Cold Hammer Forged Barrels?

[UrbanWolf]

Which AR's come with CHF Barrels now? I know FN's M16A4 do, and PSA sells them.

Does Colt 6490 even have CHF barrel?

[Rabid]

Whats with the CHF obsession these days? Years back CHF barrels were seen as the bottom rung but now you pay a premium for them.

[cofi]

Whats with the CHF obsession these days? Years back CHF barrels were seen as the bottom rung but now you pay a premium for them.

bottom rung? my dd barrel has WELL over 10k through and there is still deep rifling

[Circuits]

Whats with the CHF obsession these days? Years back CHF barrels were seen as the bottom rung but now you pay a premium for them.

In the olden days, there was both a bit of "not made here" snobbery, because the chf tech was used almost exclusively by large european gunmakers, and quite a bit of traditional hidebound thinking regarding "good old American cut rifling". So basically American barrel attitudes were rooted in the past and we didn't like euro-stuff.

CHF produces better barrels at lower cost than traditional bore-and-rifle methods, if a company has the startup capital to invest in the equipment, and enough in the way of operating funds to replace mandrels when needed, or to fund a new mandrel for a new barrel profile and bore when the product line expands.

OP: CMMG, BCM, Daniel Defense, Spike's, Rainier, Centurion and many other places sell CHF barrels now - though almost all of them are made for them by FN, since they were the first to build a CHF facility in the US. The only Colt rifles that get CHF barrels are those made with parts produced by Diemaco/Colt Canada. Colt bought Diemaco specifically to get their hands on a CHF barrel facility, and then import of those barrels was forbidden except for military contracts.

[Rabid]

I get that with every blow of the hammer on the mandrel your compacting and heat treating the steel but does this really offer any advantage over a chrome lined barrel? My experiences with CHF barrels, from Winchester and Tikka, is that they foul much quicker then then a button or cut barrel. I am guessing this is because the the high variance CHFing produces along with the fact that CHFing is the cheapest and quickest way to produce a barrel so little if any lapping to the barrel is done.

[drew890]

I get that with every blow of the hammer on the mandrel your compacting and heat treating the steel but does this really offer any advantage over a chrome lined barrel?...

Many CHF barrels are chrome lined.

[cofi]

Many CHF barrels are chrome lined.

my dd is....

[drew890]

my dd is....

As is my BCM.

[Circuits]

I get that with every blow of the hammer on the mandrel your compacting and heat treating the steel but does this really offer any advantage over a chrome lined barrel? My experiences with CHF barrels, from Winchester and Tikka, is that they foul much quicker then then a button or cut barrel. I am guessing this is because the the high variance CHFing produces along with the fact that CHFing is the cheapest and quickest way to produce a barrel so little if any lapping to the barrel is done.

Not sure what was going on with your unlined winchester and tikka sticks - but it does not match my experiences with CHF in the AR world.

You tend to get far more perfect, and consistent bores from CHF than you ever would from boring a blank, rifling it, chambering it and lapping it. If the mandrel is good, all the barrels that come off it are going to be damn near identical. Several handgun makers have to add imperfections, effectively marking each barrel, in order for slugs fired through them to be able to be told apart forensically.

If a CHF barrel is to be chrome lined (and all the M16/AR-15 ones are) the mandrel used is slightly oversized to allow room for a hard chrome plating step after the barrel comes off the mandrel.

[Rabid]

So thats why CHF barrels are favored in demanding competition shooting sports like benchrest... Oh wait they are not.
Sorry to burst your bubble but CHF barrels have lower tolerances then a cut barrel. You can get a plain jane chrome lined or nitrocarburized (said to be harder then chrome) barrel for half the price and you get more then half the rounds through it compared to a CHF barrel before it is shot out. More rounds down range for less money seems to be the winning ticket to me.