I've been pondering whether I should start using pencil barrels to lighten my builds from now on, and this is where I'm at right now. My question is, Do you think this is a sound argument, or am I missing something?
Argument #1: Torture Tests. In all of the torture testing I've seen, the profile of the barrel doesn't seem to have much of an impact on its lifespan. I've never seen one meltdown even where the rifling didn't get destroyed long before the barrel actually burst. It seems, and I could be wrong here, that the profile of the barrel doesn't have much influence on the rifling. In other words, if you're firing fast, then the heat doesn't have time to sink into the meat of the barrel. Alternately, if you're firing slow, then a pencil barrel seems to dissipate heat at about the same rate as a reasonably heavier profile, like the SOCOM profile. So if you're firing at a slow, sustained rate, not exceeding the rate at which the heat is sinked from the rifling, then a SOCOM profile would only give you a brief window, due to its mass, at which it would outperform a pencil profile. Once the barrel is hot, then you're back to its ability to dissipate heat. If you're firing fast, faster than the heat can be sinked from the rifling, then you'll destroy your rifling long before the barrel fails; and a heavier barrel wouldn't have prevented it because you were exceeding the rate at which heat was being drawn from the rifling. In other words, the SOCOM barrel would only perform marginally better than the pencil profile during normal firing, and only for a brief time.
Argument #2: Military Rifles. If you look at the majority of military rifles, they're using pencil barrels. Even the A2 profile is for all intents and purposes a pencil barrel because the mass is in the wrong freaking place to have any impact on anything. I have heard of instances where a rifle failed in combat due to heavy firing, but it was always something besides the barrel, like the gas tube.
Argument #3: Accuracy. I've spoken to several manufacturers and an R&D guy, and they assure me that rigidity in terms of accuracy is a myth for free floating barrels. They've all told me that they've tested this, and for the first magazine a pencil barrel performs just as well as a bull barrel made from the same blanks. After the first magazine, the barrels start heating up to the point where expansion causes loss of accuracy. But here again, the difference in mass between pencil and SOCOM is only going to give you a brief window. So for most barrels, heat dissipation is more important than mass. The exception would be varmint barrels because of the slow rate of fire, plus the fact that you're shooting off a bench. The last I heard, ball mill dimpling yielded the greatest surface area, so it would make more sense to have a light ball mill dimpled barrel than a SOCOM barrel. The increased heat dissipation would help preserve the rifling during normal fire, and it would also preserve accuracy.
The reason I ask is I'm seriously thinking about using a lightrigid barrel from battle arms development in a RECCE build. Is there anything I'm not taking into account here?
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Originally Posted by turnburglar
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