Cold Hammer Forged or Stainless steel?

[MOA]

In the process of getting all the stuff for my first AR and am wondering if I should go with a 16" BMC 410 barrel or a BFH barrel? My plan is a 16" with a 12" DD lite rail. Down to choosing metal now. It will be set up as a GP gun with light and irons until I get the money for a dot. I am using this to fill the 25yrd to 300 yrd gao in my gear. Probley a class or 2, weekly range time, and general varmint/plinking. I know the hammer forged will last longer, but does the accuracy suffer? I'm not expecting to use calipers to measure groups, but i consider 2" at 100yards a max.

[Alaskapopo]

Stainless is great for applications where accuracy matters a lot and you don't mind shorter barrel life. I have a stainless barrel on my three gun rifle. However on rifles where you want long service life and can live with 1moa to 2moa performance then cold hammer forged chrome lined is the barrel for you. With a good stainless barrel and match ammo you can expect half to three quarter moa groups at least that has been my experience. With Chrome plated guns you can expect 1.25 to 2moa performance again that has been my experience. My Noveske is the best chrome plated gun I have and it will hold 1.25 moa for 5 shot groups. My Colt is more of a 2 moa gun my new Daniel Defense is a 1.6 moa gun. The colt and DD are chrome. My Larue Stealth three gun rigle with the stainless barrel is capable of .5moa groups.

For what you listed as your intended uses I would go with the Cold Hammer forged chrome lined barrel.
Pat

[MOA]

that is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. 1.5moa is acceptable. Is that with match ammo or ball or what? I don't plan to bench the gun but I do want to know it will make the shot I want. I am a F-class shooter and can shoot, but I plan this as more of a combat DMRish type rig. We do a shoot at the range that is 10 rapid off hand 100yrds, 10 rapid slow 200yrds and 20 rapid prone 300trds. the shots are at a 6", 12" and 6x12" plates. Its all iron sights anf combat type rifles and I've been using a Garand and I think a carbine would be a lot more fun and easy.

[Alaskapopo]

that is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. 1.5moa is acceptable. Is that with match ammo or ball or what? I don't plan to bench the gun but I do want to know it will make the shot I want. I am a F-class shooter and can shoot, but I plan this as more of a combat DMRish type rig. We do a shoot at the range that is 10 rapid off hand 100yrds, 10 rapid slow 200yrds and 20 rapid prone 300trds. the shots are at a 6", 12" and 6x12" plates. Its all iron sights anf combat type rifles and I've been using a Garand and I think a carbine would be a lot more fun and easy.

That is with my reloads using Sierra 77 grain Match King Bullets.
Pat

[C4IGrant]

CHF. Why? The accuracy can be outstanding (.75-1MOA). These barrels will be lighter and give you MUCH greater life than a SS barrel. They also tend to be cheaper.



C4

[MOA]

Well the uppers I'm looking at both cost the same. How many rounds can you expect out of a chrome lined hammer forged barrel? Someone recently posted something like 20000! Thats a ton of rounds. I get about 2500 out of my F-class rig, and most of the service rifle guys are around 3000 to 5000. Do BFH barrels hold point of impact when they get warm?

[C4IGrant]

Well the uppers I'm looking at both cost the same. How many rounds can you expect out of a chrome lined hammer forged barrel? Someone recently posted something like 20000! Thats a ton of rounds. I get about 2500 out of my F-class rig, and most of the service rifle guys are around 3000 to 5000. Do BFH barrels hold point of impact when they get warm?

It kind of depends on the ammo you use and the rate of fire, but I would say that a HF barrel will give you at least 35,000-40,000 rounds.



C4

[ra2bach]

Well the uppers I'm looking at both cost the same. How many rounds can you expect out of a chrome lined hammer forged barrel? Someone recently posted something like 20000! Thats a ton of rounds. I get about 2500 out of my F-class rig, and most of the service rifle guys are around 3000 to 5000. Do BFH barrels hold point of impact when they get warm?

you're talking about two different things here. it's not about how many rounds you can actually shoot through a barrel, but how many before accuracy degrades beyond what you deem acceptable. I had a 20" Douglas Match Grade SS barrel on my service rifle. shooting SMKs over Varget, it was a tack driver for about 1800 rounds. its accuracy was "acceptable" till about 2600 rds when I pulled it off and sold it.

any barrel, whether CHF, or stainless, or chrome lined, if it isn't shooting a minute or less, out of the gate, really shouldn't be part of this discussion...

[MOA]

I'm not looking for 1moa, but 2 moa at 100 seems like a lot for a gun that cost over a grand. I know that its semi and that AR's generally built to be target rifles and I don't expect it to. But 2 moa with match grade ammo would not be exceptable to me. Of course I mean that it would be tested with a quality scope off a rest. I don't expect that with irons off hand cause that wouldn't be fair cause I cant do that off hand. I guess that if a CHF barrel was a 1.5 moa gun out of the box it would stay that way longer than a stainless, but what kind of groups would a stainless barrel give? Am I looking at a 1.3moa? I just found a post on here where the differnce between CHF and stainless was around .25 improvement. That would not be worth is to me. The uppers I'm looking at are the BCM 16" BFH dd12" and the same thing in ss410.

[C4IGrant]

I'm not looking for 1moa, but 2 moa at 100 seems like a lot for a gun that cost over a grand. I know that its semi and that AR's generally built to be target rifles and I don't expect it to. But 2 moa with match grade ammo would not be exceptable to me. Of course I mean that it would be tested with a quality scope off a rest. I don't expect that with irons off hand cause that wouldn't be fair cause I cant do that off hand. I guess that if a CHF barrel was a 1.5 moa gun out of the box it would stay that way longer than a stainless, but what kind of groups would a stainless barrel give? Am I looking at a 1.3moa? I just found a post on here where the differnce between CHF and stainless was around .25 improvement. That would not be worth is to me. The uppers I'm looking at are the BCM 16" BFH dd12" and the same thing in ss410.

I ran the math and you can get into a BCM for around $1054. That is NOT a lot of money to pay for what you get. Also remember that the Military says that 4MOA is acceptable a combat weapon.

From my experience, a lot of people do not shoot well enough or use quality ammo to ever take full advantage of their AR's capabilites. So if you did get a hammer forged barrel that shot 2MOA (which I doubt), it wouldn't be the end of the world.


The precision of the SS really depend on who made it. Some will be better than others.

To me, service life is WAY more important that a .25MOA difference. YMMV.



C4