Quoted:
I've got a basic thread protector on order, but I'd rather not shoot an AR without some sort of flash hider or compensator.

Quoted:


Why not? There's no harm in shooting with a bare muzzle or thread protector, unless you are afraid of being seen without a cool whiz bang attachment in the end...

The way you've phrased it makes it sound like you think flash hiders and compensators do something similar. They don't.

flash hiders greatly eliminate flash, slightly reduce sound (a few db), and have basically no effect on recoil. On the other hand compensators greatly reduce recoil, greatly increase volume, and greatly increase muzzle flash.

So, given that they do opposite things, it seems odd that you are so set on having either one of those 2 opposite things...

By the way, a bare muzzle has it's advantages also -- it's light weight, making it faster to point your gun and easier to hold on target, quiter than a compensator (good for hunting esp if you don't use ear pro), and legal everywhere!

Accuracy degradation from muzzle brake erosion.
   By Jim See
Occasionally our precision bolt action rifle may start to have sudden
unexplained accuracy issues. Often overlooked are the erosion forces on
the muzzle brake which can cause the bullet clearance holes to
“tighten”. We have all seen carbon build up in our muzzle device and
this absolutely will cause accuracy loss. But if that accuracy loss
remains after a good carbon removal cleaning we need to look deeper.
I first encountered this in 2008, when a new customer sent in a
specialty pistol in 6.5x284. After 200 rounds his groups had opened up
well over an inch and he was requesting me to fix the issue. After a
quick inspection of action screws, rings and bases, and a bore scope
barrel inspection, I turned my attention to the muzzle brake.
Clearance holes through muzzle devices should be at least .020” over the
bullets diameter, so with a few pin gauges I attempted to measure the
holes. This particular brake had less than .005” bullet clearance. Upon
closer inspection I could see that the brake was opened up .025” over
bullet. But the effects of gas and powder blast on the baffle surfaces
had created a steel bur on the leading edge of each clearance hole. That
bur subsequently rolled into the leading edge of the thru hole causing a
reduction in clearance.
The end result was a bullet that was being adversely affected as soon as it left the muzzle. My inspection also
revealed that the original gunsmith used a brake that was of stainless
steel of a non-heat treated variety that was softer than barrel steel,
this promoted the deformation and movement of the steel into the
clearance hole.
My later testing revealed that harder brakes tend to take longer for the erosion/metal displacement to occur to a
point that accuracy is affected. I have also learned  thru the
inspection and construction of thousands of rifles and muzzle brakes
that greater erosion/displacement occurs based on these other factors;
short barrels, slow burning powders, and large capacity cases (which use
slow burning powder) all tend to increase the erosion factor.
The solution;
 Well really that starts during the brakes manufacturing and
installation. Since that very first revelation of thru hole tightening, I
have sought to combat the occurrences and what I learned in building
muzzle brakes and testing processes has paid off.
Now I bore all my muzzle brakes to .030” over bullet diameter during installation. This
helps slightly but the real key is to chamfer the leading edge of each
baffles clearance hole with a 45 degree chamfer for about .015 of an
inch.
 To properly explain the location of this chamfer picture each baffle that the bullet passes thru as a small funnel, I am removing
the material that creates the bur. When the baffle is a perfectly flat
surface the material around the clearance hole gets pounded by pressure
and carbon residue, thus it deforms at the 90 degree edge and flows into
the area of bullet clearance. By cutting this very small “funnel” the
material does not get a 90 degree impact, thus it is much more resilient
to deformation.
 The process of chamfering the baffle holes is accomplished right after brake install when the clearance hole is being
bored to its final dimension. I simply walk my HSS boring bar to the
leading edge of each hole and cut the correct chamfer with the angle
that is ground on the cutting surface of the tool. Done this way most
brakes that are of 28 rockwell hardness will last the life of the rifle
barrel with no issues related to clearance hole erosion/burr creation.
Repair of an already damaged muzzle brake;
This is relatively simple, slide a pop-sickle stick in the first port
of the brake closest to the muzzle or remove the brake from the rifle.
The intent is to simply protect the rifle bore and crown from the
process of de-burring the clearance holes.
I take a ¼” brass rod with a slit in it to hold a small wrap of some 320 grit emery cloth. I
then chuck the brass rod in the drill and hone out the clearance holes,
which in the process will fracture off all the burs and get you back to
your original clearance dimensions. This process may have to be repeated
during the life of the rifle depending on barrel length and powder burn
rate ect. That I outlined above.
So remember these tips if you’re having an unexplained accuracy loss that you cannot contribute to other accuracy gremlins.

