I read recently that some manufacturers hammer forge their chambers and barrels. Who's doing this? How good are the results? Does it save a lot of money? Am I the last to know?

I know that hammer forged barrels have been the norm for factory rifles for several years. Hammer forging of chambers is news to me. Sorry for not being clear.

Sounds like meaningless hyperbole.

Many makers are hammer forging barrels; it is a quick and cheap way to make barrels, although the first one costs a million dollars in tooling. The second one is ten bucks. It can produce a good barrel; Ruger, Remington, Steyr, and probably others are using hammer forges, And, all our tank cannon barrels are hammer forged at Watervliet Arsenal. The hammers are about as big as an office desk; I have seen them do it. (And I bought the barrels as well, by the hundreds)
I do not know what a hyperbole is, but yes, it is common industry practice to hammer forge barrels these days.

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Hammer forged chambers is something that is generally left to repetitious manufacture. Hammer forged rifling is used in the sporting industry because there are so few options for calibers that it makes it cost effective to tool up for it and use it. You simply run off a couple of years worth of barrels at a crack and then chamber them to what ever cartridge is needed in that caliber. I have watched the hammer forging process while I was at Remington Arms. Remington only hammer forges the rifling.

With dedicated manufacture for say, 223 barrels based on the M16/AR platform a lot of companies will also roto/hammer forge the chamber as well. Companies like FN, HK, Daniel Defense and others doing military contracts can justify the expense of the equipment and tooling because they are knocking off tens of thousands of the same barrels in exactly the same chambering.

dpcd: No down play of hammer forged barrels was intended, Tom. But, I can understand how it would appear as such.


Here's a Wikipedia definition of hyperbole:
Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. In rhetoric, it is also sometimes known as auxesis (lit. "growth"). In poetry and oratory, it emphasizes, evokes strong feelings, and creates strong impressions. As a figure of speech, it is usually not meant to be taken literally.

Life is good. Live it up.: This is a hyperbole to many.

Thanks for that very informative post. I guess I had sporting rifles on the brain again. Duh.

quote:

Originally posted by speerchucker30x378:
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Hammer forged chambers is something that is generally left to repetitious manufacture. Hammer forged rifling is used in the sporting industry because there are so few options for calibers that it makes it cost effective to tool up for it and use it. You simply run off a couple of years worth of barrels at a crack and then chamber them to what ever cartridge is needed in that caliber. I have watched the hammer forging process while I was at Remington Arms. Remington only hammer forges the rifling.

With dedicated manufacture for say, 223 barrels based on the M16/AR platform a lot of companies will also roto/hammer forge the chamber as well. Companies like FN, HK, Daniel Defense and others doing military contracts can justify the expense of the equipment and tooling because they are knocking off tens of thousands of the same barrels in exactly the same chambering.

Thank you, gentlemen. That would explain why twist rates in factory rifles sometimes are not appropriate for the chambering.

Now kindly advise me how to convince my shooting (term used loosely) buddies who expect all factory rifles to be MOA, even with lousy bench technique. I tell 'em to stop reading the damned magazines, but it doesn't seem to get through.

No, they shouldn't compromise on twist rates; what are some examples you are thinking of? I don't know of any that are grossly bad. And these days, with better bullets and barrels than we had in the 50s, 60s, even 70s and 80s, most anything will shoot MOA or very close to it.

"Usually" I've found the issue in small calibers. The manufacture figures the rifle is going to be a varmint rifle like a 22-250 (244Rem)so they use a slow twist. Then the buyer wants a heavy bullet and he is out of luck. I don't "think" it had to do with their machine compromise. Just failure to read the customers wants.

The hammer forge equipment is the huge investment. The mandrel not so much.

IIRC Steyr started it all and made a large amount of money - It was a good idea .It's maybe 50 years old.The big rotating machine isn't anything to watch but it does the job quick and nicely !

I've been under the impression that chambers were "rough forged" as the rifling and profile were being forged. Then the chamber was finished and headspaced with a finish reamer. I've never seen the process first hand, so I don't know for sure.

