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The Best Duty Barrels? - FN 16-inch Chrome Lined 5.56 Barrel
Updated
21 months ago
Good morning, everyone, this is John with gun.deals, and today we’re gonna be taking a look at a very high quality FN 16-inch chrome-lined barrel.
Full disclosure, I paid my own money for this barrel, I have no relationship with FN whatsoever. I did a lot of testing, I put a lot of ammunition through this as this is kind of on a budget/duty build, if you will. I put this together for about 650 bucks retail, if you don’t get dealer pricing it would probably be around 800, 850, and since this is a ‘duty build’ I couldn’t think of a better barrel manufacturer to go with, someone with a longer track record that has more barrels in use with militaries around the world, than FN.
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Today, we’re mostly gonna be talking about it, its performance, as of right now I have about 2 000 rounds through it, without cleaning or lubricating, will get into that later on, accuracy, performance, all that sort of stuff.
Getting into the barrel itself, this is a 16-inch mid-length barrel, it is a Government profile, which is a military-spec, it’s not really the ideal profile, there are definitely better profiles out there in general. Government profile will have a bit of a thinner taper in the middle, up to the gas block, and then it will have a slightly thicker taper at the end. It can result in decent accuracy, and with this barrel it does certainly, the end product is a very accurate product, however, it’s a little unbalanced, it’s a little front heavy, so we would prefer to see that weight moved back a little bit, maybe a little thinner taper up front, that’s what more modern profiles are doing, however, Government profile still absolutely works, it’s just not necessarily ideal.
This being a very mil-spec barrel is made out of the proper mil-spec 4150 chrome-moly vanadium steel, they have their own ASTM spec for that, I forget the number off the top my head. Now, the finish on the exterior of the barrel is a manganese phosphate finish. Manganese phosphate is a very good finish, it soaks up lubrication, that’s kind of its claim to fame, it’s not necessarily my favorite finish for everything, but it is, again, very mil-spec, very tried-and-true, with the proper maintenance will last you a very long time.
The bore chamber, all of that is very nicely chrome-plated. Chrome plating is not really arguable that it is the best lining for a barrel, it’s extremely hard, it’s about as twice as hard in terms of HRC versus the actual steel itself, and it’s very corrosion-resistant, it’s very heat-resistant, it’s a very, very durable lining. It can reduce accuracy in certain applications if it is plated improperly, however, FN has been doing this for a very long time and, as we’ll get into later on, the accuracy of this 16-inch barrel left very little to be desired.
The feed ramps in the back, it does, of course, have M4 feed ramps on the barrel extension, on top of that, this is a true 5.56 chambering, meaning that it’s designed to handle the higher pressure 5.56 military-spec rounds, of course. On top of that, we have a 1:7 right hand twist, which is very good for stabilizing anything from 55 to 77, 80 grain ammunition, really whatever you can fit in a 5.56 magazine will be stabilized through this barrel.
On top of that, we have a mid-length gas system with a .750 gas block journal, very standard there. The gas port size on this specific barrel is a .078, which is actually 2000 of an inch larger that what you’ll find on like Ballistic Advantage or Rosco for a similar 16-inch mid-length and, again, for a duty application just giving it that little extra bit of reliability headroom by adding a little bit more gas in the system that it needs.
For me, that is perfectly fine if I was going to be building several hundred or thousands of rifles for a military or company, whatever you have, I would probably err on the side of reliability, as, again, I’m not sure how well all of those are going to be threaded and, in fact, you can probably be fairly certain that most of them are going to be abused for most of their life, adding a little bit of extra gas is gonna help them cut through some of that extra dirt debris, grime, what have you.
FN makes a ton of different barrels, a ton of different configurations for just about every purpose out there, they’re very famous for their cold hammer forge chrome-lined barrels. This barrel, while it is, of course, chrome-lined, this one, I believe, is their button-rifled barrel. Cold hammer forge as a process tends to be the most durable, it imparts the best characteristics to the steel as it’s being worked, meaning that in general it will provide you a longer barrel life, a more durable barrel on top of the chrome plating.
Button rifling is a more standard process, if you will. You can correct me on that in the comment section down below, if I’m off base, but the button rifling is a little bit of a simpler process, and it also does tend to be fairly accurate as well, again, it’s just not quite going to be to the same level of durability that you’re gonna get with cold hammer forge.
The last couple of things that we need to talk about on the barrel before we get to performance are gonna be one that the gas block journal is not dimpled for a gas block. I’m not sure if that changes between barrel to barrel, this one here is not dimpled, so I personally dimpled and pinned the gas block on here, as that’s generally what I do with most of my upper receivers, almost every gas block on any of my guns is going to be dimpled and pinned.
On top of that, the thread pitch is your standard 1/2x28 and it does have a recessed target crown on the end of the barrel. All of the features that you would like to see, all of the nice materials, all of the high quality coatings, chrome-lining. The only thing that this barrel is specifically lacking is going to be a dimple on the barrel itself and, of course, cold hammer forge versus button rifling, you guys can argue one way of the other.
We can talk about how the barrel actually shoots. As I mentioned earlier, it does have a slightly, very slightly larger gas port size than like a standard 16-inch mid-length gun, and it is not what I would consider to be punchy or over-gassed, it does, again, just have that little bit of extra headroom that I am personally 100% fine with. If you don’t like the recoil impulse, if it’s just a little bit snappier than what you’re used to, you can throw in an H1, H2 buffer in the back and it’s going to tame that down a little bit.
