CRYOGENIC Treatments to Barrels

[FW Conch]

Cyro on a rifle barrel is a "snake oil " sale . "Nitrideing", on the other hand seems to have great merit:) !

[emtrescue6]

Cyro on a rifle barrel is a "snake oil " sale . "Nitrideing", on the other hand seems to have great merit:) !

I am currently working on a build and ended up with a stainless barrel and blued action so started looking at "barrel" treatments so as to end up with a barrel and action that look the same. Anyway, after a great deal of reading and two phone calls to Daniel Lilja of famed Lilja Barrels from whom my barrel came from I came to two conclusions.

First...pretty much all of the educated people I talked to and read material from agreed that cyo treatments for barrels do nothing to improve life, accuracy or ease of cleaning...I spoke to two barrel manufactures in addition to Lilja (Pac-Nor and Shillen)...all three said the same thing basically "there's no actual evidence cryo treatments work". The only people I really found that support cryo treatments was the people selling it and the magazine writers that were provided barrels (from the sellers) to test.

http://www.riflebarrels.com/faq_lilj...#deepcryogenic

That being said, both Daniel Lilja and Jay at Pac-Nor said they had tested forms of "Nitrideing" including Melonite...and both agreed that it has some possible redeeming values...hardened surface that is many times harder and slicker than traditional metal (which actually results in less velocity), possibly easier to clean...they both agreed it didn't likely increase accuracy.

I decided to give the Melonite treatment a shot on this project on the barrel (Lilja stainless barrel), action and bolt housing...I'll let ya know in the fall if I think it's an improvement.