Bartlein Press Release - New Barrel Material

[Hand Skills]

I know (and have) LW barrels ,
They have their own stainless barrel name of the steel is LW-50.
From what I explore it has at least 2x barrel life vs 416 and similiar.

LW-50 is a trademark, this is known in the industry as SAE 630, or 17-4. It's different because it has the addition of Nickle. This helps the material deal with friction (among other things), and is one of the reasons nickle type steel (like L6) is used by a lot of saw blade manufacutres.

High speed tooling manufactures figured out tungsten works even better, but I doubt we will be seeing any tungsten alloys in rifle barrels due to the size and hardness of these carbides. They make machining a lot more difficult.

 

[Slick8]

I agree with JE, there's always a trade off. In this case, it could be machability.

If the claims are true and it's a workable alloy, I see two benefits...competitive shooters and fire breathing magnums.

Very interesting.

 

[ntsqd]

Sinker EDM'd chambers anyone?

 

[remingtonman_25_06]

Wish they had these when I built my 7-300 Win Mag... Oh well, I'll be getting one when this one shoots out for sure, which may be sooner rather than later if I keep using it in competitions. Entered my first 1100 yard match today and ended up taking 1st place! But at (4) 7-10 shot strings in 3-4 minutes, the barrel was literally smoking hot, could smell the steel, and fry bacon and eggs on it haha. Didnt matter, still put them right on top of each other. I'll never own any other barrels other than Bartlein. Had a couple Harts and Shilens, but Bartleins are hands down top notch in my book!!

 

[Buck Fever]

Sinker EDM'd chambers anyone?

This is actually a very good idea, no concentric rings, you can line up the chamber as precisely as you can measure and probably control the cut to 0.00002" or so if you know what you are doing and the machine is top notch.

The only issue is cost and if you lined up enough business, that could probably get reasonable too.

Heck, you could probably hammer forge a tough alloy with a bore and rough chamber, then button rifle it and finish the chamber with EDM. That would only leave receiver and muzzle threads to machine conventionally. It would make custom contours hard to make but that might be what it takes to make barrels with a tough alloy.

That would all sound great if it worked.

I don't think anyone would try to produce that commercially unless they had a huge order up front or they already knew it was going to double barrel accuracy life and also knew they could sell it.

 

[HRM Johnny]

Tag

 

[ntsqd]

One issue with an EDM chamber would be resulting surface finish. Would probably need to follow up with a polishing. Could do that conventionally or if avoiding circular rings/marks is the goal then could do it with electro-polishing.

Imagine what electro-polished rifling would look like!

 

[Hand Skills]

Titanium stands up really well to heat, I think additive manufacturing and Ti is the way forward myself. I have some pretty nifty hand tools created in this way.

 

[Rardoin]

Titanium stands up really well to heat, I think additive manufacturing and Ti is the way forward myself. I have some pretty nifty hand tools created in this way.

A HSS reamer would be a no go with Ti. Carbide reamers would require special geometry and would not likely play well with hand feeding the reamer. Maybe with a CNC lathe but that would greatly limit gunsmiths capable of chambering such a barrel. The new steel machines close to 416 and can be done with current tooling in possession of 'smiths than chamber barrels.

 

[Hand Skills]

The idea behind additive manufacturing is that no stock removal is required

 

[Buck Fever]

Titanium erodes and burns pretty quickly and it's not hard enough.

I have wanted to play with selective laser sintering and a Ti/TiC powder mix but that idea was for a knife blade, not a barrel, I doubt it would be appropriate.

 

[ntsqd]

So line the bore with hot forged Stellite. See? Problem solved.......

 

[Rardoin]

The idea behind additive manufacturing is that no stock removal is required

Surface finish would not work for bores or chambers. At least not with current technology

 

[Hand Skills]

Yes, polishing (aka lapping) would be required. I think that technology is pretty well developed