Citadel Garand barrels.

Squinty

Squinty

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Trade Ex has Citadel barrels in stock. At one time Citadel barrels had a bad reputation; however, the company changed hands and the new barrels are supposed to be of good quality.

That said, does anyone here have any experience with Citadel barrels from Trade Ex? Inquiring minds want to know.
 
I bought one, but haven't installed it yet. The threads needed to be cleaned up a bit to get it to seat against the face of the receiver. I trial fitted it to 15 different Beretta/Breda receivers and found that it ranged from 32 to 45 degrees off vertical index when hand tightened on the receivers. That's too far off for a starting position on a barrel installation so I will need to have some metal lathed off the barrel shoulder before installing it.
 
purple said:
I bought one, but haven't installed it yet. The threads needed to be cleaned up a bit to get it to seat against the face of the receiver. I trial fitted it to 15 different Beretta/Breda receivers and found that it ranged from 32 to 45 degrees off vertical index when hand tightened on the receivers. That's too far off for a starting position on a barrel installation so I will need to have some metal lathed off the barrel shoulder before installing it.
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By 'threads needed to be cleaned up' do you mean it was tight to thread into the receiver?
 
jonh172 said:
By 'threads needed to be cleaned up' do you mean it was tight to thread into the receiver?
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Yes. I don't know if this was typical, but I had to touch up the threads in places with a fine file and wire brush in order to get the barrel to thread up fully against the face of the receiver. I've never found a similar problem with a new Criterion or US GI barrel.
 
I also recently emailed the Tradex guys about these barrels, asking whether they were (a) short chambered (so have to finish with a finishing reamer); and (b) whether they were chrome lined (which could wreck the aforementioned finishing reamer).

For (a) - they replied that yes, they were short chambered (as expected so they can be finished to match the receiver)

For (b) they didn't know (gulp) - but I assume not chrome-lined, as that would make finish reaming very difficult.

Purple - can you confirm?

I'm leaning towards going the tried-and-true route with Criterion barrels otherwise for my next build. Peter Dobson at Hirsch Precision had some in stock a while back and price was good.

Regards,
Peter
 
The Citadel barrels are short chambered. The only chromed area that should appear on a Garand barrel is the external surface of the barrel around the gas port area. This was done as a precaution against corrosion from the use of corrosive primed military ammo.

I can't imagine Citadel or any other maker chrome lining a barrel as this would prevent the use of a finishing reamer to set up final headspace. getting a uniform thickness of chrome plating throughout the bore is also quite problematic. One sure test for chrome plating is to apply cold blue to the surface in question after degreasing it. Cold blue will color ordinary steel, but will not affect chrome plating.
 
purple said:
Yes. I don't know if this was typical, but I had to touch up the threads in places with a fine file and wire brush in order to get the barrel to thread up fully against the face of the receiver. I've never found a similar problem with a new Criterion or US GI barrel.
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Ya that is bizarre.
All the criterion, krieger and SE I barrels I've had all spun up with no lag. Also, 35-45 degree index seems extreme, I guess they leave extra material incase of a heavily worn receiver? I spoke with garand guy in new York and he used to request it from criterion so he had to machine the shoulder, just his way of doing things, but maybe that's what citadel has done....
 
Criterion does make chrome lined barrels for the Garand M1. I know because I have four of these barrels--three in .30-06 and one in .308.

These barrels are fully chambered and you can only adjust headspace by changing bolts. Garand bolts differ in length. From shortest to longest they are:

WRA and Italian bolts
-12SA
-14
-17
-19
-2
-65 series

So if you use a chrome lined barrel, make sure you use a shorter bolt. With a Winchester bolt or an Italian bolt, you should have perfect headspace. But a 65 series bolt is way too long and will not work. A 65 series bolt will have insufficient headspace and the bolt will not close.

The Criterion people build their barrels to very close numbers and they are designed to work with the shorter bolts.

Every now and then, you may run into a troublesome receiver that will not work with a chrome lined barrel and any bolt. So be prepared to try another receiver. But if you have a short bolt and a receiver or two, you will be fine with a chrome lined barrel.

And my chrome lined .308 barrel is my favorite shooting Garand.
 
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Interesting that Criterion makes a chrome lined Garand barrel. The military went to chrome lined barrels to minimize bore erosion caused by prolonged firing of full auto and semi auto weapons. As a bonus, chrome lining also makes the bore easier to clean as we learned with our FNC1s many moons ago. The US GI M14 had a chrome lined bore, but chrome lined barrels were never used with the Garand in military service.

Its a bit of a crap shoot to get the right headspace with a fully chambered barrel as there are always variations in bolt lug wear and wear on the locking lug seats in the receiver, so it's worth having a good stock of bolts on hand for trial fitting. There is a lot of dimensional variation in used bolts on top of the fact that some types tend to be longer or shorter than others from the get go. About 10 yrs ago I had installed a new GI 1952 barrel and tried a number of bolts for headspace prior to finish reaming. I was amazed to find a -12SA bolt that headspaced properly with this new, short chambered barrel. One sure bet is the fact that the new 65 series bolts now in circulation are about the longest available. Unless a person has a good selection of bolts on hand it's probably a better bet to go with a standard short chambered non-chrome lined barrel that can be finish reamed to set up headspace with a bolt of your choice.

The other big issue on barrel installation is the degree of offset from vertical index before the barrel is tightened into final position. There is quite a variation where a barrel will sit from one receiver to another. By way of illustration I currently have 8 new GI barrels on hand which I've trial fitted to a hand tight position on 20 different receivers. There is an average of a 6 to 11 degree variation in where these barrels time up when hand tight. Some are far enough off index that they would be a no-go situation on various receivers unless some metal was removed from the barrel shoulder before installation.

I find the standard Criterion barrels to be on par with a new GI barrel for accuracy. The last one I installed was better than most.
 
While I was initially worried that a chrome lined Criterion barrel would be a crap shoot, it was actually more like a sure thing.

You don't have to worry about a pull through reamer and the barrels index properly. With a short bolt, headspacing is easy. The stripped bolt will close on a go guage and it will not close on a no go gauge.


So get some short bolts and a chrome lined barrel and go for it.

I cannot see any difference in accuracy between un-lined and chrome lined and the chrome lined barrel is much easier to clean.
 
I got 2 of them last year had to put them on my dads lathe and turn a hair off the shoulder as there was no way they were going to index. Had to do this multiple times on each barrel so I didn't take off too much. Once they were indexed Clymer pull thru reamer then go no go gauges and was all good. I did bruise a thread on the muzzle during this process of repeatedly chucking up and the vice and of course gas cylinder lock didn't want to go on, ordered up a 9/16 x32 die I believe to chase the thread it was good after that. Price was good on barrel and Tradex shipped quickly, of course found a NOS springfield 1955 barrel a week later that is tucked away for now.
 
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