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Why are many comp/flash hiders stainless steel?

lowCountryCamo

Stainless
Joined
Jan 1, 2012
Location
Savannah, Georgia, USA
I have been looking at various flash hiders/ comps and it seems that many, not all, are HT'ed stainless. I understand the HT, buy why stainless, in stead of 41xx like many barrels? They do take a beating and stainless helps with rust. Any other reason?
 
I have been looking at various flash hiders/ comps and it seems that many, not all, are HT'ed stainless. I understand the HT, buy why stainless, in stead of 41xx like many barrels? They do take a beating and stainless helps with rust. Any other reason?

Brakes and flash hiders do not really need to be heat treated unless they are ultra thin. Nothing ever touches the unit so there is nothing to wear out and common 1018 or 416 in its annealed form is easily strong enough to take the reduced pressures in most units. Some comps are high carbon or heat treated stainless because they also act as the slide bushing or cone in some pistols. People make brakes and flash hiders out of double heat treated high Grischnonium Unobtainium simply because they don't know any better or for merchandising purposes.

Black or blued, comps, brakes or flash hiders go on black or blued guns. Stainless units go on stainless guns. Its purely a cosmetic thing.
 
Unobtainium is not commonly stocked by metals jobbers. It may be reliably sourced from the numerous specialty shops that forge it into custom billets for the truly discerning user. We don't have room here to discuss the merits of forged unobtainium over those of cold rolled or cast unobtainium. Suffice to say that custom forged billets are so much better in every way. Regards, Clark
 
I have been looking at various flash hiders/ comps and it seems that many, not all, are HT'ed stainless. I understand the HT, buy why stainless, in stead of 41xx like many barrels? They do take a beating and stainless helps with rust. Any other reason?

I don't buy the rust argument at all. I have favored blued steel over any other firearm finish for years. The insides of my chrome-molly barrels don't rust... Why would a muzzle device?

It is nothing more than preference. Perhaps not my preference or yours, but a preference none the less. I make my own muzzle breaks, when I feel the need (damn rare), out of the same material (or something close) as the barrels. Since the ONLY 2 SS barrels I currently own are a .223 and a .17 Rem I have never made a break in SS. My .338s and the .50BMG I'm working on are another matter. I use either 4140 HT or Quad Steel XR because that is what I have on hand most of the time.

Providing they are stout enough just about any steel would be fine.
 
Some flash hiders also act as the mount for suppressors so they need to be hard so the threads or mounting mechanism doesn't get dinged up. Also pronged flash suppressors like the Smith vortex should be heat treated. If the rifle falls on the flash suppressor and a prong gets bent into the bullets path you are going to have some serious issues. 416ht machines easily and doesn't need to be finished reducing the need for outside processing. As mentioned earlier some muzzle brakes have thin walls so 17-4 works well in those cases.
 
not that i dont believe you, but i think its crazy that any italians and greeks made it up that far. but i guess if the french can do it.... ;)

What can I say, the Italians and Greeks can cook pretty good so we imported a lot of them. We started slapping around the Acadians in 1755–1763 and in retaliation they assembled a formidable army and in true french format uttered that famous battle cry (retraite s'enfuir s'enfuir) and promptly fled south. What french do remain we have boxed up in the penal colony of Quebec. Its like your Guantanamo Bay (GITMO) but much larger, and much colder. I read the other day that we have more mandarin speaking people in Canada than french. Due probably to the fact that they are smaller and we can pack them in tighter. ;)
 
I'm pretty sure they use stainless so when you are doing a final clean/dry fit by hand on your shiny new threaded muzzle before application of loctite, the threads gall creating a permanent union between the two parts. This leads you into a few words you wouldn't use around your mother, cutting the device off and making new shiny threads on the muzzle. If you were lucky, you were able to machine out the stub and chase the threads on the device reusing it.
 
Quebec penal colony

Ouch that hurts, bringing up the good old days like that.

As you will no doubt find out, once the settlers caravanes reach the plains and you can get a fresh 4 months old copy of the Montreal Gazette. Quebec has recently been stripped of this prestigious UN classification.

The recent public enquieries into government corruption having proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the inmates are running the jail, the UN was left with no choice. We Quebekers have responded to the news as tradition requires, by holding 5 referendums and 2 elections and so far the answer is still NON. So commitees are being formed as we speak to study the situation. Democracy is not cheap, but the revenues generated by the recent discoveries of petrol in the western plains of Upper Canada will no doubt help covering the bill.

Meanwhile everyone here is on his best behave in the hope that we will beat Mogadishu in the upcomming UN listings.

Now about stainless steel in pistol compensator. It was used to combat erosion in the baffles between the chambers of a compensator. It never was an issue with the .45, but in the .38 super and other high pressure caliber pushing a light bullet at high speed, it was a serious problem. In 1988 Behlert Precision started brazing stainless steel baffles in their comps in the hope that they would have to replace them less often on high usage guns. Other pistolsmith were no doubt doing the same. A 9x25 destroyed baffles twice as fast as a .38 super or 9 mm major.

This is what the baffles of a 9x25 compensator looks like after approx. 10000 rounds. I think this comp is made out of 4140 and the chambers/ports were sink EDM'ed. Not certain on the metal because I had them made by EGW and George knows a lot more about steel than I do. image.jpg

P.
 
Free machining SS is easy to cut, relatively strong, dissipates heat well, can be hardened readily and resists corrosion in all but marine environments. Seems like good qualities for gun parts.
 








 
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