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What about that last 6-8 percent of stress relief from Magnatite to Austentite? Most of the mold makers do it.

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Originally posted by vapodog:
If Cryo treated barrels truly offered any tangible benefits, everyone would know about it and most folks would be doing it! One may therefore assume that it's pure marketing hype.

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Originally posted by DArcy_Echols_Co:
Stuart
There is no doubt that this barrel had some major kinks that were likely induced during it's manufacture, contouring or as a combined result with the High temp soldered hardware. When the Cryo process hit the media it was seen as cure all for everything accuracy related in regards to manufacturing induced stress. However Kevin Thomas at Sierra wrote about a test they did that found little quantifiable accuracy improvement when used with some of their test barrels. In my case I was groping at straws and hoping it was a stress related issue and willing to give it a try under the circumstances. In this one case the procedure did in fact reduce or remove what ever stress was present. I bring up this one instance as it did dramatically correct an ugly situation at least this one time. This might be a relatively cheap fall back procedure to considered when faced with a similar disaster in the making.
D'Arcy

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Originally posted by airgun1:
There is a place in Ohio that specializes in cryoing barrels. They will also do barreled actions, but specify that it is better to do them separately. They know what they are doing. They go in stages down to -300 F if my mind remembers correctly and then gradually raise it to +300 F. I don't know if this is capable of stress relieving or not. I just wanted to point out that they heat them as well as freeze them in the process. My numbers may be way off as I am going by memory of having one done there 10-15 years ago.

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Over the last 18 years I have had perhaps 5 barrels cryo treated after they have been chambered to try and make them shoot more accurately without unexplained flyers or radical shifts in impact. Of these attempts I have only seen one of these barrels react in a very positive manner and it was the first barrel I ever sent in to have the procedure done.

I had just finished stocking a 416 Rigby barreled action that had been put together by the late Tom Burgess. The barrel was a cut rifle barrel and had a front sight, sling swivel base and a secondary recoil lug silver soldered to the barrel. The client had a Lion & Buffalo hunt scheduled and was to use this very rifle in 4 weeks time. Now completely assembled I was at the range trying desperately to zero the irons and the scope and was becoming ill as I shot one 8" group after another. After 200 plus rounds and a dozen different loads, bullets and mantras had been tried I called the client and gave him the good news. As the Ser # had already been registered on his gun permit across the pond I was beside myself as this was his first and only heavy rifle. I called a barrel maker to arrange a favor, more likely a miracle, and arranged to have those guys make a replacement barrel as close to the original contour as was possible and have it to me in 14 days. As the barrel maker would not have the blank ready to contour for 10 days I decided to give Cryo a try based on what I had read about the process in a number of issues of Precision Shooting Magazine. I next day aired the barrel to Kathy Fisher and she ran it through the process over the weekend and had it to me the following Tuesday. The rifle was reassembled and I headed to the range with black cloud hanging over my head. From that day on this rifle has shot .750 three shot groups with anything you shoot down it's bore. 350gr, 400gr, 410gr, softs, solids, Mono's, it really doesn't seem to matter. To say the results were nothing short of miraculous is a bit of an understatement. It didn't matter if the barrel was fouled, cold, our fired until it was to hot to touch the point of impact and group size stayed the same.

I wish I could report that subsequent inaccurate barrels showed the same amount improvement after the process but this was not the case. If I can get it done as a process of the barrels manufacture I'm all for it. But I'm not convinced it will solve all the accuracy issues that you could run up against. In this one instance however it was a project saver.