Along with a couple of new hop ups from AK GB a 450mm stainless steel electropolished barrel arrived, thought I’d share a few details as I was fairly impressed. Not advocating for SS barrels being better in any way as modding blasters is still pretty new to me but hopefully this might be of interest to some people.
At first I thought Electropolishing was marketing jargon talk but apparently its a thing, whether that’s the process these barrels actually undergo is another matter, but they’re certainly shiny.
When initially looking down the bore I was pretty disappointed as it was incredibly dull, the inside of the barrel was incredibly dirty, assuming that’s from the electropolishing process. After about 20 minutes with a 7.62mm nylon brush, isopropyl alcohol and several patches the bore really started to shine.
Close up photography is not my forte so I wasn’t able to get a photo of how polished the bore is, but I was able to put a light down one end and the phone camera pressed up against the other to show just how much light is reflected inside the bore, hopefully that gives some indication of how polished it is.
45cm is too long for my needs but I bought it with the intention to cut it down to make a 28cm and a 15cm barrel but given show shiny it is I’m thinking of trying a 33cm barrel on an SLR ION with a full cylinder.
I’m not expecting miracles out of this thing but looking forward to the experiment to see how it performs (or doesn’t)
I think the main benefit to stainless barrels was their rigidity, being a harder metal than aluminum, they won’t wobble/flex as much when shooting.
You will need a proper cutting disk or a hacksaw to get through it though obviously, and I had to use a pointed grinding bit to clean up and bevel the edge.
Think I’ve got some 1mm stainless cutting discs for the 100mm angle grinder so that’s probably what I’ll use with with a small pointed grinding stone on the Dremel to finish off, maybe some high grit sand paper if I’m feeling really fancy.
@Friendly_Fire Will definitely report back with results, bought a spare Cyma t-piece so I can quickly switch out barrels for testing.
I have never been an advocate of stainless barrels, mainly as being a hard to cut and work material doesn’t lend well to customising the length, but also as nearly all of them over the years have been 7.3mm id which is just not my jam (jam… get it?)
Good polish, and some gel sizing to suit they might be better, but both of those things are gel things I don’t make time for so have always just stuck with 7.5mm alloy barrels.
I’ve always loved my Stainless Barrels simply for the fact that their internal polishing and maintenance is MUCH better than Alloy barrels.
As we both know @RokSolid , owners rarely EVER clean and maintain their barrels, which leads to all sorts of issues regarding lower FPS/Broken Gels/Terrible Accuracy etc etc.
Stainless Barrels withhold their integrity much more highly than Alloy in any situation, especially when neglected in the operating conditions of heat, dust and humidity.
But the most important factor is to do the research and find a high quality micro polished stainless barrel to start with!
I’ve done plenty of builds where “quality” Stainless or Alloy barrels looked like they were internally “finished” with 400 grit Sandpaper!
Unfortunately @Jug :s barrel actually looks pretty terrible with all the machine marks and ribs left inside it, whereas the Stainless Barrels I sourced for my builds were Mirror polished to perfection internally.
I always chose Stainless Steel over Alloy simply because I knew that the average Gelblaster owner NEVER includes barrel maintenance as an important factor in keeping their Blasters operating at peak performance.
I always pressed my Customers into paying that little bit extra for a quality Stainless Barrel, mainly because I didn’t want to see them again complaining about issues that were solely related to a non maintained Alloy barrels,.
Aluminium alloy simply just breaks down, whereas Stainless Steel does not.
I’ve still got a few of the old school BRUISEMASTER Brass Barrels as well, but they are just as bad as Aluminium if you don’t maintain them properly.
All good in theory, but the base metals prove otherwise.
I agree and with the moisture from the gels, if you don’t punch the barrel with a bit of lube starts corroding very quickly with an alloy brl. If not used for awhile.
Stainless will not and is a very durable steel. Piss easy to cut through with a 9" haha no seriously out with dremel sorts lengths and things out.
Depends what you can get hold of too. Sometimes they are not available. But stainless is better than alloy. Even for my other blasters
Ah bugger, I didnt look at the light reflections from that point of view DB. All good, I’ll see how it performs on the weekend. It’ll be cutting this barrel to the same length as the existing alloy barrel for a direct comparison.
Or at least, a direct comparison as I can make it - I measured the ID of the new stainless barrel last night which turned out to be 7.55.
Don’t think it’d matter when I went to the Dentist, yep that ones a gonner. Ok pull go for it, pull harder greek lady jumping on my chest, bit old for me though she did a top job.
I remember the old bruisemaster brls went from one size to tighter. Yeah they are long gone because it was a stupid idea, plus they couldn’t make them. I never bought one, stick your brl up where the sun don’t shine
Same issues I found regarding the polished finish on the BRUISEMASTER barrels.
If you thought Alloy barrels degraded fast without the right maintenance, those BRUISEMASTER barrels turned into green death faster than you could load a magazine!
I’ve still got one somewhere. A relic of a bygone era
Forget what I paid for it, but it wasn’t $100 or even close to that. You would order one, then wait, and wait, and wait. He’d finally answer your emails and say sorry, been busy.
These barrels have a 9.6mm outer diameter so wouldn’t play ball with a couple of the screw on hop ups, not a deal breaker I could get them down to 9.5mm at the hop up end with some sanding. They are extremely tight in the T piece though.
Internally they are actually closer to 7.6mm inner diameter measured with a decent set of verniers. With our gels sorted between 7.25 and 7.45 the accuracy was no better than an alloy barrel. This was tested across two blasters with the same gels and the same hop up.
At this stage I’ll either go back to the 7.5mm alloy barrel or look for some gels that grow slightly larger and see how they go.
Interestingly after the days play I cleaned these barrels with a 7.62mm nylon brush and water and the inside of the barrel was absolutely filthy, it looked like gunk had settled into what looked like long grooves running down the length of the barrel. The only thing that got rid of those long dirty lines and returned it to a shiny finish was isopropyl alcohol and a nylon brush. Needless to say this isn’t a cleaning process that I want to perform after every game day.
Unless some larger gels perform well in these barrels it might be back to the 7.5mm alloy barrels I reckon.