Chad Roberts added 2 new photos.October 11, 2016 ·
Copper and Muzzle Brake issue on train up Friday before the match: Hopefully this helps others out in the future.
So as most have heard I had a rough morning Friday before the match
with my gun shooting a half MOA group at 100 yards and just not
performing as it usually does. Typically this is a one hole puncher and
I've shot a 3 inch group at 1000 yards, so typical for this rifle is
perfection. Certainly not throwing shots all over the zero range like it
was.
 Brian Allen spotted my muzzle break being all kinds of fouled up and honestly I just didn't
realize it had gotten as bad as it had. So as first steps go we took it
off and fired a group, it was still throwing shots. When I say throwing
shots it would be two touching, two or three spread out. I then put my
suppressor on and same thing, throwing shots. To make sure it was not
just me Brian Allen shot a group and results were conclusive that the
gun was just not grouping. Pissed off, I went back to RV to collect my
thoughts, etc.
As luck would have it this big beautiful looking guy named Brian Bowling who was a stranger to me at the time decides to park beside our RV. He
gets out of his truck and proceeds to yell across lot to his buddy that
he has a bore scope with him if his buddy needs it. I immediately asked
if he wouldn't mind checking mine out because I couldn't figure out why
my gun was throwing shots. So him being a great dude that he is, he
takes a look for me. Turns out my barrel is coated with copper and some
pretty bad spots built up at the muzzle and at chamber, one deep spot
about halfway down barrel also. At this point there is 817 rounds on the
barrel.
I grab my Eliminator copper remover that's been collecting dust for years and run four soaked patches down barrel
followed with 20 passes of a nylon brush. I repeat this about 8 times
until I'm getting no blue on my patches.
Up until that moment I hadn't used a copper cleaner, just clean my barrel about every 300
rounds with a bore cleaner (not going to name which one because I'm no
pro at cleaning and that wouldn't be proper etiquette)
The pictures of the chrono are from before cleaning the rifle and after
cleaning the rifle. Same ammo loaded all at the same time before the
match. The 5.4 SD was before cleaning the copper out.
The seven shot chrono with zero sd was rounds 3-10 after cleaning. I tossed out first three shots bc barrel was re-fouling.
After cleaning the copper out and putting a clean muzzle break on the
rifle it was back to shooting solid one whole 5 shot groups at 100 and
zero SD's.
I hope this helps some of you out there who were like me and honestly didn't understand the effects of copper issues. I will
certainly be buying a barrel scope now after seeing how great of a tool
they can be. A big thanks to both Brian Allen and Brian Bowling for your
help.

Quoted:
Thanks.

Removing the flash hider every time I clean the barrel is a pita, but that may be the only way to prevent carbon fouling/clean the muzzle crown.

I can't believe that folks remove them every time they run a bore snake! ;)

There's got to be a better way.

Quoted:
Honestly, I think constant removal, cleaning, and reinstalling the flash hider is more like to mess up accuracy than carbon build up. All that cleaning is begging to booger up the crown.

The build up doesn't change appreciably between shots so accuracy and precision will be very stable and consistent shot to shot for any practical application. Even precision rifle.

The only type of shooting where this matters, might be benchshooting. Those guys are chasing groups in the 0.0Xs and they don't use muzzle devices.