Would like to hear peoples opinion on this. Also I've heard fn makes bcm's barrels but I've never seen confirmation on this.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_3_118/559831__ARCHIVED_THREAD____FN_manufactured_CHF_barrels_RESULTS_IN_OP__MORE_INBOUND___CODE_BROKEN__YOU_DECIDE.html&page=1


Looks to me like they perform similarly enough to not justify extra cost of one brand over another.

What stickman posted is correct, however I know that FN (like most manufacturers) does have a minimum spec for what they will mark with their brand even if it is sold by PSA or someone else. Brands can exceed that but they are not going to put out junk and stamp their name on it.

Also I assume many items they make are not specific to one retailer. For example the last PSA barrel I received from PSA  wasn't even marked PSA. It had a small FN logo followed by the details for caliber and twist. It could have been sold by any number of retailers and was not PSA specific.

What I am saying is if you get a FN CHF barrel you are going to get a quality piece no matter who you buy it from but one retailer with a better spec might be marginally better than another.

That 'accuracy' test was about worthless. The biggest problem is comparing 4 different barrel lengths. Maybe if they had 4 different barrels of each length you could possibly draw a conclusion if all other conditions were perfect. Comparing single 10.5, 11.5, 12.5, & 16 inch barrels against one another tells us nothing. Plus he tested on different days I believe.

 

The point was that none stood out as a clearly superior product.

 

Unless someone wants to spend $20k on 10x barrels and a bunch of ammo, nothing will be statistically significant enough. Of course, you can come to your own conclusions, but insinuating that PSA CHF FN barrels are somehow inferior to other FN CHF barrels can't really be supported by any evidence.

Having never fired a FN barrel this makes sense to me.  They don't want their name associated with junk.

The barrel market is tight enough that if they tried to pass of rejects under their name it would get pretty obvious pretty quick and nobody would want their high end barrels either.

psa does not sell reject barrels

Factually, you cannot say that PSA FN made barrels are anybody's rejects....

If FN allows PSA to put their name on the line, then FN is confident that their quality will not be besmirched by PSA's quality requirements.

If FN makes the same standard barrels to begin with....Other then twist what other specs can someone request from FN that would make them superior  

Obviously there are differences in specs, but insinuating that PSA sells rejects is false on its face. PSA sells more FN barrels than Noveske and Centurion combined. FN must really suck if they are putting out that many rejects. Or maybe you were saying that Noveske sells the rejects?

Chamber quality, dimensions, I think. I doubt FN has different hammer forge dies for different specs, but I've been wrong before. This could probably be answered with a phone call or by an actual customer of FNs barrel department.

When people say that psa buys bcm's or noveske's rejects, it seems so far-fetced from a business standpoint. the logistical cost/loss assiciated with purchasing barrels that were shipped to the midwest or (oregon, if youre in on that conspiracy), QA failed, then bought and shipped back to SC would be so much higher than for PSA to just pay the alleged difference (what 5-10-20 bucks a barrel, at most?) than to deal with all that drama? To do this as a business practice instead of just ordering those same "machine gun steel, double chrome thickness" that every other assembler advertises wold be nutty.  Especially when psa and FN are close to each other and would save a lot on shipping, for fn to ship across the country, then the barrels need shipping back to SC to psa, just down the road from psa? It's crazy.

Shipping and receiving and warehousing and purchasing and all that is such a significant part of the business, for a high volume company to  complicate it by buying rejects from much smaller companies just to save a few bucks on unit cost would be such a terrible business practice.


what ive heard from another barrel manufacturer is that psa orders more FN AR barrels than any other AR shop by an huge margin. maybe in some rare instance PSA bought a few cosmetically scratched barrels from Noveske or something for 50 cents on the dollar and sold some blems, but in any regularity as to constitute a business practice? Impossible.

