and outside.
* It has no dimensional effect so bore chamber are the same.
* it drastically reducing surface friction which has the effect of dropping peak chamber pressure and increasing velocity as it allows an increased load.
* Drastically reduced throat errosion. In our testing it was more than 2x increase in bore life.
* Signifcantly reduecd copper and carbon fouling.
****** One thing though. Unless you go through a service where they state they will polish the bore you must do this before firing. The beads they use usually do not work in the bore which leaves you to do it manually. If you do not you will be getting just the oppoiste results until its finally polsihed from the bullets. You will get high pressure, severe copper fouling, etc...
It does not take much effort. Use flitz or other very nonaggressive polish [nothing harsher than jb at most] on a tight patch wrapped nylon brush and work it say 100 strokez or so. You can then use a chamber mop and spin it to do the same to the chamber. I use a drill with a xy table but a power screw driver or gun on lower speed will work very well. Shine a light down the bore and it will look like black glass and will feel slick smooth when you run a dry tight patch down it.
I mention this as we were one of the very first to offer nitrided barrels for the ARs we built. We did a ton of testing and research before selling to customers. Another company that was and still is know for their high end ARs tried to copy us and make it sound like something they had done on their own but did not bother to do research. They sent all their guns out with the barrels without polishing chambers or bore as they did not know or I guess botherd to test and had a landslide of cases of blown primers and severe copper fouling.
We started with the barrels then after more testing did bcg. Now yrs later most offer it. Not only is it superior to a parkerized chromelined barrel in most everyway its also way cheaper as its one process for internal and external surface and when you are doing it in full batches its way way cheaper. Top cl job our cost wad $13 per barrel [you still had to reream and polish chamber and clean up crown post cl if you want good accuracy] and then we had to parkerize which was 30min per barrel required sand blasting, lots of prep etc to get it flawless and still one could scratch thru it with a screw. The per barrel cost for qpq nitriding was $7 and this was complete. But there was 20 min too polish the bore and chamber.
Because it does not effect dimensions it can be used iin precision barrels as well. At first I had concerns that the heat treating might some how effect the stresses in the steel effecting straightness that might be seen in the tylically longer barrels of precision rifles. This ended up to not be the case as I nor anyone else I have contacted has had any such issue. It was more my lack of metallurgical knowledge and the unknown that was at the root of my concern.
Your cost will be way more than $7 for a number of reasons. One being we used a industrail treater as there were no firearm specific services at the time. The other is the minimum batch size was by volume weight and alloy of steel etc. A batch added up to 600lbs of barrels. You got charged for the batch price for one 3lb barrel 16* or hundreds of them. These places offering for your barrels have to put batches together. Deal with all the stuff of wotking with multiple customers. May also loose effecince if the do not have full batches but still have to run them as they have time lines for their customers to meet. Lastly they have to make a decent profit to put bread on their table at the end of the day.
For me I would happlly pay $100 or so to have a top custom barrel treated especially in a overbore barrel burner. The cost for rebarreling unless you are doing it yourself alone with the wait times makes adding double the life to our barrel or more worth it all by itself. Add in easier cleaning far less chance of damage during cleaning. Maybe a bit more vel are just freebies IMHO.
But its not for everyone. Take BR shooters I doubt they would want anything done to there barrels that involved chnaging the surface etc for fear of an effext nobmatter how slight or probable. At the top level I can not hardly blame them. They are very slow to chnage from what has always worked for them without huge overwhming proof of benefit. Heck many are still using amonnia base copper cleaner that have long ago been proven to be less effective than other cleaners. I actually ran one of the i formal testing and it was not even close using pure copper monoliths as the test median.
One last thing once nitriding is done ......its done. You are not going to be cutting thru it with even q carbide chamber reamer..ask me how I know..... Yes you can drill thru it such as to pin a gas block or drill a gas port but....it will take a solid carbide bit to break thru the surface. Again ask me how I know. Point beimg b3core sending it to be nitrided make **** sure e erything is right such as chamber, crown, threading. Etc.. While its possible to cut thru you are now also lossing its benefits where you cut thru it. Not to mention its a royal PITA and not cheap as it wears even solid carbide out fast.
- This is what Krieger thinks about it.
- Do you recommend Salt Bath Nitriding?
No. There have been many praises of this surface hardening treatment applied to rifle barrels in relation to extended barrel life, easier cleaning, non existent copper fouling. However there are some concerns that must be understood if you move forward with this.
The temperature that the steel is brought up to during this process is within the range that can remove the temper from the steel if not properly finished potentially causing the steel to become dangerous and not contain the pressures your cartridge will produce. Any heat treating process done after the rifling process can lead to bore and groove dimensions and uniformity being changed.
Also, the salt bath nitriding process produces a very hard surface finish. If the barrel is not broken in prior to this process being done, it will never properly break in. If the barrel is broken in there could be traces of copper left in the bore (even in the pores of the steel) and it will react with the nitriding process in the form of pits or corrosion in the barrel where it reacted to the copper.
The person or company you choose to do this operation must be aware of these items and should assume responsibility for what happens to your barrel as all of these operations and procedures are out of the control of Krieger Barrels, Inc. For these reasons, we do not recommend salt bath nitriding.
It's just starting to get good.
I nitride treated (melonite) each of my last two barrels. Plan on treating any and all future barrels also. Reduced bullet to bore friction, reduced errosion / increased throat/bore life, and reduced corrosion on CM barrels. Nitride treats the bore and exterior, and the corrosion protection is nice on coastal hunts where salt exposure accelerates the rate of rusting.
