Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles stainless or nitride treated gun

What do you feel is safer from corrosion resistance....a stainless rifle or a non-stainless one that has been black nitride treated? Thanks

Don't have experience with nitride, I believe sig uses this coating? Think I would look into cerakote if it were me. Depends on what your requirements are? No maintenance for how long and in what conditions? Wax on the metal and stock will work for wet conditions.

The stainless typically used for rifle barrels and actions is not really very corrosion resistant, as stainless alloys go, and does not hold a candle to a finish like Tenifer.

Cerakote vs Black Nitride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns8PkpYgHdA

Well that settles that question.

Stainless steel would be the best choice.

The exterior metal looks great in that video. I wonder how the bore looks.

Ceracoated stainless trumps

Why not nitride stainless? It doesn't cost anything extra, looks the same, gives the best of all possible combos, and isn't paint.

Nitride laughs at the thought of Cerapaint.

There is another thought. How many rifle are subjected to any hours of concentrated salt vapor? What do you think the bore in the painted barrel looks like?

I recently purchased a blued 6.5x55 because it can not be found in stainless. After purchasing it, Im having second thoughts......So I have to look at coming up with a durable solution to it not being stainless and get it coated some how to protect it from corrosion. The other option is to sell the 6.5x55 and buy a 260 that I can get in stainless.
Keep in mind I would rather have the 6.5x55 caliber over the 260, but I hunt out of state a lot and don't normally pack in gun oil on my backpack hunts......lol
Im afraid of having a blued gun out on a six day backpack hunt where as with stainless I wouldn't worry about it near as much.
Kinda thinking about keeping the 6.5x55 and sending it to have it black nitride teated........thoughts

Well, I just got back 3 barrels, 3 actions, 4 bolts and an assortment of other parts from being nitrided, so I guess I will be trying this out in a big way! From everyone I have talked to this should be the toughest most rust and wear resistant process for guns. I guess I will know in a few years of hard use. One of the guns is 26 nosler, so I did that hoping for the extended barrel life as well. I guess time will tell.

who did you use for the treating and how long was the turn around time? Thanks for the info

If you have a blued rifle AND hunt in a very HUMID enviroment it will rust.
Sight in your gun by running a Patch Lightly coated with a LIGHT gun oil such as this
http://www.montanaxtreme.com/products/?id=9&product=BoreConditioner
through the bore .
Note where the shot hits and a couple of shots after that.
Keeping a VERY light oil such as this(used sparingly) in the bore while hunting will help prevent rusting in the bore.
Also keep a Light coat of oil on the exterior of your blued rifle .
If you get caught out in the rain clean it up again.
Pain in the azz I know but if you want to prevent rust then you should do it.

Someone will inevitably come on and comment that they have never used oil in their barrel and have never had a problem with rust.
Steel will rust and if they are not having any issues with rust then either they hunt in a area of very low humidity and or haven,t looked closely enough !

Carry oil and patches in your pack !

Or just coat the bore with DBC and the exterior with DGS and forget oiling...

Or put a SS 6.5x55 barrel on your rifle

I don't do non-stainless rifles any more. I spent my early years in a non-air conditioned and propane space heated house in Mississippi. It was a full time job knocking rust off of my chrome moly guns. Stainless is so superior it's not even funny, as far as I'm concerned all chrome moly guns should be in museums and their sale outlawed. The nay sayers from Arizona and Montana will chime in soon to lecture us that they've never had a problem with rust and we just need to put a little oil on them every now and then. Needless to say I don't take them seriously because they haven't dealt with real humidity and seen what it does to chrome moly guns. Trust me, stainless steel, even 416R stainless, is a Godsend.

Most of mine are just bead blasted stainless. That's worlds better than any type of coated chrome moly in itself. If you really want to go crazy then cerakote or nitride stainless steel. Whatever you do just start with stainless.

A few prepackaged oil wipes weigh nothing in a pack and work as fantastic fire starters in an emergency. That would get any blued gun through some wet weather. I use both stainless and blued and don't have problems although most of my hunts are daylong coming home at night.

I have been hunting in a very wet region for 35+ years, including in coastal areas, and have never had huge corrosion problems with CM rifles. As long as they were oiled down before and after use (usually with CLP), they were fine.

Stainless tends to be easier to maintain, but IMO it is not a huge difference. My bigger concern in wet weather is with wood stocks, especially not well sealed ones.

Also, not all stainless is created equal. My Kimber Montana seems to need more care than a stainless Rem 700. Go figure.....

These days I pretty much always hunt with synthetic stocked rifles when wet weather is expected, but CM or stainless is not as big a deal.

YMMV

It is pretty damp and humid here in GA. I have some 40+ year old blue guns that have not been pampered. They have some character marks, surface rust has been wiped off to the point that the blue is no longer present in places. But they still function just fine.

I prefer SS and my go-to rifles are SS. But I'd not worry a lot about it. If blue is effected by weather enough to cause a failure it takes a long time and I'd classify the problem as neglect. If SS just doesn't look right then any of the coatings might be preferable to some.

In my experience a synthetic stock is more important than SS on an all weather rifle. I've seen wood go from perfect to complete failure in minutes with nothing that can be done to prevent the problem.