Who uses the highest tensile strength steel of the barrel makers?

Lothar Walther uses a proprietary alloy for their stainless barrels called LW50. It's made by Krupps if I remember correctly and it's basically the same as 420. The stuff is tough enough for many gunsmiths down south refusing to machine them after they gone through the experience once.
 
Need CM here, though I’ve chambered a LW CM barrel and it wasn’t soft, LW19 they call it also proprietary. Machined fine, just slow feed and lots of coolant, no big deal. Seen the US comments from one smith, made me chuckle, he clearly doesn’t like changing his setup or method from 416 or 4140.
 
BattleRife said:
For ultimate strength with outstanding toughness, 4340 is the ticket.

If you want to go all out, look for a specialized grade of 4340 known as 300M. It is typically sold as a special bar quality stock, so getting a size that can be made into a barrel shouldn't be too difficult. Most commonly used for things like F-18 tailhooks, so source from folks who routinely supply the aerospace industry. Expensive to buy, probably tough as hell to work, and with a very persnickety double heat treatment to get the desired properties, but it can legitimately be brought to a 300 ksi (2.0 GPa) tensile strength.
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I can vouch for 300M Being a tough steel. I have had this gun drilled and splined for use in my transmission in my pulling trucks. turbine input torque on the shaft was over 2400lbs-ft on a 1.23"OD input shaft, and we have never broken one.

Mind you, my friend in Boeing made it and the 3rd gear drum and intermediate shaft out of the same material so no surprise they hold up.

The heat treat in 300M would be difficult to achieve on a final dimension rifle barrel though. It would be amazing, but hellishly expensive to do properly. Even after heat treat, and normalization cycles, the shafts in my transmission were then cryogenically treated for good measure.
 
Two other alloys I don’t see mentioned here but well worth considering are 4340 v mod and EN30B. Both have high tensile and are pretty hard, preheat treatment. They are not too bad to machine and material is available from local steel suppliers.
 
brybenn said:
Any clues as to what the cartridge will be?
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.350 Tezwa, named for a river I’ve guided on where I had some particular adventures outfitting.

Discussed it in another thread but it’s well buried and under a confusing title, as I was looking into fitting it in a Win 94 .357 for testing. Blowing past that right to the main project, cartridge is a wildcat 9x50 Magnum. It’s essentially a super length .357 Maximum, needed an extremely slender cartridge to fit the frame I want to use, even the .30-30 and .375 Win were too fat. It puts out some surprising numbers from Quickload, thanks to help from pmatuk and ForealBoreal’s expertise.

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It was heavily influenced by this round of Hoytcanon’s,

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Ardent said:
Got them for $115 a piece, in stock at nine35. Will be perfect for a double, as even if not the best barrels the steel’s excellent. And anyhow... Double rifles don’t group, they congregate.
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Just don't put a bore scope in them or you might be horrified.You may want to lap them.Unfortunately you get what you pay for when it comes to barrels.They seem to shoot fine though.
 
It would seem, if they don't work out, that you would get your barrel steel reboring 6.5 Swede or any classic barrels sourced for DWM.

What is your original brass for this cartridge?
 
Bohler made (makes) various types/ ‘qualities’ of barrel steel as I found when doing online research on my 1950 Mannlicher Schoenauer which has a barrel marked Bohler ‘Antinit’ - I found this was a special order material for that rifle ... and found info on other grades of bohler barrel steel as well as their respective strengths. Some of their steels are well regarded by shotgunners fwiw.

older steyr SSG rifles have a very long service life and the barreled actions of their pre-sbs Model ‘M’ Pro seem remarkably light .... just an observation. Perhaps the SSG longevity is a benefit of the type of steel or the hammer forging or both .... whether that would translate to a thinner barrel with adequate strength IDK ..... although if light weight was the primary goal —- I am frequently surprised at the seemingly lighter weight of my model M Professional as well (although it is in a Robertson stock)
 
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