I nitride treated (melonite) each of my last two barrels. Plan on treating any and all future barrels also. Reduced bullet to bore friction, reduced errosion / increased throat/bore life, and reduced corrosion on CM barrels. Nitride treats the bore and exterior, and the corrosion protection is nice on coastal hunts where salt exposure accelerates the rate of rusting.
How could Krieger know if they don't nitride their barrels? Makes me wonder how their information be any better than the information available to the public at large? Nitrided barrels are available commercially by some firearms manufacturers. They seem to have it figured out.
By the way, I called Krieger about 3-4 years ago and talked to a company rep before nitriding my first barrel - a Krieger 4-groove .308 CM barrel. They told me they couldn't recommend it for company policy reasons, but they thought it had positive benefits if done correctly.
If you nitride a barrel, it will give the manufacturer the opportunity to say any future problems with their barrel was caused by nitriding. If that scares you off, better not nitride your barrels. Folks have been nitriding barrels for years now with positive results. I'm not scared.
Truc
Well-Known Member
I knew a barrel maker and what needs to be clear is the quality of steel makes the difference. If it has little sulfur deposits in the micro size, the easier to clan and shoot, I've won or placed well with both types in competition from 100-600 yes Not all Benchrest matches are for group, score is popular, where the five shots are placed on 5 targets and must be dead center
I guess those many hundreds of AR barrels never broke in along with the 3 customs precision I have had of my person guns. Its a good thing they all foul far less than broken in barrels not nitrided and clean much easier. Must of gotten lucky ????
I actually tested this as opposed to hypothesis. First how is trace copper staying in the barrels when they are preheated way above the melting point of copper? There are places that do crappy nitriding no different than barrel making. That usually end in a surface that is not as hard and even when speaking in microns is a thinner.
As for barrel break in. That is a burnishing of the surface or in otherwords a type of polishing hence why when you use a mechanical paste you sort of have to thru something similar to a very shortened break in. Some barrels with very nice surfaces are broken in only a few shots. Nitirding when the process is of the quench polish quench leaves s surface once polished that is far slicker than a broken in barrel not so treated so not sure how that works. The fact there is a increase in vel and lowering of pressure supports this fact. Very much the same happens going from a virgin barrel to broken in but this takes it beyond that degree a step further. Again its not like you are gaining 300 fps and can add 10% more powder but its there and measurable given if there is enough powder capacity in the vase and proper burn powder etc which is a given.
Not to mention that when dealing with a barrel burner like many of the popular LR rounds you are not actually burning up the throat while you are breaking in the barrel with shots compared to nitriding. Could you do a nice finally hand lapping of the chamber and bore??? Yes without a doubt and likley a good idea especially the chamber. The smoother the better makes complete sense but a top end barrel should need little in the bore itself.
Nothing is a free lunch but what krieger wrote just does not match up with what I know of the process or the logic of it with the understanding of what is going on.
I actually tested this as opposed to hypothesis. First how is trace copper staying in the barrels when they are preheated way above the melting point of copper? There are places that do crappy nitriding no different than barrel making. That usually end in a surface that is not as hard and even when speaking in microns is a thinner.
As for barrel break in. That is a burnishing of the surface or in otherwords a type of polishing hence why when you use a mechanical paste you sort of have to thru something similar to a very shortened break in. Some barrels with very nice surfaces are broken in only a few shots. Nitirding when the process is of the quench polish quench leaves s surface once polished that is far slicker than a broken in barrel not so treated so not sure how that works. The fact there is a increase in vel and lowering of pressure supports this fact. Very much the same happens going from a virgin barrel to broken in but this takes it beyond that degree a step further. Again its not like you are gaining 300 fps and can add 10% more powder but its there and measurable given if there is enough powder capacity in the vase and proper burn powder etc which is a given.
Not to mention that when dealing with a barrel burner like many of the popular LR rounds you are not actually burning up the throat while you are breaking in the barrel with shots compared to nitriding. Could you do a nice finally hand lapping of the chamber and bore??? Yes without a doubt and likley a good idea especially the chamber. The smoother the better makes complete sense but a top end barrel should need little in the bore itself.
Nothing is a free lunch but what krieger wrote just does not match up with what I know of the process or the logic of it with the understanding of what is going on.
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Without a doubt this is true. For us it was not an issue as we did so our barrels we had made would not have issues and would perform better than others. The idea being to offer the best product we could at a fair price. If I had not been injured I really wish I could have kept going as I really enjoyed the work.
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Kmccord
Well-Known Member
Tim_w, who does this process now days? I have no knowledge of this process, but is this also nitriding the outside of the barrel and if so, can you still cerakote the barrel without any issues?
bigngreen
Well-Known Member
I've talked extensively with Kreiger about nitriding and you guys are completely taking this to the wrong place, they have tested it and fully know the benefits and the possible down falls. For some manufacture Nitrided takes there barrels to the point in temp to close to there stress relieving temp and the increases the possibility of movement others are GTG and their process match well with the Nitriding. Some button rifle barrels use a copper based coating to lube the bore for buttoning, if this coating is not completely removed and it goes to heat treat the barrels is scrap, if your bore has copper in it when it goes to Nitrided it's scrap, Kreiger has looked at this and when you look at all the fingers in the process I absalutely see why they would not back a barrel that has been Nitrided.
bigngreen
Well-Known Member
I cerakote after Nitrided all the time, same process as anything else and same results.