Of course, sure, each company will have the specs they request, like profile and chamber and gas port if they dont do that themselves, and acceptable +/- range.   Is it possible that psa allows a bigger range? (From FN's perspective, it would save money by swapping out mandrels and reamers in longer intervals).  Perhaps...  but the barrels that are made when the mandrel/reamers are fresh will come out as the same quality when theyre coming off the same line if they're using the same materials, no matter who the end customer is..  if company A requires a tighter tolerance range than company B, you run a statistical risk of "X" percent of getting a barrel from company B that is outside of company A's ranges. But the majority of barrels from company B will be inside company A's envelope.  How much does that matter? It will theoretically depend from barrel to barrel, but all the psa fn chf barrels I've shot have been good shooters.  As are the bcm.  It's not like bcm.bfh barrels are known for amazing accuracy, my personal thoughts are they are probably specd close enough that the "vent diagram" of tolerances between the the vast majority of barrels in the same overlap group.  

So to think that buying rejects off much smaller companies is somehow a significant part of their business is so far fetched, imo. And the price difference between a PSA FN CHF upper and a BCM BFH UPPER isn't really that great, when you consider that BCM is adding their $90 compensator.

BCM BFH upper minus mod 0 compensator retail : $515-90 - $425
PSA Premium CHF minus a2 FH retail : $344- $394 = $370avg.
Considering that psa is going to get a volume discount and has lower shipping costs, and bcm includes some swag and has a lot more branding and sponsored "operators," the prices would be super reasonable to extrapolate from everything if they used the exact same barrels.  Is it possible PSA tells FN to replace the mandrels and reamers in longer intervals than bcm or Noveske says? Sure... but it would be more efficient to just give FN good spec requests than to try to scavenge every other company's dumpsters forr barrels whose chambers are 0.001 past spec.  

Anyway, The barrel manufacturer who posted on the subject (a nice guy from a quickly emerging company with nice nitride barrels with some catchy names ) said that psa's contract with FN is orders of magnitude larger than bcm and they can negotiate better prices, which explains psa's low prices.  

All the FN chf barrels seem to be good stuff.  BCM is awesome because you can order an upper with custom handguard, muzzle device, barrel contour, etc, whereas with PSA you get what they do a run of and that's that.

Not that I disagree with the rest of your post, but most of the FN produced barrels from PSA are marked PSA.

I also think a major factor as to why PSA can offer AR products cheaper is they also deal in a wide array of other items on sale. I'm a BCM fan myself but if I wanted to buy ammo, optics, other makes of firearms or the like PSA sells those.

I doubt PSA has to make the same mark up per AR upper as BCM, they can make up their profit margin on other items

All testing was done the same day. Why don't you fund and execute a comparison that tells us something?

At 100 yards I doubt the barrel lengths are going to play any role at all.

I'd love to see an independent test showing a PSA CHF chrome-lined barrel matching the accuracy/precision of Noveske CHF chrome-lined barrels.



Accuracy Evaluation of a Noveske 16” N4 Light Barrel







I’ve posted short reviews of Noveske N4 Light barrels in the past, so for this article we’re going to take a more in-depth look at the Noveske 16” N4 Light barrel.  For starters, Noveske’s nomenclature of “Light” for this barrel is somewhat misleading/confusing. When most shooters hear the term “light- weight” in regard to AR-15 barrels, they think of the “pencil” barrel profile of the original Colt M16/M16A1 and also the same light-weight profile of the Colt 16” carbine barrel found on the Colt 6520 and 6720.  However, this is not the profile of the Noveske N4 Light barrel.


Colt M16/M16A1 barrel . . .





Colt 6520 16” light-weight barrel . . .





The stripped-weight (no flash hider, no front sight base/gas block, just the barrel and barrel extension) of the Colt 16” light-weight barrel is 1 pound, 6 ounces.  The stripped-weight of the Noveske 16” N4 Light barrel is 1 pound, 12 ounces; which is the same stripped-weight of the Colt 16” government profile barrel found on the ubiquitous Colt 6920.


