I am interested in finding out about expected barrel life of a stainless match barrel vs. a chrome lined milspec barrel. Let’s assume the ammo is Federal XM193 55 gr. ball. The SS barrel I am thinking about is a White Oak. And for control purposes let’s assume the milspec is a Colt. Both 16" midlength 1:7.
Any input would be appreciated. 
I would pick my bbl for the application of the AR. For precision lower volume shooting, the ss has the edge.
I prefer Chrome lined in a full blown battle gun that will see thousands of rounds in short order.
Life will depend on shooting styles but it’s safe to say the bore of the mil spec colt will last longer than the white oak if used in the same scenario.
Depends on the type of stainless. There are stories circulating (including mentioned by John Noveske himself) that his SS barrels should still see great accuracy to 10,000+ rounds, and then drop off to ‘mere’ chrome-lined levels of accuracy. :eek:
Its more about the heat rather than the actual number of rounds down the SS tube that will degrade the accuracy.
You can overheat the colt barrel whereas I would steer clear with any well made SS barrel.
I remember reading an interview with John Noveske where he said some of his stainless barrels have had 15,000 rds fired in them and are still in service. Pretty impressive to say the least for a stainless barrel. I think the interview was in defense review. I am sure someone has a link to it for reference.
One of those guys like ADCO or someone did an extreme round count test on a good SS barrel. It was posted on barftard a while back.
The gist of it was that the barrel lasted about as long as you’d expect a Chrome lined barrel would. If I had a link to the specifics, I’d post it, but :rolleyes:
Most maker’s SS button rifled match barrels (including White Oak’s) are worth about 3,000 rounds.
A chrome lined barrel is good for 10,000+, depending upon how it was made.
Very, very few chrome lined barrels will shoot as good as a White Oak stainless.
After 3000 rounds in the stainless steel barrel, match grade accuracy may deteriorate but will it be worse than a chrome lined barrel with 3,000rounds through it? What type of accuracy is acceptable from a combat carbine with a chrome lined barrel? When do the groups become large enough to require replacement? At 10,000 rounds will the accuracy of a stainless steel match barrel be worse than a chrome barrel with 10,000 rounds?
In my experience if the two are shot similarly the SS barrel will last roughly half as much sometimes a little more than that vs. the chrome-lined barrel. The SS barrel will have much better accuracy vs. most chrome lined barrels. However some chrome-lined barrels are extremely accurate some as accurate as some SS match grade barrels. The two most accurate chrome-lined barrels I’ve found are the BCM BFH (hammer forged)chrome-lined and the Noveske N4 chrome-lined barrels.
Excellent information, thank you.
Posted by “bigbore” on TOS:
[i]18 Months and 15,000 rounds later, I’ve leaned quiet a bit about an 11.5” SS barrel and how it will handle hard use. After over a year of weekly, if not daily hard use(including a classes with Hackathorn and Super Dave), numerous other shooting events, and adding a steady amount of sustained full auto, Its time to see what’s left of this barrel. A few weeks ago I spend some time testing the Geissele select fire trigger burning through over 1500rds of his ammo almost as fast as we could load and swap the 10 mags we brought; definitely the hardest day of its life. I shot it one more time at 50yds, and was easily still hitting golf balls, but made the decision to take it apart and see how it looks.
Think back 18 months to when the upper $tainless $teel barrels were the must have because of the “extended life”, and “increased” muzzle velocity, and whatever hype was being spouted at the time. I compared several different barrels – and yes for some reason the SS barrels do produce more muzzle velocity than chrome lined barrels. Regardless of the rifling, or brand – SS barrels of the same length, by different makers, will produce the same muzzle velocity as the others.
This is the first barrel I played with the idea of moving the gas port 1” forward-as it would be shot suppressed almost all the time. It began life as a Wilson, SS 1:8 16” CAR barrel I purchased from Rock River. My shop guys cut it down, threaded it, plugged the gas port and drilled a new hole 1” forward.
It was mostly shot semi auto, but did see a significant amount of full auto use – most all just burning through mags for fun – so it was sustained full auto. I always cleaned the barrel after every use with Hopped #9 – wet patch dry patch. Every 5K rounds I’ll spend 30 minutes with copper remover, wet patch dry patch until the patches came out white.
From day one it was an easy 1MOA shooter, - last time it was sandbagged and shot for “groups” was around 12k rounds, and it shot great. It was shot out to 600yds once, 330yds a few times, and the extent of its consistent longer range work was smacking a 6” plate at 250yds. (To this day that plate is a piece of cake with ball ammo). The majority of the rounds impacted targets at 50yds and closer.
