Seems that way. The quality stuff is still out there though 
P&N or Suttonā¦ I avoid anything made in China if I can.
There was a time when steel tooling items were made from decent material and if they were black they were nitride coatedā¦ like gun barrels, etc.
The last set of turning tools I got from ebay (carbide insert holders) arrived and almost went straight in the bin.
I swear they were made of mild steel, painted black not nitride coated, which included the screws and clamping blocks that were definitely not high tensile.
I guess you get what you pay for. 
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Yea, used to use Sandvik 20yrs ago. They were not cheap but quality for all mill/lathe tools.
Supervisor would bust a left nut when you cooked a carbide tip trying to finish machine heat treated tool steel for a die. Slow down but hurry up 
Just remembered we have an RCBS case deburring tool that would have worked better than the sandpaper, or at least be easier to use. Nevermind, next time
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Give it a shot next timeā¦
Iām sure it wonāt be the last inner barrel you chop up.
Thatāll do it, perfect
I always used those brands, as well as Sandvik right up to this very day.
Unfortunately Sutton stuff had gone down the plug hole and is no better than whatever cheap Chinese crap is available in the local hardware store 
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Suttonā¦ they used to be good. Maybe they shifted place of manufacture to compete with prices like a lot of companies.
Looks like a good place to buy from TURNING TOOLS LATHE TOOLS HSS CARBIDE INSERTS PCD CBN INSERTS - Engineered Tooling Pty Ltd
dang they havenāt got any cheaper for those swedish buggers.
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Pretty good range of tool holders, prices arenāt too bad.
I do bugger all machining these days, so quality stuff will definitely last my lifetime.
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Used to be a knowledgeable fellow on the GBF that knew the ins and outs as he sold tools. Would have been good to have the input on this subject. Oh well.
Downgrading to an M90 spring has knocked the FPS down to 300-310. Iāve put the correct tongue on the ihobby hop up as well and done some more testing but unfortunately the accuracy is still pretty woeful. Iād say 2m spread at 25m.
Put my sonās Aztec Hellfire hopup on which saw an improvement of maybe 1.5m spread at 25m.
Have tried 4 types of gels and results were similar so I feel as though itās the setup and not the gels.
Iāll do that barrel cylinder measurement at some point and see what that looks like
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As a general rule, we usually check grouping accuracy with gel blasters using full auto or burst fireā¦ which means all that vibration will transfer to anything loose and gels will be all over the place. Iāve found 90% of accuracy issues Iāve had have resolved with a bit of work on a solid setup.
VE is important, but once you get over a certain length with the inner barrel, youāre pretty much stuck with what you get, dictated by rhe cylinder size. Bad VE can be improved with tighter bores, porting, etc but on something like an M16A1, M14EBR or L1A1 with a long barrel over 50cm youāll never get optimal VE.
For what itās worth, Iāve built blasters with what should be appalling VE and theyāve been very accurate. Iāve also built some with perfect VE and they havenāt been accurate at all. Itās a bit of a crap shoot.
Keep plugging away, youāll get there.
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