Thread: Stainless vs Chrome moly

I have not worn out any barrels but I have done research into steel in other applications so here is my view, for what its worth.

As other posters have pointed out , there are many different types and grades of Stainless steel. They are all stainless for the same reason but they are used for different applications do their other properties are different. high end stainless steels are not only expensive but very hard, difficult to work with.

25 years ago, when the majority of mountain bike frames were made from chromoly steel, aluminium (and a handful of cabin fibre and titanium), a few mountain bike manufactures did make SS bike frames. They were always expensive because SS is difficult to work with, and it was hard to get desired results from them. Today Chromoly is the main stream for park and dirt BMX, dirty jumper. SS is still as rare as it was 25 years ago.

Another area where SS and non-SS often compete is knife making. High end SS are very expensive. If you want a knife that is sharp and sharpens easily, you can save a lot of money buying non-ss.

Now on guns, i would imagine the cost sand work-ability with SS for other application must also exist for gun barrels. so I think to make rifling, they must use less-than-premium SS. If you are shooting a caliber where you do not shoot a lot, but you carry it with you a lot thus resistance against rust is a bigger concern than wearing it out, then SS would make more sense. But if you shoot a lot then I guess high quality chromoly steel has to beat SS.