Overall the last 18 months have been boring. Clean or dirty – and shooting suppressed makes EVERYTHING dirty. Semi or full auto, rounds fed and extracted like clock work from the Wylde chamber. The unpainted parts of the barrel are now gold/copper colored by the excessive heat. Last March when it was below freezing, M855 was clocked at 2718fps, 3 months later at 50 degrees 2752fps, and recently at 75degrees 2780 fps. I’ll lump those variances into temps and different lot numbers.
According to a GI TE gauge – it has worn so that 2” of the rod enter the rifling – the gauge has another 1” before the reject line. I’m not sure what, if anything the reject line means, because the gauge was made for 20” chrome lined 1:12 M16 barrels? But there is measurable wear.
A big surprise came when I measured the land/throat erosion with my stony point gauge. I checked when new, and never remembered to check again until yesterday. After all that use, the OAL of the cartridge to seat into the lands increased by 50 thousandths. That’s almost nothing for that much use.
I’m not sure what I expected from this barrel. I understand how barrels last and SS barrels wear, leading to long range accuracy loss, but I had never known first hand of a hard use SS carbine barrel. There’s not much to say, the barrel has held up fine, and is still a good barrel for that application today. If SS barrels that cost twice much last as long, under the same circumstances, I’ll be amazed. So yes, a SS barrel is more than good enough for a fighting gun. [/i]
Basically, a “match” stainless barrel will probably cease to deliver match accuracy after a few thousand rounds, but it will be viable for general use for quite a while. All things equal, chrome will last longer, but don’t discount SS.
Sounds about like what I’ve said. Pat Rogers took at non-BFH forged chrome-lined BCM barrel past 28K rounds of purely training class shooting before it’s was just done.
All I can say is “It depends”.
Stainless barrels have a reputation for holding their accuracy and then letting go all at once. For instance, a Walther SS barrel I had shot a 190+ with a high X count one week at 600 yds. The next week it wouldn’t hold the bull of a SR-3 at 300 yds. That was a little over 4,000 rounds. I’ve had one SS let go at less than 3,000 and another at about 3,500. These are button rifled. They usually quit shooting at 600 first and shot OK at 100 for several hundred. They would have been OK for SHTF for those several hundred rounds.
But once the SS really lets go, that chrome-lined barrel with a similar round count is definitely going to shoot better. I had a Colt 1/9 that would shoot 69 MKs into about 5/8" for 5 at 100 with a similar round count.
What type of accuracy is acceptable from a combat carbine with a chrome lined barrel?
From what I understand, MilSpec is <5" at 100 yds.
When do the groups become large enough to require replacement? At 10,000 rounds will the accuracy of a stainless steel match barrel be worse than a chrome barrel with 10,000 rounds?
Most SS barrels won’t be anything but a tomato stake at 10,000 rounds. Some chrome-lined barrels will be tomato stakes too.
But, as you can gather from reading the other responses, it depends. It depends not only on your personal judgment, but on the fabrication method and material of the barrel.
For instance, cut rifled barrels have a reputation for lasting longer than button rifled. Plain hammer forged barrels are supposed to last longer than cut rifled. Chrome lined usually lasts longer than even that.
But all chrome lined barrels aren’t created equal. The Colt and I believe Bushmaster barrels were/are made by button rifling and then chrome lining. Those aren’t as durable as chrome lined hammer forged barrels. And, apparently Mr. Noveske has some methods for making even more durable barrels.
Plus, when it comes to accuracy, you can only speak of relative accuracy levels. A chrome lined barrel isn’t generally as accurate as a stainless button rifled barrel, but I’ll bet there’s tons of people here who had a chrome lined barrel that shot better than a lot of buttoned SS barrels. Even given that, I doubt that you’ll see a chrome lined barrel shoot 5 shots into <.1" but with buttoned or cut SS it happens relatively frequently.
So it really all depends upon what your standards are and exactly who’s barrels we are talking about.
I can’t talk about all barrels from personal experience. I’ve only burnt out plain, button rifled chrome moly barrels, stainless button rifled barrels, and got one button rifled chrome lined barrel to the point it shoots 1 3/4" groups instead of the original 5/8" groups. I’ve shot a few plain hammer forged barrels, but not on ARs or target rifles and not in anywhere near the volume that the target/blasting rifles get shot.