Personally, throughout the entire 2000 rounds that I’ve had this barrel so far, I’ve used it exclusively with carbine buffers, carbine springs. I’m getting about three o’clock ejection with M193 brass-cased ammunition, with steel-cased ammo about 3:30, 4 o’clock, and then with really hot ammunition, some of the HSM and other match loads that I threw through it, I was getting about 2:30 ejection.
If I was shooting this dedicated hot ammunition only or suppressed I would probably upgrade to either a Walther A5 or H2, H3, something in there to kind of tune the recoil down just a little bit. That’s not to say that this gun has a lot of recoil, as you’ll see in a lot of the shooting footage, it is a very, very soft, very smooth recoiling gun, it’s just a little bit like a hair over what you’ll get on some other barrels on the market.
Getting into accuracy, accuracy is something that I was very happy with. Again, chrome-lining in general, people argue whether it’s necessary, it’s definitely not necessary for every application, and then they’ll say that, you know, kind of it can reduce accuracy. In this case we tested it with a lot of different loads, just 55 grain M193 all the way up to 77 grain match.
We were getting very good, very consistent with all of the materials we were put through it. With a cheaper like Atomic 77 grain, I believe, we were getting about 1.5 MOA, with HSM we were getting down to 1 MOA. So, accuracy, overall, I am very happy with, if I can get a ball ammo anywhere from 2 to 3 MOA I’m gonna be very happy with that, and if I can get match ammunition sub-MOA or right at an MOA, maybe even just a little bit over MOA, again, I’m very happy in this barrel, for the money absolutely delivers.
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The price tag on the barrels by themselves are around 250 to, in some cases, 300$ retail, and then if you find them in sale, sometimes like Palmetto State Armory or Primary Arms will have them around 200$, so they’re definitely not cheap barrels, these are not, you know, cheap 100$ barrels, 80$ barrels or whatnot, these are more expensive barrels, but these are definitely duty/grade, battle-proven barrels.
Again, I’m not really sure if there is another company out there that can really compete with FN in terms of their track record, just how many of these barrels have seen service all over the world, again, they make incredibly high quality stuff, and the price tag matches.
Getting into reliability, it should be noted that I did not clean or lubricate this gun for 2 000 rounds, and through the entire time I had two malfunctions in one magazine, so I had two failures to eject. That’s after, again, about 2 000 rounds, it was really right at the end of testing on this barrel in this build, and I had two failures to eject with steel-cased ammunition. Now, it only happened in one magazine, which was from a single box of just, I believe, Tula 5.56, a really crappy steel-cased ammunition.
When I have a failure with steel-cased ammunition it’s always kind of a toss-up between whether it was an ammunition issue whether it was the BCG. In this case this is a Tool Craft Nickel Boron BCG that I paired up with the FN barrel, so it could have been a combination of bad ammunition, the system getting really gunked up and the extractor itself, not wanting to pull out those crappy steel-cased ammunition, could have been some sort of combination in there, again, it only happened in one magazine, so it was two rounds from the same box of ammunition, could have been an ammunition issue, could have been an extractor issue, not really sure there, but, again, it did happened.
Most of the time that I’ve been testing this barrel, it’s also been paired up with this Athlon 1-10, which you guys will be have seen a video on this a couple weeks ago. Overall, the barrel matches up very well with the performance of the 1-10 LPVO. Inside of 75 yards, where probably about 75, 80% of my shooting was done, it performed very well, very fast, again, it is a hair over-gassed compared to other options, but it is still a very smooth, very good shooter for 5.56, not difficult to control whatsoever, and then, on top of that, with the accuracy that we were able to get out of this barrel, I believe we were able to take it out to 6 and 700 yards for long strings of fire without issue, we were using 77 grain HSM ammunition, which, again, is about 1MOA through this barrel, and with this optic combination, again, the pairing is very good, you have a capable rifle that will absolutely shred inside of 100 yards and still provide you a good to excellent level of accuracy out to 6, 700 yards when you’re using the proper ammunition.
Alright!
I will absolutely take that all day long!
The FN barrel is one of those products that if I had this in any of my builds I would be very happy with it, not only do you get that pedigree and track history with FN, but you’re also getting a very high level of performance, shootability, accuracy with the barrel and, again, it is one of those things that if I had this barrel in any build of mine, for any application, I’d be very happy with it. Tree gun, very happy, distance, I would be very happy the accuracy that I was able to get out of it or even just a general purpose gun.
FN barrels, again, they do charge more money.
Are they worth it?
If you’re looking for a top-tier, duty-grade barrel, not necessarily a gamer-gassed barrel like a Criterion, which do tend to be much, much softer shooting, but, again, depending on your application, a more general purpose, high quality, duty-grade barrel like the FN makes a lot of sense.
So, for those of you who are looking for that sort of durability and performance it is an excellent option. If you can afford it, of course, if you’re on a little bit more of a budget, there are other options on the market that will provide you a very similar level of performance in most circumstances, so whether or not it meets your needs or it’s worth it for you, that is, of course, up to you, but if this does fit your needs and your budget then it is, of course, an excellent option.
