Centurion Arms midweight CHF barrels are back.

[AAMP84]

Centurion Arms has their midweight chf barrels back in stock on their site. FCD also has them listed at a slightly cheaper price. Trajectory Arms had them listed, but they're out of stock. Pics up on Trajectory's site for those that don't know what CA's midweight profile looks like.

https://www.centurionarms.com/hammer.../hfb-mw-ml.htm

https://www.forwardcontrolsdesign.co...tem_p_258.html

https://www.trajectoryarms.com/produ...t-5-56-barrel/

[Leonidas24]

Trajectory Arms' website doesn't appear to be working at the moment...

[sig1473]

Trajectory Arms' website doesn't appear to be working at the moment...

Works for me. It's just really slow in loading.

[OldState]

I’ve heard it’s mentioned that their barrels have progressive rifling. Any insight to this and exactly what it means? An increasing twist?

[ABNAK]

I’ve heard it’s mentioned that their barrels have progressive rifling. Any insight to this and exactly what it means? An increasing twist?

From the Centurion website:

"Our barrels have a slight taper to the bore during the hammer forging process to ensure better accuracy."

[OldState]

So I guess that’s progressive depth of the rifling? Interesting, they used to cut rifle muskets like that in the 1800’s

[Coal Dragger]

I’ve heard it’s mentioned that their barrels have progressive rifling. Any insight to this and exactly what it means? An increasing twist?

Tapered bore, which hammer forging can accomplish due to mandrel taper. Gain or progressive twist is not possible on a hammer forging machine, and is a cut rifling proposition only.

[MQ105]

Tapered bore, which hammer forging can accomplish due to mandrel taper. Gain or progressive twist is not possible on a hammer forging machine, and is a cut rifling proposition only.

The tapered bore is a function of the CH Forging process; ie, removal of the mandrel.

[AAMP84]

A quote from Monty posted on another forum.

I was given a link so I figured I’d come over and respond.
Looks like you guys pretty much have the concept. The bore gets slightly smaller as it moves to the muzzle end of the barrel.
I did not come up with the concept and it is not new. So why have you not seen taper bores in the AR platform before?? Probably because using hammer forged barrels is a fairly new thing in the AR rifles. Taper bore is something that is only realistically done by the hammer forging process. The mandrel that is used to put the rifling in the barrel is slightly tapered and this leave the tapered dimension in the barrels as the forging machine beats the blank around the mandrel.
So what does it offer you? Taper bore gives you a slight boost in velocity over a non-taper bore barrel and it help negate any potential accuracy issues caused by chroming the bore since it is not always a consistent thickness.
Taper bore does not extend the life of the barrel our barrels last longer because they are hammer forged and made from a different spec material that was engineered for machine guns. Hammer forging work hardens the material and the chrome is thicker than a normal barrel. The barrel steel is the same used on the MAG58, 240, M249, MK46, and MK48 machine guns it is also the same barrel material and process used on the 1/2moa sniper rifles FN won the FBI contract with and that are still in service. The FN SPR sniper rifles use hammer forged hard chrome lined taper bore barrels to get ½ moa accuracy and this is the same barrel specs and processes I have done to my barrels.
So who else uses this?
Obviously FN, who has the time, money, and resources to do the research to find this type of barrel steel and proof out this type of process and specs. FN hands down manufactures the best machine guns in the world and there isn’t even a close second in this field there isn’t even any two companies you can combine that has as much institutional knowledge as they do in making beltfed machine guns.
HK also taper bores their hammer forged barrels for all their rifles.
So why do I use it?
Well I didn’t really think much about hammer forging and taper bore before I was sent to work doing combat systems development and operational testing for SOCOM. There I worked on several weapons programs one that used these barrels on one of the rifles we were testing. I got to observes millions of dollars worth of R&D and testing that was done and got to see hundreds of thousands of rounds run through these weapons and got to see firsthand that these barrels did indeed last allot longer and on a whole shoot better than standard button rifled barrels that were chrome lined. The difference was significant and I wondered why the hell no one made these barrels for the M4/AR rifles so I figured I would bring them to market myself. I have over 20 years of service and have shot out plenty of M4’s in my time and can with full confidence say this is a improvement I’ve seen it first hand.

Thanks
Monty

[georgeib]

Makes me wonder how anyone in their right mind would pay $250 for a nitrided Black River Tactical barrel when they could have a hammer forged and chrome lined barrel from Centurion for $11 more.