It’s a little more complicated than that. I’d put a Criterion chrome barrel against any cheap stainless barrel any day. But they have very uniform plating and lap each barrel.
It’s not that chrome barrels can’t be accurate, it’s that almost every application where chrome is used places durability far above accuracy. So making a superbly accurate chrome barrel is rarely a goal, and in those applications a chrome barrel is easily sufficiently accurate.
Match shooters take off stainless barrels with round counts in the low single digit thousands. 2k-3k is a common range for a service rifle barrel.
My DD S2W seems capable of shooting as accurately as reputable stainless barrels from WOA or CLE. Its 18” and heavy like the 20” svc rifle barrels.
Bookmarks