Colt 6920 government profile barrel . . .





Noveske 16” N4 Light barrel . . .





As you can see in the pics above, for the N4 Light barrel, Noveske has done away with the next-to-useless M203 (grenade launcher)  cut-out found on the Colt government profile barrel.  The N4 profile also has a more evenly distributed barrel diameter (and thus weight) fore and aft of the gas block journal, which moves the center of gravity of the barrel farther aft compared to a government profile barrel.  This all makes for a superbly handling 16” barrel.

The reason that Noveske uses the “Light” nomenclature for their N4 barrels is simply because the N4 barrels are lighter than Noveske’s original  medium contour stainless steel barrels.  For comparison, the Noveske 16” medium contour Recon barrel has a stripped-weight of 2 pounds, 2 ounces and as mentioned above, the 16” N4 Light barrel has a stripped-weight of 1 pound, 12 ounces.


The Noveske 16” Recon barrel . . .





The Noveske 16” N4 Light barrel is a cold hammer forged barrel.  It has a mid-length gas system, “M4” feed-ramps and a chrome-lined chamber and bore.  The barrel has a 5.56mm NATO chamber and a 1:7” twist and has been high-pressure/magnetic particle tested; as the barrel stamp indicates.  Contrary to erroneous Internet reports, the N4 barrel does not have polygonal rifling.


The barrel stamp . . .






The mid-length gas system . . .





I conducted an accuracy (technically, precision) evaluation of the Noveske 16” N4 Light barrel following my usual protocol.  This accuracy evaluation used statistically significant shot-group sizes and every single shot in a fired group was included in the measurements. There was absolutely no use of any group reduction techniques (e.g. fliers, target movement, Butterfly Shots).

The shooting set-up will be described in detail below. As many of the significant variables as was practicable were controlled for. Pictures of shot-groups are posted for documentation.

All shooting was conducted from a concrete bench-rest from a distance of 100 yards (confirmed with a laser rangefinder.) The Noveske 16” N4 Light barrel used in this evaluation was free-floated during testing using a Larue Tactical free-float railed handguard. The free-float handguard of the rifle rested in a Sinclair Windage Benchrest, while the stock of the rifle rested in a Protektor bunny-ear rear bag. Sighting was accomplished via a Leupold VARI-X III set at 25X magnification and adjusted to be parallax-free at 100 yards. A mirage shade was attached to the objective-bell of the scope. Wind conditions on the shooting range were continuously monitored using a Wind Probe. The set-up was very similar to that pictured below.














For this evaluation, I used one of my standard match-grade hand-loads topped with Sierra 55 grain BlitzKings.  When fired from my Krieger barreled AR-15s, this load has produced ½ MOA 10-shot groups at 100 yards.










Three, 10-shot groups were fired in a row from the Noveske 16” N4 Light barrel from a distance of 100 yards with the resulting extreme spreads:

1.29”
1.18”
1.31”

for a 10-shot group average extreme spread of 1.26”.  The three, 10-shot groups were over-layed on each other using RSI Shooting Lab to form a 30-shot composite group.  The mean radius of the 30-shot composite group was 0.37”.

After firing the above three groups, I fired an additional five,10-shot groups in a row for a total of eight, 10-shot groups fired in a row. The average extreme spread for all eight of the 10-shot groups was 1.24”. I over-layed all eight of the 10-shot groups on each other using RSI Shooting Lab to form an 80-shot composite group. The mean radius for the 80-shot composite group was 0.39”.





The smallest 10-shot group . . .














The 80-shot composite group . . .






…..





The Noveske 14.5” N4 Light barrel is a cold hammer forged barrel

It has “M4” feed-ramps and a chrome-lined chamber and bore.  The barrel has a 5.56mm NATO chamber and a 1:7” twist and has been high-pressure/magnetic particle tested; as the barrel stamp indicates.  Contrary to erroneous Internet reports, the N4 barrel does not have polygonal rifling.