Twist is specified/suggested by SAAMI; it is not the fault of the manufacturer or barrel maker trying to cut corners. The 22-250 was never designed to shoot heavy bullets.
As for chambers, they do it both ways; either forge the chamber in, or cut it later with a reamer. Or finish it with a reamer, as you suggest.

It's my understanding that chambers can be either rough forged or fully forged. I believe that most of the long production runs are fully forged. The whole idea of roto forging is to cut down or eliminate machining time.

As far as twists go. I have noticed that a lot of the semi custom gun makers will under twist their rifle barrels. I'm sure their thinking is to capitalize on the fixation that using a twist rate favored by bench rest shooters will be more accurate. Fashion is a BAD approach to rifle making. If you want to make a sporting class firearm you should set the rate of twist to anything that the rifle might see and ignore what the peanut launching gallery is doing. The peanut gallery occupies only .0001% of the shooting fraternity and while some of their practices can be transposed over to the sporting rifle community, one must remember that benchrest is it's own game, with it's own set of rules and bench rest rifles do not make good sheep rifles.

quote:

Twist is specified/suggested by SAAMI;

I'll add that to the list of things I did not know.

quote:

Originally posted by speerchucker30x378:
It's my understanding that chambers can be either rough forged or fully forged. I believe that most of the long production runs are fully forged. The whole idea of roto forging is to cut down or eliminate machining time.

As far as twists go. I have noticed that a lot of the semi custom gun makers will under twist their rifle barrels. I'm sure their thinking is to capitalize on the fixation that using a twist rate favored by bench rest shooters will be more accurate. Fashion is a BAD approach to rifle making. If you want to make a sporting class firearm you should set the rate of twist to anything that the rifle might see and ignore what the peanut launching gallery is doing. The peanut gallery occupies only .0001% of the shooting fraternity and while some of their practices can be transposed over to the sporting rifle community, one must remember that benchrest is it's own game, with it's own set of rules and bench rest rifles do not make good sheep rifles.

Over the years I've seen several Remington barrels come to me with 'extraction problems" that had voids in their chambers. I'd hope the mandrel didn't have as many 'machine marks' on it, as I've seen in some Rem/Win/Ruger chambers. Ya',, the BR thing, like pinned recoil lugs........

99.9999999% of the time when you see a void in an American made sporting rifle its caused by rust creating deep pits. Once in a blue moon you may see a ring or even less often, what is known as a rip in the chamber. Rips are generally caused by material building up or sticking to the reamer flute and at some point this small block of material stuck to the flute will friction weld to the chamber wall under the turning force and pressure of cutting and tear out a bit of material in the chamber wall. I have only seen a couple of these in 25 years of full time gunsmithing.

I don't know of any American manufacturers that forge their chambers. The only makers of sporting arms that do is HK and possibly Steyr.

As Rod mentioned, HK forged the chambers in their rifles; at least in the semi-autos with the fluted chambers. Swiss Arms forges their chambers as well and those I have seen are the smoothest, straightest chambers one is likely to see.
As with any aspect of manufacturing, the end results are determined as much by quality control and the set goal than they are by the method. Hammerli sets out to make the best barrel they can and they do so. Other companies set out to achieve high volume and low cost and quality and consistency suffers. Regards, Bill.

Ya' ,, I guess I'm just another dumb a$$ with 41yrs of machining experience, a diploma from a two yr. gunsmithing school and 20+ yrs of bench experience that doesn't know the differnce between the marks a tool can make with loaded-up cutting edges and a void in the metal when I look at it through a HawkEye bore scope. Yep!, I don't bother to post here much and "blow my own horn" so I must not know much of anything other than what I've seen on U-Tube or read on the interdnet. And not to even mention that after finding that first "void" in that .308 chamber I called Remington and the man on the other end of the phone confirmed that at one time Remington was 'rough forging' the chamber, along with the rifling, and ocassionally a void wouldn't 'clean-up' with the finish reamer and it 'slipped' through QC and should have been sent back by the first purchaser of the rifle, but you know how some can be.. So it ended up on a 'used' rack at a 'buy-sell-trade' shop or a pawn shop until someone decided to find out what was wrong instead selling it to some other unsuspecting sucker........ Have fun in your own little world, boys!

Are you new to Internet forums, slivers?

Who kicked his dog??