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Posted: 7/21/2008 5:59:24 AM EDT
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My 'beater' 16" left-over-parts carbine is getting heavier with an Aimpoint on a carry-handle mount and a Surefire M97 on my desk waiting on some cheapo handguard rail... Actually, it STARTED heavy with an old school fat stainless 1/12 bbl so I'd like to lighten and get a better balance by removing bbl material under the handguard. I'm not jumping out of APCs, kicking in doors or doing any sustained fire so I can sacrifice some tough for light... I have a lathe and a mill so my questions is this: What is the minimum contour I could turn this to? Should I just copy the profile of an SP1 I have or is there an even lighter profile. Is fluting a better option and, if so, what's the minimum O.D. at the bottom of the flutes? Seems like flutes would cool great but weight savings would be so so. Thanks for your input. Sorry if this has been beaten to death before but the search only goes back 30 days and there are MANY posts here... |
You don't want to go that light with a stainless barrel. Stainless is not as strong and doesn't have the heat resistance of carbon steel so will wear very quickly with a thin profile. The standard advice for stainless is to not go thinner than a medium weight, .700-.740 or so. If you have a ~.850 HBAR, you'll notice the weight difference to go down to .700. |
Hmmm...Adco was willing to reprofile a SS WOA barrel down to .625 for me. |
I wouldn't hold that against ADCO. Apparently if you have a thin SS barrel, you shouldn't be doing lots of rapid fire with it. I'd considered doing a thin SS barrel for hunting. No rapid fire needed, so it would've been fine.
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I don't hold it against them...I don't have any RRs or RDIAS so that is of little concern to me 
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Hmmm, I fear that .550 profile might be a little on the thin side for stainless, who knows what actual SS alloy this is. But .625 or even .600 might yield a appreciable weight loss. Besides, I've got another one of these dinosaur barrels around here somewhere, what's the worst that could happen? h Thanks for all your input! |
ANY pressure on any weight of barrel is going to affect your point of impact. And yes it would be more so on a lighter barrel. PursuitSS |
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