The Noveske 14.5” N4 Light barrel used in this evaluation was free-floated during testing using a Larue Tactical free-float railed handguard.   Three 10-shot groups fired from 100 yards using match grade hand-loads had extreme spreads of:

1.029”
1.360”
1.275”

for a 10-shot group average of 1.22”.  As above, I over-layed the three 10-shot groups on each other using RSI Shooting lab to form a 30-shot composite group. The mean radius for that composite group was 0.37”.



…..

Define MOST

PSA sells PSA barrels and they mark them as such.  

PSA also sells FN barrels and they are not marked PSA.
They also sell a PA Freedom line and its marked as such.

I just bought a rifle kit from PSA four weeks ago and the barrel is clearly marked FN HF MP 5.56 NATO 1/7.
There are no PSA marks on the barrel anywhere, only on the receivers.  

I would say I'm also a BCM fan. I paid quite a bit more when I bought a BCM lower then I would have for similar quality lowers. I also paid a bit more for a BCM upper.

That being said, when I built the upper I used a Colt barrel.

I received a PSA 16" CHF upper in August with the same markings, the FN is clearly stamped with their trademarked logo. I have a 16" CHF middy I purchased around Xmas last year that has HF MP 5.56 NATO 1/7. PSA on it plus 1 other 16" CHF upper from 2012 (my 1st AR build that reached 4400 rounds today) with HF MP 5.56 NATO 1/7. PSA on it.

I would guess FN is marking at least all their PSA supplied barrels now for marketing reasons. I ordered a 16" Premium (FN made barrel) on sale today so when it gets here I'll see if FN is marking those also

Buy PSA With Confidence Shame on yall talking like you know the confidential contractuall agreements between any of these Companies.

Apparently FN is going to put their logo on all barrels now.  http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_2_301/278553_Barrel_Markings.html



Here's my 10.5 CHF uppers barrel marking, just got it today.

Noveske CHF barrels are FN. And as Molon showed, they are crazy accurate. To the point of more accurate than the "average" FN barrel. So, I'd personally say not all FN CHF barrels are created equal in the accuracy department.

How do you know this? He randomly posted results for a single Noveske barrel, but no comparison. Do you have additional (hard) data? Your personal opinion is just that...

Don't get so caught up on barrel markings. In the past, FN would mark the barrels with PSA. Now, they are marked with the FN logo. Same barrels, different logo.

FN barrels provided to particular companies are often manufactured to different specs. This has been discussed around here for years. FN is not solely churning out one CHF barrel, and that's it, period. They churn out CHF barrels to particular manufacturer's specs as well. Tighter chambers, etc. Not every FN CHF barrel is the same. And that's beyond the extremely minute variation due to the machining process itself, as CHF machines yield extremely consistent results from barrel to barrel - which is one of the big advantages of CHF as well, overall consistency. That said, FN does not churn out all their CHF barrels to the same specs. Not every FN made CHF barrel is the same.

I'm with Stickman.

These barrels are probably 'rejects' in the way that FN makes the barrels, checks them, and they don't meet the standard that Noveske has put in their contract with FN. But hey, they do match the reqs PSA put forth, which was nothing other than any barrels that aren't total junk, no other reqs. Lol

Probably something like that.

That, or PSA just puts a checkmark in the boxes they want, which have a given price increase for different boxes. So, it's special order to the reqs of PSA. This is usually how it goes in this kind of situation. Since FN supplies so many different people at different price/quality points.

I know arfcom hates this, but you generally get what you pay for.

