From an interview with John Noveske in 2008. He says that Noveske buys their own steel and has PacNor employees machine them to Noveske specs with Noveske tooling.
LINK Crane: Right, o.k., now you�re double-chrome-lining your barrels, or some of your barrels, not the stainless steel barrels, but the�
Noveske: The N4 Light Carbine and N4 Light Recce barrels.
Crane: Light Carbine barrels. You�re double chromin� �em, and obviously, you must be getting a pretty nice even chrome job on there.
Noveske: Yes. I have a tolerance that is equal to a match-grade barrel.
Crane: Equal to a stainless barrel?
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Noveske: Well, that doesn�t mean anything, because there�s a lot of different makers of stainless barrels, but there is a kind of an unspoken match-grade tolerance in the custom barrel world of 2/10ths of a thousoundth concentricity, or�in uniformity of bore diameter from end to end, and I spec that out on my chrome-lined barrels.
Crane: Are you the only guy that�s double-chrome-lining �em?
Noveske: That�s not the right [terminology]. "Double-chrome-lining" implies that I�m chroming twice. I�m chroming once to the technical data package requirements for the M249 machine gun [FN M249 Squad Automatic Weapon a.k.a. FN M249 SAW], which call out for a chrome thickness that is approximately twice the thickness of an M16 or an M4.
Crane: The barrels that we�re talkin� about are Pac-Nor.
Noveske: Our stainless barrels are made partially in ourshop and partially in Pac-Nor�s shop. And, the relationship that I have with Pac-Nor�I used to work there, and now what�s goin� on is I buy steel, I take it to Pac-Nor, when the guys clock out of Pac-Nor, they clock into our barrel production. They machine my blanks with our tooling, which is all made to our design, including the drills, reamers, button, so forth, so on. They stress-relieve to our recipe, and then they give the barrels back to us, and then we finish them all in our shop.
Crane: What type of stainless are they using?
Noveske: Well, they use 416 project 70. I use a different type of material.
Crane: And what about the standard steel barrels? What kind of steel is that?
Noveske: Let me back up. You can�t call the barrel that we make a Pac-Nor barrel, because if you call Pac-Nor and order a stainless barrel, it�s gonna� be much different. It�s gonna� be different in every way from the barrel I sell. So when you say "what kind of materal do they use?", last time I checked, Pac-Nor uses 416 project 70 made by Carpenter, and I use a different material which is technically considered 416R, and it�s a lot harder than any stainless we�ve ever tested from other manufacturers. Our stainless comes in around 32 on the Rockwell C scale, and that�s harder even than the call-out for the M16 barrel.
Crane: And the standard barrel that�s being chrome-lined, the non-stainless-steel barrel, what kind of steel is that?
Noveske: That�s the same steel that�s in the technical data package requirement for the M249.
Crane: And what is that?
Noveske: Well, I�m not gonna� talk about what it is, specfiically.
