07-28-2011, 07:15 PM
Sorry for the late reply. I have purchased all my nitro-carb'd barrels from AR Performance. Yes, you can have it done to barrels after they are chambered & finished. You just have to make sure they are bone dry clean. Nitrocarburizing doesn't add surface thickness, and it is not a coating or plating like chrome, TiN, etc. It is a quench-polish-quench process that introduces nitrogen into a high-temp kiln to change the crystalline structure of the steel so it is more dense on the surface. It is also known as Melonite, which Glock and other makers do to slides.
It's catching on pretty quickly with rifle barrels now, and I have bench rest friends that are doing it to match-grade barrels, with amazing results as far as accuracy life and really no fouling. There isn't any place for fouling to stick to, like on normal barrel surfaces with larger crevices in the steel structure. If you have a great barrel that shoots really well, you can clean the crap out of it, get it nitro-carburized for about $60, and extend the accuracy life up to 100%.
Eventually, the throat will get burned if it's a burner caliber, but that process is extended significantly, so for guys with 6mm's, 6.5x284's, 7mm WSM's, or 300x.338 LM's, it makes a lot of sense to get it done.
One thing I have noticed is that when I drop a sized piece of brass into a nitro-carb'd pipe, it rings like a tuning fork for a long time, and chambering and extraction are extremely smooth. Harrison at AR Performance claims that these barrels eat Wolf like it's going out of style, since the porous steel cases have nowhere to stick to during extraction.
I'm actually going out this weekend to test how some of the 5.56 nitro-carb'd pipes do with some 69gr SMK hand loads, as well as Wolf for reliability. I really wish Harrison could be licensed to make Grendel barrels and his improved bolts as a combo, because that would take the Grendel to a different level really.
It's catching on pretty quickly with rifle barrels now, and I have bench rest friends that are doing it to match-grade barrels, with amazing results as far as accuracy life and really no fouling. There isn't any place for fouling to stick to, like on normal barrel surfaces with larger crevices in the steel structure. If you have a great barrel that shoots really well, you can clean the crap out of it, get it nitro-carburized for about $60, and extend the accuracy life up to 100%.
Eventually, the throat will get burned if it's a burner caliber, but that process is extended significantly, so for guys with 6mm's, 6.5x284's, 7mm WSM's, or 300x.338 LM's, it makes a lot of sense to get it done.
One thing I have noticed is that when I drop a sized piece of brass into a nitro-carb'd pipe, it rings like a tuning fork for a long time, and chambering and extraction are extremely smooth. Harrison at AR Performance claims that these barrels eat Wolf like it's going out of style, since the porous steel cases have nowhere to stick to during extraction.
I'm actually going out this weekend to test how some of the 5.56 nitro-carb'd pipes do with some 69gr SMK hand loads, as well as Wolf for reliability. I really wish Harrison could be licensed to make Grendel barrels and his improved bolts as a combo, because that would take the Grendel to a different level really.