So you are either bashing FN or lying outright

1. If there are so many rejects at the purchase end, then that would mean FN QC is shit- which its not.
2. If companies are having to sell rejects, then they would be doing so at a loss, and no company would continue to do this.
3. Even if they are selling rejects, how is it possible that PSA sell more uppers/barrels than basically all of the rest of the sellers, they surely cant be doing that by buying rejects.
4. sellers buy FN barrels, very few spec them. Do you really thing FN has 10 different CHF specs to satisfy individual sellers? They would be taking a loss on trying to cater to end users, They make a couple different ones, double chrome/chrome and all the same barrel material with the same twist. The end sellers use the "proprietary info" to bolster sales.

5. Could it be that PSA just buys a ton more barrels than everyone else and has cheaper prices.


If they are "rejects" then where is your proof they are such, or does it just hurt your sales to say they are the same? There have been plenty of comparisons of the two with little to no difference.

or they are simple lapped by noveske, just like armalite barrels were, dont know if they still are.

Even then 1 barrel test to prove a manf is better than anyone else is total garbage.


I have a 2x DD/1x centurian/1x Noveske/mult FN barrels. They shoot basically the same.

Noveske may also cut their own chambers.

 

But, let's face it. Hammer forging mandrels are not cheap, and are also extremely consistent. That is their main advantage. Unless the OEM is buying their own mandrels or cutting their own chambers, the barrels are the same regardless of the stamp on them.

They are not rejects.

If anything they are made to spec, they don't go down the line and decides who gets what based on how far out of spec they are.  That is not how a successful company works.  They would make them in batches to each companies spec.

And they won't put their stamp on trash because they know if people get burned on a PSA FN barrel, they will avoid a Noveske FN barrel.  They don't want to trash their name.

This is where I lose all respect for Stickman. To claim PSA uses Noveske rejects implies 2 things. 1st Noveske must be the largest AR maker in the US to have that many rejected barrels to supply a competitor with 1000's of "reject" barrels per month.

The 2nd is to say FN can survive as a company making that many "reject'' barrels per month is ludicrous. Their willing to let PSA advertise their product uses FN made barrels then they know they have to stand behind their product.

FN stamping all their barrels "FN" is a smart move, it eliminates the old "is my BCM/Spikes/PSA" barrel made by who.

Each company could set their own specs. But FN has to set the machines to bore these barrels and ream those chambers and I doubt they take the time to change settings between production runs.

That ain't going to win me any fans but I have more respect for someone who doesn't ream out a competitor's product without actual facts

i'd agree that noveske CHF chromelined barrels are by far the most accurate chromelined barrels i've shoot. i have 2, a 16 and a 12.5. both group consistantly tighter than others i have. those being: FN 20" GI, colt 20 and 14.5, BCM 20" GI, 12.5 BMC kino in recent history.

and i dont believe the psa reject story either.

It’s not a difficult concept.  I posted hard data from two different Noveske CHF barrels to demonstrate the level of precision that those barrels are capable of.  

If you want to claim that PSA CHF barrels are just as accurate as Noveske CHF barrels, then it is incumbent upon you to post the results of three 10-shot groups fired in a row from a distance of 100 yards from a PSA CHF barrel.



...

Reading comprehension not your forte, or are you just flat out lying?  

I posted data from TWO DIFFERENT NOVESKE CHF barrels that produced nearly identical results to demonstrate the level of precision that these barrels are capable.

If you want to claim that PSA CHF barrels are just as accurate as Noveske CHF barrels, then it is incumbent upon you to post your results of three 10-shot groups fired from a PSA CHF barrel at a distance of 100 yards.






So you demand that AR-Ryan21 needs to provide data, yet you have not contributed any valid, first-hand data at all on the subject matter.  Hypocrite much?  


...

Very disappointing to see you following in the footsteps of kaneljo3000.  

As stated above, I posted data from TWO DIFFERENT NOVSESKE CHF barrels to demonstrate the level of precision that these barrels are capable of producing.  The word “prove” does not appear anywhere in that post.

