How much does rifling direction *really* matter?
I bought a barrel blank from green mountain rifle barrels for an AR-9 project, profiled it, and wasn't really happy with its performance.
Then I realized that there is a "muzzle" end and a "breech" end to the blank, and I *probably* got it backwards. (It's been a while, so this is from foggy memory)
My understanding was that you draw the button from the breech to the muzzle, because the *entrance* hole *at the breech, has more distortion than the exit hole. Therefore, if you put the chamber at the "bad" end, you erase all the distortion. But if you cut off a sufficient amount from the "bad" end, it doesn't really matter which way the barrel goes.
e.g.: if you start with a 17.5" barrel, and cut 1" off the "bad" end, it doesn't matter which way you use the barrel.
However, when talking to a rep at Green Mountain today, she said the actual direction the button was pulled through the barrel always matters, no matter how much you cut off.
Which is to say, the only way I'm going to get the best performance out of this barrel is to go back in time and swap ends.
Is that actually true? Does which way the button was pulled matter if you erase the entry end?
I bought a barrel blank from green mountain rifle barrels for an AR-9 project, profiled it, and wasn't really happy with its performance.
Then I realized that there is a "muzzle" end and a "breech" end to the blank, and I *probably* got it backwards. (It's been a while, so this is from foggy memory)
My understanding was that you draw the button from the breech to the muzzle, because the *entrance* hole *at the breech, has more distortion than the exit hole. Therefore, if you put the chamber at the "bad" end, you erase all the distortion. But if you cut off a sufficient amount from the "bad" end, it doesn't really matter which way the barrel goes.
e.g.: if you start with a 17.5" barrel, and cut 1" off the "bad" end, it doesn't matter which way you use the barrel.
However, when talking to a rep at Green Mountain today, she said the actual direction the button was pulled through the barrel always matters, no matter how much you cut off.
Which is to say, the only way I'm going to get the best performance out of this barrel is to go back in time and swap ends.
Is that actually true? Does which way the button was pulled matter if you erase the entry end?