Bartlein Press Release - New Barrel Material

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.
Depends on the grade of titanium my friend, I have fooled around with hardening titanium (again, for edged tools). You could be correct, but based on the materials data and some of the applications I have seen, I have a different opinion (and that's ok)
 
I have played with several alloys too. You can't harden it enough to make a blade unless you add carbide which is why I want to try SLS with a Ti/TiC powder mix.

Beyond hardness, it has very poor thermal conductivity which means heat that you put in to the bore is going to stay in the bore until you burn up the rifling and your barrel looks like the inside of a 150 year old San Francisco sewer pipe.
 
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!
The interior of custom made rifle barrels (Krieger, Hart, Bartlein, Benchmark and the like) are usually not lapped beyond about 320g / 400g. Why? Because a perfectly smooth rifle barrel will copper foul like crazy. Too much friction! Those "circular marks" in some chambers help with bolt thrust. They give the brass something to grab to as it expands as pressure builds upon firing. Again, a good custom cut chamber is best when polished with no finer than 320g wet & dry paper.
 
Electro-polish doesn't have to be taken clear to a mirror finish, even if that is the norm. So we need a interior finish that is much like that which is applied to racing sail boat hulls? As EDM'd would probably work then.
 
According to a gunsmith with a bit of experience with the new composition it is slightly different than CM or 416 SS. He did mention it is a little harder on tooling but nothing very significant.
 
I wonder how this was found....I hear(Barrel maker interviews) these guys kind of get what they get from the big steel companies....

I wonder if this is the case of.....I can't fill your full order for 6 mo, but if you will take this other nearly same bar stock, I think you can make a good barrel from it. Then in testing it lasted forever!

btw, this is total speculation....I know nothing.
 
I wonder how this was found....I hear(Barrel maker interviews) these guys kind of get what they get from the big steel companies....

I wonder if this is the case of.....I can't fill your full order for 6 mo, but if you will take this other nearly same bar stock, I think you can make a good barrel from it. Then in testing it lasted forever!

btw, this is total speculation....I know nothing.
No, Bartlein specifically formulated this heat for their use.
 
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Shoot Straight!

StraightShooter77
Any idea what weight on this new material is compared to same profile of the old?
 
A guy on FB testing one of the new metallurgy barrels reported the following:

" These are phenomenal barrels. This new material has me at about .003" per 100 rounds as opposed to the normal .007-8" I see per 100 rounds. I've got my second one on the way already. These are definitely worth looking into."

Chambering: 6 x 47 Lapua


If your guy is wearing out his barrels @.007 to .008 Thousandths per 100 rounds he is shooting Cratex bullets or powder laced with Valve grinding compound. Normal wear is much less than that and setting the chamber back to clean up the lands and leads normally only needs to be done once in the life of a barrel, and then It is only .010 + after thousands of rounds.

There is no doubt that tougher materials are available but tougher materials are also harder to machine, so the quality/accuracy Is the first thing to suffer. The factories can buy and use Million dollar machines and high priced tooling that can deal with some of these problems, but machine-ability is still a factor in the accuracy of all components, and has to be considered. they normally compensate this with higher cost to the customer.

I have saved many barrels that were shot out by simply setting the shoulder back one thread. The only reason for one thread was to bring the barrel ID back to the original position and freshen the entire chamber, shoulder, neck, freebore,throat and lead. This also resets the head space and squares any ligament surfaces. Barrels of the machinable steels that have traditionally shoot very well have proven the setting the barrel back would return it to it's old accuracy.

Re doing the harder alloys and coated barrels have proven not to respond to re chamber very well and results were less than favorable.

I am all for materials that will improve the longevity of barrels, but most barrels that are not abused and are taken care of will last a long time.

Just my opinion based on my experiences with barrel steels.

J E CUSTOM
 
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