Neither you, nor kaneljo3000, nor anyone else in this thread, nor anyone else on this website has posted the results of three 10-shot groups fired in a row at 100 yards from a PSA CHF barrel, that have equaled the results that I posted from the two Noveske CHF barrels.  

If you want to claim that the PSA CHF barrels are just as accurate as the Noveske CHF barrels, then it is incumbent upon you to show us the mean radius of a 30-shot composite group fired from a PSA CHF barrel at a distance of 100 yards, that equals the results that I posted from the Noveske barrels.


..

Not to be disagreeable...... but they can claim what ever they please with out obligation.... To be believable however.....

I thought this was tech....Speculation and purse swinging is cool now?

How can anyone say anything "factually" without seeing contracts and specs?  And buying rejects?  Has anyone actually seen company A say those aren't up to snuff we don't want them and then seem company B buy them?  And just because one company doesn't want them doesn't mean they are rejects. They just don't meet one companies spec. Saying reject implies bad.

I just don't see how without seeing all of the agreements and specs anyone can claim anything for sure. FN isn't going to put out junk for a company just because they ask them to.

It just feels like elitism is starting to show in this thread.

"Pfffft.....you're looking st reject PSA FN barbells??!!?!....you're obviously not an oper8tor!!11!1!"

I see why people hate nutnfancy. Obviously he isn't perfect but he nails a lot of stuff. The elitism in the gun community is out of control.   He's right about that.


OP. There is absolutely nothing wrong with PSA FN barrels for 95% of applications.  Great quality for a great price.

The thing about cold rotary hammer forged barrels is, and it's the reason manufacturers like them, is there is almost no variation between bores from barrel to barrel, and no variation in straightness.


So, there is only way hammer forged barrel can vary quality, how well the hammering process fills the rifling, under-filling, or galling.  Under-filling is when the hammer strikes are too light and the steel does not get beat into the corners of the rifling, leaving a rounded rifling profile.  Galling is caused by hammering too hard and the bore drags on the mandrel, leaving a rough bore.

With precision barrels, the range of machine setting between the two extremes is narrow and if you stray outside the limits you don't get a barrel of lesser quality, you get an unusable barrel, so you really can't vary the base quality much with CHF.

You can improve on the base quality by hand lapping or better control of the plating process, but this extra effort is not going to make a 2 MOA barrel a sub-minute barrel, it has to start out pretty darn good.

<Keep this crap out of a technical thread. -Z>

This Tuesday, my PSA pencil 16" middy in MI rail shot my best group in years, 5 shots at 100 yards .50".

My Noveske 18" stainless with 10X Nightforce gave me my best ever group of .45" also at 100 yards.

The $1300 Noveske upper with the heavy 18" stainless, is consistently more accurate than my typical $300 CHF 16 or 14.7 LW and pencil barreled uppers from PSA or BCM by maybe .50-.75".  

For my money, I'm happy with PSA "reject" FN made barrels.

Uhh, no.  That's not how it works.

You posted testing on the results of your Noveske barrels in order "to prove" they were better shooters than PSA FN's or others.  Your testing proved nothing except that your barrels shoot pretty good.  It is incumbent upon YOU to back your nonsensical claim.

your slander is meaninglessly, considering you have been a member for 6 months and have 600 posts, that 100 a month, 3.5 a day. do you have a job?

you'd come across alot better if you didnt have the same attitude you are complaining about.

i think you are missing the point of molons post. its a baseline for noveske barrels. now someone can post the same with psa barrels and we can compare. you are just being argumentative.

So...

If I post results that are better or worse within...say... .10", while using a different rifle, shooter, ammo, optic, bench setup, weather, altitude, etc.  How would the results be taken?  For such sticklers for accurate testing we have around here, I feel they don't fully get it.  

ETA:. For the record, and as I've stated many times before, his testing is always a decent read.  I understand and respect the time involved.  I lose respect when he or others speak in absolutes based strictly off of his testing.

probably not very well. you know how people are here, its like kinder-garden sometimes.