Honest truth about ss barrels?

[mstennes]

Let me share a secret I've learned with EVERY hobby i've ever had.

Parts of the same manufacturer tend to work best together.

Will a DPMS bolt carrier group work with a Kreiger barrel? Probably, but far from ideal.

So if I spend $450 on a Noveske barrel, and $150 on their bolt carrier group, I think that is money well spent. BTW, $150 for a BCG is about right.

Stake that DPMS carrier, add the proper extractor spring and o-ring, MPI the bolt, and you'll see where that money went.

If you think Noveske's prices are that jacked up, enlist in the military or go to the police academy and use the discount they put out to people working to keep you safe in your bed.

This has gotten off topic, so I digress on the Noveske stuff.

Something else I failed to mention, allot of resellers, jack the prices up for the Noveske name, its to bad he has no way to control that, I saw a Noveske lower on a AR here for sale, gun shop wants $1800.00, and its not a Noveske, other than the lower.
Agreed

[T2J]

I have no qualms at all with Noveske, hell the guy is a text book case for capitalism! His barrels are some of the best! My point here is simply, why pay for his roll mark, so to speak, why pay $185.00 for a Noveske lower, when you buy say a Spikes for $99.00? I dont have the list in front of me but what, there is not that many places that finish them, so they could be from the same place (again no list in front of me), same exact reciever, except markings. So please dont get me wrong he makes a fine, fine product.

Ok, I got you. I agree about lowers. I use Stag primarily and you're right, there are only so many that make them, then they're sold by different outlets.

[Skyyr]

I have found that it's exponentially easier to build a beautiful precision AR, than it is to then take that beautiful AR and make it produce on paper.

It takes numerous range trips with different loads, tweeks, and in my case mind sets/mental focus in order to finally hone in my latest build and get it shooting to my expectations. To me that is the fun stuff, and I enjoy the tedious and time consuming work/effort involved in not only building a precision AR, but making it earn the mark on paper once built.

It took 7-8 trips with my recent precision AR to the range in order to produce my best group to date with this particular build. That is like 400-500rds. fired before I could figure it all out....aka..the cost of a new Rock SS barrel

Beautiful work, as usual man!

[ALCOAR]

Thanks pal, you are one of the few who prob. knows how much time and revisions it took me to finally get something on paper that looked good

[Cesiumsponge]

noveske stainless barrels are made AT pac-nor on noveske's blanks, noveske's tooling, and by noveske's people.

In manufacturing, the customer can send customer-supplied tooling to the vendor to reduce tooling and fixturing costs and send customer-supplied material so the vendor doesn't have to source a supplier.

However the vendor isn't going to let the customer send over a bunch of employees into the vendor's shop and just let the customer's employees start running the vendor's machinery and start jamming up the lunch room microwave. OSHA would have a field day with untrained non-employees running machinery and it would violate ISO QC processes, as well as cause all sorts of insurance and liability nightmares. That is a ridiculous statement. Maybe at a one-man operation but not any decent-sized company. They might send over people to review the process and inspect, but that is more along the lines of QC processes for aerospace.

[bkb0000]

In manufacturing, the customer can send customer-supplied tooling to the vendor to reduce tooling and fixturing costs and send customer-supplied material so the vendor doesn't have to source a supplier.

However the vendor isn't going to let the customer send over a bunch of employees into the vendor's shop and just let the customer's employees start running the vendor's machinery and start jamming up the lunch room microwave. OSHA would have a field day with untrained non-employees running machinery and it would violate ISO QC processes, as well as cause all sorts of insurance and liability nightmares. That is a ridiculous statement. Maybe at a one-man operation but not any decent-sized company. They might send over people to review the process and inspect, but that is more along the lines of QC processes for aerospace.

i'm not in the machining industry, but it's done ALL THE TIME in other industries.

however- i was apparently wrong. PacNor's people produce noveske barrels- but on Noveske's dime.

Noveske: Our stainless barrels are made partially in ourshop and partially in Pac-Nor’s shop. And, the relationship that I have with Pac-Nor…I used to work there, and now what’s goin’ on is I buy steel, I take it to Pac-Nor, when the guys clock out of Pac-Nor, they clock into our barrel production. They machine my blanks with our tooling, which is all made to our design, including the drills, reamers, button, so forth, so on. They stress-relieve to our recipe, and then they give the barrels back to us, and then we finish them all in our shop.

[Cesiumsponge]

The snippet you posted is fairly typical as the customer gets to have their stuff made the way they want and most do some processes in-house, and outsource other processes to vendors. Many send custom tooling and fixturing to vendors, otherwise vendors would have to make that tooling and fixturing, then charge the customer for it. When companies get tooling made, they have to chose from a variety of other companies so its possible Noveske weeded through a bunch of crappy suppliers before they found reliable companies to crank our their specific tooling. Some of our customers send over custom fixturing and tooling as well.

I've never heard of vendor employees clocking in and out for different customers. Keeping track of machining hours is typical for small prototype work where you charge by the hour, but production level stuff has a machine shop running X quantity of parts for a price quote. A machine shop will be running dozens of parts for dozens of models for dozens of customers at any given point so production is staggered in various stages of completion. It's not like all machines start and end the same job at the same time. Maybe it was stated that way to simplify the process for laymen interested in an inside peek.

Either way, those barrels are in the hands of top notch companies. I have one of Noveske's 18" Mk12 3-groove match barrels (not their polygonal rifled SPR barrel)for my SPR. Good stuff, I'd like to drive south and take a tour of the Noveske facilities some time.

[DOA]

I guess that did come off as a slam, and it shouldnt have, if you price allot of the same parts, barrels excluded the exact same part with Noveskes name brings more $$$, I think its great capitalism at its best, but damn shop around save some $$$.

Are you the same poster slamming Noveske at CalGuns?

[mstennes]

Are you the same poster slamming Noveske at CalGuns?

Nope, never been there. Did you read my clairification, as to why I'm not a Noveske Kool Aid drinker?

[NE450No2]

Alpha Sierra
As a High Power shooter, I would be curious to hear your barrel life results with actual barrels, in the calibres you have shot.

And the reason I ask is that as you have stated, there is a big difference in how long a barrel shoots good to a 100 or 200 yards, vs 600 and 1000.