help me decide the barrel for proper balance

[StrykeBack]

Hi this is my first build and have a mega forged upper lower with magpul STR stock and my Noveske 15" NSR rail just arrived.

I'm trying to decide on a fairly accurate barrel that was supposed to be an ultra light build that has slowly grown in weight.
Planned on a Daniel defense lightweight 16 pencil barrel but some have warned that it heats up and becomes innacurate really fast? Upon reseaching I've found a medium contour from centurion arms and noveskes N4 lightweight that while heavier, it atleast keeps the weight closer to the body.

Is this carbine going to be very front heavy or what would you recommend?
Its going to be my first build and first AR that I would eventually like to take some carbine courses with it.

[UWone77]

Personally, I don't like lightweight barrels, but unless you have a happy trigger, I doubt you'll notice a difference. If you're concerned about weight, I really like the skinny barrel from Noveske. They are still .750 at the gas block, but shaved some material to save weight, a good compromise in my opinion. Rainier Arms also has some medium contour barrels with their Select line.

[Hmac]

My solution to balance problems wasn't to compromise on barrel profile, I ended up swtching to an 11.5 inch SBR with a Noveske NSR rail on it. That makes an amazing difference in handling.

[StrykeBack]

As much as Id love an SBR, Im in California where the are illegal. I'm trying to convince my wife to move to Texas. Even AR pistols are illegal unless you go thru an 80 percent lower or single shot exemption it.

Probably gonna go with the Noveske lightweight N4 if I can find one.

[rob_s]

I've shot the hell out of light barrels almost exclusively. I've never missed a shot or lost a match or a drill that I can attribute to the barrel profile.

Barrel profile only matters, maybe, when doing nappy-time, one-hole-chasing, "precision", I'm-too-out-of-shape-to-do-any-other-kind-of shooting.

On TD3 of a carbine course in August I've never heard anyone say "damn, I really should have brought the HEAVIER shit", but I sure as hell see a LOT of guys stripping off load-carriage, VFGs, lights, and anything else they can to lighten the load.

[gatordev]

What about with a suppressor on the end, specifically with a shorter barrel? That's the one area where I haven't gotten a warm fuzzy on using a LW profile (which most of my barrels are on my "normal" length barrels are). Then again, the data points seem to be fairly small, ie one fairly well-written description of running a 6921 barrel vs a SOCOM barrel with a suppressor that came up in my Google searches.

I ask because in the relatively near future, I foresee myself having four SBRs configured for suppressor use. Two are already ready to go: a 10.3" 6920 barrel and a 11.5" BCM govt. profile barrel. But the other two will be a 14.5" 6921 (stock or SOCOM TBD) and a 12.5". Obviously the LW profiles make carbine comps and classes easier, but I do worry that if I decide to run suppressed, if it will make a noticeable effect.

[rob_s]

I'm not aware of any scientific testing of otherwise identical LW and HBAR barrels with and without cans, but I can say that in my experience there are so many other variables that can affect POI shift that it would be hard to isolate barrel profile as the single cause of shift. But I understand why people think that logically a thinner barrel will bend more with a weight on the end, and therefore POI shift will be affected more. If I was still doing that kind of thing it would be an interesting exercise, but to be valid it would really require multiple examples of each barrel and the can in question, so it would probably be cost prohibitive. But incidentally, a shorter LW barrel is going to bend less than a longer one when a can is attached.

I'm not a fan of cans, and I'm even less of a fan of moving them around all over the place, although if you are going to have a can I do think it makes some sense to try and put mounts on the various guns that could accept the can if needed. Again, my experience, but I find that most people that buy cans wind up never shooting with them outside of the static range because the can is heavier than they thought and not as quiet as they thought, and when shooting around a bunch of other people not using suppressors you still wind up wearing hearing protection anyway. Remember earlier when I mentioned people stripping extra weight off of their guns on TD3? Yeah, that can is the first to go. Although I did manage to get through 3 days of an EAG class with a 300WTF upper wearing the can for most of the class.

