Upper help

[Catalyst81]

I was about to order this PSA upper and as I was browsing their website I found this one.

Besides the second one being out of stock currently, can someone explain the difference between the two? Are they essentially the same? One is labeled hammer forged vs. chrome lined in their title description, but it appears that they are both chrome lined. I'm new to AR's and I'm just wondering what I'm missing if anything.

[tiger222]

Chrome lining is generally a good thing - you might loose some accuracy - but reliability & corrosion resistence increases

[Munny$hot]

Both barrels are listed as chrome lined. The major difference is the first is hammer forged which basically means its will take more abuse than a non forged barrel. Either barrel will out last most shooters easily. Unless your doing a high volume of F/A fire in a short period of time than the non hammer forged barrel will do.

[Chaos47]

get the hammer forged they are made by FN

[Peter.Steele]

Copypasta of my copypasta of ... anyway, info about hammer forged barrels, specifically as relates to Palmetto State.

I posted this in another thread that asked the same question, more or less, and so I'll just copypasta it over here:

Hammer forged barrels frequently offer little to no benefit in terms of accuracy. That's a myth. What they are is a way to make a lot of barrels very quickly.

The process involves putting a steel tube over a mandrel which has the rifling and chamber already cut into it. After this, hammers pound the living hell out of the tube, and then you've got a barrel that is already chambered, rifled and profiled. No further steps are needed.

The advantages:

First, the finish on the inside of the barrel may be extremely perfect, straight out of the box. Depends entirely on how worn the mandrel is.

Second, the barrel will likely be significantly harder due to the hammering process, and therefore more wear resistant than a non-HF barrel. This leads to potentially much greater wear resistance, and therefore a barrel that will last longer.

Third, since you're not drilling a deep hole, you are more likely to have a barrel that is straighter than more traditional processes.



These are the big advantages.

The disadvantages:

1. Chip forming processes - like cut rifling - do not induce additional stress into the barrel. The hammering process does. If the barrel blank has not been properly prepared beforehand, you can wind up with a barrel that is not straight. At all.

2. The quality of the bore depends heavily on the quality of the mandrel. If you get the first barrel off the new mandrel, you'll likely have a MUCH higher quality barrel than if you got the ten thousandth barrel off the same mandrel.

3. Cost. The machinery to make these barrels is stupid expensive, and that means that unless you have a market for a whole hell of a lot of them, they'll be very expensive.



Disadvantages 1 & 2 are basically overcome by having very high levels of quality control. Disadvantage 3 may be overcome by establishing a certain level of cachet to having a hammer forged barrel, so that the added cost will seem worth it.


As far as the advantages go, the first one will be - again - based on quality control. A high-end barrel maker with more traditional tools will likely have just as high quality a finish. Same for #3.

The big advantage is #2: the wear resistance. Thing is, shooting 200-250 rounds a month, your barrel will likely outlive you. Hammer forged makes a big difference for machine guns doing a lot of suppressive fire. Not so much for a semi-auto rifle.


Now, that said, the hammer forged barrels from PSA are not sold at that much of a premium. FN makes a s**tload of these things, so they can do it cheaply enough. Also, they tend to have extremely good quality control. So, the way I look at it, with PSA's prices and FN's reputation, you've got a decent chance of getting all the advantages to actually line up at once. Even if you don't, you've still got a barrel that isn't going to be any worse than anything else out there, and you'll still have bragging rights.

Full disclosure: I have a PSA upper with an FN hammer-forged barrel. I could not be in any way more pleased with it.

[Catalyst81]

Hammer forged - that's it, thanks. I wouldn't mind spending less on the other one, but since its out of stock I'll likely go with the HF.