Good day…I am going to trepeditiously build a rifle. When I say ‘trepeditiously,’ you have to understand I don’t know which side of a hammer to use when nailing a nail. I saw a DD barrel assembly with button rifling for a shade over $200 on the BCM site. I don’t know much about button rifling. School me…worth the investment?
Thanks.
Why would you get a Button Rifled when you can easily purchase a CHF for a little more, or even sometimes less.
if you’re as mechanically inept as you claim to be, I would look at buying a complete upper. Risking a kaboom with something you cobbled together and barely understand is not something to be taken lightly.
These are expenditures, not investments. I have YET to make any money off an AR I’ve built. Granted, I tend to sell stuff I don’t need to friends and family but with the glut of products on the market, somebody will always find what they need for cheaper than you can sell it and still profit.
I am a little under-estimating my lack of mechanical apptitude, but in all seriousness, aside from maintaining my M4 in the service and now owning one, I want to build one. For myself, not to sell. The one I bought has a lot of bells and whistles, and now I want to build as close to the issued M4 as I can.
As for button rifling vs CHF, this is why I am asking the question. Is it worth the price, or what other suggestions might one have?
how many rounds do you shoot a year?
here’s what i think…
i think you could order a CHF barrel, and maybe someone has a brain fart and puts a button barrel in your box. i think you could then receive the barrel, inspect the barrel, install the barrel, shoot the barrel, and grow old and die, and never know you’d been cheated.
i think cost is the only difference 95% of people will ever notice.
Or vise versa. I’ve read some accounts of people who ordered the button-rifled being shipped the CHF instead. I ordered the button rifled off Midway for $129 when it was on sale awhile back, and by one account, its the CHF (based on where the 5.56 1/7 marking is), but others claim the CHF have the date engraved on the barrel. Still not sure which is correct, but I only paid for a button rifled, so I’m happy either way.
It was a steal for the price. I’m only at about 300 rounds on it, but its been issue free (coupled with a DD BCG).
I am not a competition shooter, and my serious mil days are behind me (I am a boring officer in a boring job in the Navy reserve), I don’t need proficiency for my civ job, so my round count will likely not exceed 1,200 rounds a year plus a class or two.
The main reason I am asking regarding this barrel assy is that see the barrel assembly is on sale for a little over $200, whereas the ‘normal’ price is $379. The consumer in me sees 40% off, but the shooter in me doesn’t know if it is ‘worth’ it or if I should get a CHF assy.
i think you’d need to shoot about 750% more than you do before a CHF barrel’s potential benefits would be noticeable to you.
chances are, if you’re going to get into building, you probably wont be putting 30k+ on any given gun, even if you were to start shooting 10 times as much as you do now. it’s been a long time since i’ve put any more than 15k through a gun. most of the guns i build for myself don’t get more than 2k put through them before retiring to the safe, where they await being cannibalized or sold to fund new builds.
I will NOT be shooting that much, bkb. This rifle will be a ‘project rifle’, and like I said, for the range and a couple classes a year. If that barrel isn’t going to make that much of a difference for my use, then it seems like a decent value.
That being the case and your usage being that low and not hard by any means. Than a button rifling should be sufficiently suited towards your needs. However I might point out that if you are able to get an upgrade at a marginal price point above your intended expenditure than why not. If any case you happen to decide to sell said barrel or part etc… You should be able to get a little more on the back end than you would by purchasing the lower graded barrel. Needless to say many consumers won’t know the difference, but you would have a far greater pool of consumers available if you decided to sell later on if it was a CHF barrel, etc…
I’ve bought, sold, built, traded, and shot AR’s for years. In the AR world hammer forged is somewhat new, in barrels it’s been around a long time. How many hobbyist shooters have you heard of that shot out a barrel? To me the hammer forging is a nice plus, but not that big a deal. By the time you wear it out by shooting you’ll want something else or another rifle.
There is nothing special about cold hammer forged barrels.
Lots of Taliban are rotting dead with cold hammer forged barrels laying next to them.
Buy whatever is cheaper, and save the difference on ammo, mags and shooting time.