To Flute or not to Flute?

[antelopedundee]

My understanding is that most button rifled barrels are rifled, stress relieved, and then contoured. Is that not the case? They are definitely chambered and muzzle threaded after the stress relief.

Why would they contour or do any other operation after stress relieving when the could simply do it before especially if that's what a customer is ordering? I don't claim to know how these places run their operation, but if you order a Remington contour barrel from Hart do they pull one off the rack that's already finished and re-contour it or wait until the particular barrel comes up in the schedule and do it then.

BTW are all Remington barrels hammer forged or just the ones on the bottom tier rifles? Does after the sale machining mess them up too?

If I wanted a barrel fluted I'd order it that way, but I'm done buying barrels.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Why would they contour or do any other operation after stress relieving when the could simply do it before especially if that's what a customer is ordering?

My understanding is that process of button rifling induces stresses in the steel. If you contour/flute/thread or just machine the outside of the barrel prior to relieving the stresses induced during the rifling process you risk having changes to the bore dimensions. Thus, makers of quality button rifled barrels stress relieve after rifling to mitigate issues from further machining after rifling.

I don't claim to know how these places run their operation, but if you order a Remington contour barrel from Hart do they pull one off the rack that's already finished and re-contour it or wait until the particular barrel comes up in the schedule and do it then.

I'd bet its done differently by different manufacturers. It seems patriot valley arms with their Opsrey barrels contours them to order (has a rack of uncontoured blanks that they contour as orders come in) or takes bulk orders based on a limited # of common contours. I bet most are done in batches by order. Like if company X is making 8 twist 6mm barrels in 2 weeks but 7mm barrels in 2 months, the time id receive a barrel order likely depends on which of the 2 i chose.