I've been having barrels melonited since 2013. Barrel life after treatment appears to vary. I pulled a friend's 223 AR barrel with 10,741 used across the course service rifle. The last 600 yard score before being yanked out was 198-8. Shot 20 leaked, jitters I am sure. Did not want him to go to Perry with that much rounds from a barrel I did.
Yearly, I send anywhere from 12 to 24 barrels to the meloniting place close to home. Their core business is on oil drilling components. In fact, I had to talk them into doing barrels for me.
I mentioned many times I do barrels for the TX JRs. Yesterday, I just picked up the batch of 19 barrels along with a bunch of sizing dies, bushings, mandrels, and action bolts. They do not have FFL, so no action. These small stuff belong to some friends. In the shop I have 26 barrels to spin up, these will all get the meloniting when done, plus another 20 sizing dies for other friends.
Meloniting dies, bushings, and mandrels is well worth it. Back in my high power days when I shot 10k rounds a year I sent my brass to be commercially processed and primed. In the two D650s, the 1st stage is a 21st century universal expanding die. Both have melonited mandrels. I run brass through them with no lube. Next best thing to carbide.
On the kids' barrel we've seen degradation of X count at 600 that varies from barrels with 5K to 7K rounds. Pre-meloniting we pulled barrels at around 2.5K for degrading X count with the 80 class 224 bullets at 6. Now, the kids' barrels are pulled at 5K. We believe it is safe to assume meloniting at least doubles the precision life. For magasine length ammo in 75-77 class bullets, we believe we can shoot in excess of 10K and still hold a minute at 300.
I came from the benchrest world, I was trained to cut 90 degree straight crown. I believe in a melonited barrel the very sharp edge becomes brittle that could easily chip off. On one pulled barrel that went out earlier than predicted, under magnification I could see some micro chipping. I re-cut the crown with a coated carbide, this time with a chamfer, then took it back to the machine rest. Precision was restored and got re-issued.
File won't bite the melonited surface.
