I’ve seen some guys here with fluted Noveske barrels on this site. Did they come that way, or were they fluted by another company? How much weight can typically be lost?
In general, is there any loss of accuracy if a precision barrel if fluted?
Someone told me on this forum that your fluting should be done before heat treating. That makes sense. Most metal machining processes introduce extreme heat into the equation. I used to make and modify a lot of my own knives, and it was fairly easy to mess my temper up if I didn’t constantly dip the blade while I was working on it. So… I think if you trust the people doing your fluting to keep the temp down, I don’t see a downside - but it’s trusting that guy with your barrel that gets me. He could get your barrel in as the last of the day, be in a hurry to catch a hot date, and not take the appropriate time or measures to keep from screwing the temper up.
Post-finish fluting can relieve stresses in the barrel and your groups can widen and grow if not done correctly.
Fluting a 1-inch National Match M16 or AR-10T barrel can shed between 1/4 and 1/3 of a pound, depending on number and depth of flutes.
At the USAMU fluting is done on a CNC machine to ensure uniformity.
OP, Noveske did offer factory flutes. Pretty shallow flutes and pretty rare barrels.
My rifle smith does it all the time, no loss of accuracy. I would not could on any weight reduction. That’s where re profiling comes in, we are only talking about ounces either way.