Does Fluting a Barrel Make It Stiffer?

[HiBC]

You lost me there

[Bart B.]

Originally Posted by HiBC

You lost me there

Sorry 'bout that.

Trying to learn how a barrel made of corregated sheetmetal would be put together and be both accurate and safe. I don't think it's possible. Way too labor intensive to be competitively priced.

[oprod]

Mehavey has it correct. Two barrels of the same size one fluted and one not. The not fluted will be stiffer. So, shooters put on even fatter barrels then flute so they are more manageable. Your store bought fluting is mostly cosmetic. High power shooters for years have fluted their barrels, these flutes are quite deep and by count quite a few of them as compared to the cosmetic commercial made flutes which are few and shallow. Real fluting costs about as much as the barrel. Btw you don’t see benchresters nuch using flutes, they don’t need less weight.

[IZZY]

Now to add some charcoal to the grill....

Does fluting ( done right as to not stress the steel) add enough surface area to allow for more HEAT dissipation, and thus reduce weight and keep accuracy for a shot or two more by allowing the barrel to cool better?

( assuming good barrel harmonics, and bedding...that is all things being equal which they often are not).

Personally I would not pay more for fluting, but I would not refuse a properly flutted barrel either.

[HiBC]

I suppose it depends on what you are doing.

You ,might be slow firing a target string,and so surface area and a dissipation rate might matter.

Or you might be a part of a small military team who is breaking contact with a "rolling disengage"

Which involves consecutive full auto mag dumps.

Assuming the fleeing team makes it to an extraction aircraft, cookoff hot barrels are undesirable. Fluting won't keep up, and as far as I know,the best solution is trading the pencil barrel for the additional mass of an H-bar. More heat sink.

[stinkeypete]

Good Gravy, this isn’t that hard.

1. Fluting reduces the weight of a bull barrel which if you have ever owned one- is considerable!
2. Fluting increases the surface area so increases heat dissipation
3. Stiffness of a pipe is primarily (on the order of distance cubed) determined by the height top-to-bottom of the force in that direction and much less by the width.

As was pointed out, a 2x8 is bendy in the flat way and very stiff in the tall way and I beams are very stiff in the I way although they have not much in the middle.

Spiral fluting looks cool but isn’t any good theoretically for smooth stress under bends but practically it seems good enough and the looks sell barrels. Theoretically, straight flutes will be stiffer and the stresses distributed smoothly along the whole length but it seems to not matter much.

Having owned some loooong .223 full bull barrels, I would get the next one fluted straight just to taKe some weight off that pipe. Cooling is a bonus. Spiral fluting is pretty but mechanical inferior. A full bull 24” AR barrel is a heavy pipe.

[stagpanther]

I only have a few fluted barrels and that is only because the rifle or barrel was not offered without them. IMO they serve only one practical purpose and that's reduction of weight, but usually that comes with a penalty of reduction of accuracy over the course of repeated shots. Otherwise I avoid them if at all possible--I treat them as "one shot, one kill" from cold bore guns.