If you simply must have a suppressor, I think the best route is to leave it on one gun and set that gun up as a dedicated suppressor host. But I'd also probably choose muzzle devices for my other guns that can accept the can if needed. So, for example, if I buy a 10.3" LW DD upper (or a 14.5" LW barrel cut down in order to maximize the gas port size) and set it up as my dedicated host for a Surefire SOCOM762-MINI (http://www.surefire.com/socom762-mini.html) (which, incidentally, would be my #1 choice for a can by a huge margin, and yes it's a 7.62 can that I would put on a 5.56 gun) I would use a brake mount for that gun to minimize wear on the blast baffle and I would use Surefire flash hiders on my other guns just in case I want to move the can for whatever reason. I'd even put a Surefire brake on my competition gun because (a) they are very effective brakes anyway and (b) if I suffered a brain injury and decided I wanted to put my can on that gun I could.

So I say all of that to say this, which is that again barrel profile just doesn't matter outside of precision shooting. As much as some people would like to try to make an issue of it.

[gatordev]

Thanks for the thoughts, Rob.



If you simply must have a suppressor, I think the best route is to leave it on one gun and set that gun up as a dedicated suppressor host. But I'd also probably choose muzzle devices for my other guns that can accept the can if needed. So, for example, if I buy a 10.3" LW DD upper (or a 14.5" LW barrel cut down in order to maximize the gas port size) and set it up as my dedicated host for a Surefire SOCOM762-MINI (http://www.surefire.com/socom762-mini.html) (which, incidentally, would be my #1 choice for a can by a huge margin, and yes it's a 7.62 can that I would put on a 5.56 gun) I would use a brake mount for that gun to minimize wear on the blast baffle and I would use Surefire flash hiders on my other guns just in case I want to move the can for whatever reason. I'd even put a Surefire brake on my competition gun because (a) they are very effective brakes anyway and (b) if I suffered a brain injury and decided I wanted to put my can on that gun I could.


I've actually decided to take this approach, except with a 5.56 (legacy) SF can. The 7.62 mini wasn't available at the time (though I was wishing it was) and I didn't own any 308 guns at the time (and even now, I only own one that I'd suppress if I needed/wanted to), so it made sense to go with a 5.56 can. My mostly MK18-ish will wear the can most of the time, and I've collected some legacy brakes/FH moutns for the other guns should I want to mess around with them. Unfortunately for now, I have to wait until I can PCS back to a place where I can play with the can again, but at least (in my thinking), I went in with a plan rather than buying each new shiny object along the way. It will also be interesting to play around with what I have and see if there is a noticeable difference after a few strings of fire (other than any POI due to just putting the can on).

All that said...that 7.62 SOCOM mini sure does sound sweet for my SR-25........

[rob_s]

I actually don't own any .308s either right now. My only non-5.56 centerfire rifle is a 6.8 upper that I've never even gotten around to firing. But I have owned .308s, a 7.62x39 AK, and had a 300 WTF on T&E for quite some time so I can't say for certain that I won't have a 5.56+ caliber again in the future. My 7.62 MINI suggestion is mostly just a hedge against future purchases, and since I find cans to be mostly useless my thinking is that I'd want it to fit on everything it could. When I had the WTF upper I also had a 762-SDN-6 which I had the opportunity to fire on a bunch of different rifles, mostly 5.56, side-by-side with the 5.56 cans that those rifle-owners had and I really couldn't tell much of a difference.

Either way though, I think that, relative to barrel profile, if you have a dedicated suppressed SBR than shift really doesn't matter because the can is going to be on it 99% of the time, and your other guns are so unlikely to wear the can AND need to be shot for precision that the barrel profile becomes a non-issue. If I had a precision gun I *would* shoot it with and without the can and tape a dope card or similar to the stock.

[gatordev]

All makes sense to me and about 95%+ in line with my thinking/plan.