the nsr rails are badass. i’d have bought one if they were even remotely available.
There was a pile of these goofy things on the shelf at Merchant Firearms a week or two back…
I think the online shortage doesn’t match what you can find on the streets.
I’d like to expand on the OP’s original question concerning the heat shielding abilities of the NSR. How does the NSR compare to other aluminum hand guards in that regard? Does the narrow diameter of the NSR play any part, or do all aluminum hand guards heat up about the same? Obviously lets try to keep the comparisons equal, don’t compare a naked NSR to a hand guard sporting polymer or rubber rail covers. Thanks.
I can’t compare to other tubular rails, but my NSR gets a LOT hotter than the DD Lite it replaced.
Good to know. Have you tried the polymer rail panels from Noveske on the NSR? I’m just curious if there’s a way to have your cake and eat it too… the lightweight, compact package of the NSR sure is appealing, but nobody likes burnt hands either. How hot does it actually get? Uncomfortably so, or just enough to warm up your extremities in the winter?
Shooting 5 magazines in 15 minutes, it gets damn hot. Toward the end, too hot to hold with bare hands and uncomfortable with gloves (MechanixWear and PiGs). I just put some rail covers on it, plan to head to the range today, we’ll see if they help.
The Noveske rail covers slid on and locked very well for me. I don’t know how well they’ll stay on or hold up, but the installation was very straightforward.
Installed one a few months back and put panels around the grip area. My girl and I put just under 400rds through it Easter weekend in about an hour with a few mag dumps here and there.
The NSR itself got hot, but we both held the panel area without gloves through the entire shoot. It got warm towards the end but nowhere near uncomfortable. Throw on some gloves and it’s basically unnoticeable.
I would be trading it out for something different if this weren’t the case.
Same experience here with mine. With the polymer panels installed it is very manageable.
One odd thing I noticed is that with steel barrels mine heated up more but when running it on stainless barrels it doesn’t get as hot. I can’t imagine it’s the material so it must be the profiles or something but I don’t know. I didn’t have equipment on hand to record any real world measurements so this is subjective at best.
I’ve been shooting the NSR with and without gloves for a couple months now. I have a lightweight BCM barrel and use the Noveske rail panels. I’ve yet to have any issues with heat or notice any discomfort.
I just got back from the range. I shot 240 rounds in 20 minutes, the last three magazines being more rapid fire (90 rounds in about 3.5 minutes). This is after installing some of the Noveske rail panels.
Those panels helped a lot. Although they got hot, I wasn’t wearing gloves and found the heat to be very manageable. I used an infrared thermometer and after I finished the last magazine measured the temp of the rail panel at 145 degrees at the point where I gripped it. The barrel was 310 degrees just in front of the rail.
Great info, thanks! I really appreciate you taking the time to get legitimate temperature readings. I don’t suppose you’ve ever taken readings on the DD rail it replaced under similar conditions, have you?
Interesting. Are the profiles the same/similar or different? Is your rate of fire the same, or do you shoot the stainless barrels at a slower pace? I could see how you might shoot a stainless barrel less or slower at a range if it was more of a precision set up compared to your steel barreled guns.
I was looking at NSRs online yesterday and one site I found them in stock at mentioned that an internal heat shield was supposedly in the works that would attach between the barrel and the NSR somehow without using any of the keymod holes. They failed to mention who was developing said device, or when it would be available, so I’m a little skeptical. But it did get the gears in my head turning… there’s got to be some way to funnel at least some of that heat away from the rail and out the front…
No, never checked the DD Lite. As I was driving home, I was thinking I should have pulled the panels off and checked the bare rail temp too, for comparison
https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=97477
This thread is a wealth of knowledge on the NSR. From some of the questions it seems like some heve yet to find it via search, or taken the time to wade through it all. IIRC, some posts discuss a DIY heat shield conversion.
Thanks for the link. Any idea what page the heat shield is discussed on? 60 pages is a lot to wade through… I just spent half an hour reading and made it to page 8… tired eyes.
While I think Cold reports some thoughts using the heat shield, I don’t think there is any concrete info on it as it is not available yet.
-john