Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Dyna-Tek Borecoat

Upfront let me state that I have never used it, do not know anyone who has used it or has any experience with it, outside of the posts on the 'fire I do not recall seeing it mentioned anywhere else.

My question - If it is as good as some folks on here state then is it being used by competitive benchrest shooters?
At the rate they go through barrels and since they are concerned with prolonging the life of a "Hummer barrel" I would think that it would be used by them if it works as well as folks seem to think it does.

Is the purpose of it more to help smooth out lesser quality barrels or an attempt to salvage a not so great shooting barrel before spending the money to replace it?

drover

Not a gunwriter but I’ll throw my two cents in. I use it in every rifle I have. The reason I use it is to make the job of cleaning my rifles that much easier. It truly does make the chore of cleaning really really easy and fast in my experience. I only clean when my groups tell me I need to. I haven’t noticed any accuracy differences after coating.

What LowerRiver said... Cleaning is much much easier!

drover,

DBC does not extend bore life. Instead it reduces fouling considerably, as LowerRiver stated, allowing barrels to shoot far longer without cleaning. I do know a few benchrest shooters who use it, but I use it in all my prairie dog rifles, and haven't had to clean on in the field, even over 2-day shoot, in years.

I've also used it to "save" barrels that were accurate when clean, but fouled very quickly.

Is there new data to suggest this, or are you just saying that it doesn’t extend barrel life significantly, that we know of? My experience suggests that there may be correlation between DBC and extended barrel life, but my pool of data is far too small to say anything conclusively.

Jordan -

Throat erosion = the primary source of barrel wear - so yeah there is plenty of evidence that bore coat doesn’t protect against the steel it’s embedded in being eroded by fire.

I’d be very interested in that evidence, as ceramic does generally have the property of absorbing and dissipating heat.

Let's just say that Dyna-Tek doesn't make any such claim, and my experience with a bunch of prairie dog rifles and a bore-scope doesn't indicate any significant reduction in throat erosion. While ceramic does absorb and dissipate heat, I doubt the extremely thin layer of DBC has much effect.

On the other hand, I have tested Cerakoted barrels and found the coating does reduce barrel heating, because Cerakote was initially developed as a heat-dissipating coating for stuff like radiators, engine manifolds, etc. But Cerakote on the outside of a rifle barrel is far thicker than a layer of DBC inside.

Thanks. Good data.

I built 5 rifles in 2018; 280ai, 280ai, 6.5-06, 300WM, 7mmSTW
1) Bartlein stainless barrels
2) Moly coated bullets
3) Anti Copper fouling powder IMR-4166
4) Bore Coat in the bores

And I STILL had to clean Copper out of some of the barrels after sight in at 200 and 400 yards.

Jordan,

When i start shooting compeition again, and or Pdogs again I’ll make sure I take measurements, unfortunately I only did visual inspections with my bore scope in the past so I’m really not 100% sure if there was any difference between my coated and un-coated barrels. I simply didn’t shoot enough in the last few years to make that kind of difference.

Ideally I”ll have to use the same loads so the pressures are the same, but when you start chasing the lands things can vary, not to mention the time of the year temp effects.

That's part of the reason I say that we're still uncertain as to the throat erosion impact of DBC- there are just so many variables that it will take a LOT of barrels to have any sort of confidence in any correlation or lack thereof. I currently shoot comp, but it'll take a couple of dozen barrels before I can say with any confidence that DBC makes a difference or not.

Jordan,

I'll be very interested in your info, but should also point out that DBC (which previously went by a couple of other names, Micro-Slick and Ultra Bore Coat) has been around for over a dozen years now. I installed it in my .338 Winchester's barrel in 2006, which saved me the cost of a new barrel, because the rifle was fouling so severely that after around 15 shots accuracy went south, and it took a LOT of cleaning the get what was essentially copper-plating out of the bore.

When I first learned of it from Doug Burche, he said it had primarily been developed for military use (as are many firearms developments) to reduce fouling in automatic rifles. I would assume Dyna-Tek would know if it extended barrel life in autos, and if so, would make claims about extended barrel life. But they don't.

In fact, at first they claimed DBC (or whatever it was called then) lasted for a barrel's lifetime. Today they suggest reapplying every year in rifles that are shot a lot, perhaps because throat erosion of the underlying steel wears eliminates the DBC in front of the chamber.

John,

Yes, I remember first using DBC when it was still called UBC. Shortly after that Doug realized he couldn't ship it to Canada, so I decided to drive down every now and then and bring back a large enough quantity to justify the trip. I'd casually sell some of it to other Canadians that wanted access to it, but mostly I did it so that I'd always have a steady supply on hand That was nearly a decade ago, now.

At the time, Doug said that they were testing the throat-erosion effects of UBC in military automatic weapons, and that there were indications that it did indeed extend throat life a little bit. But, as he told me on the phone, he would only say that in the literature and elsewhere in writing if they knew it to be 100% true. So while there is evidence and data that suggest that it helps with throat erosion, Doug won't make that claim until he's positive.

Maybe you're right, but I'm not sure that the throat wearing is the cause for needing to re-apply DBC in high-volume rifles. The exposed leade is only really coated in DBC for the first number of shots until the throat wears down to the penetration depth of the coating- as little as a few microns. After that the exposed leade is bare steel. And just to clarify my point, the data obviously don't suggest that DBC eliminates throat erosion, just that it may slow it down some.

DBC absorbs into the pores of the steel, and I'm guessing that extended heat and use wears the surface coat off a little, while the absorbed stuff remains in the pores, hence the need to re-apply annually on high-volume guns and "top up" the surface coat.

Jordan,

Exactly, it takes controlled conditions - the closest I got to that was 2each 204’s one coated, one not... but one was a varmint barrel the other a field barrel, but shot under the same conditions.

Even if one does get results under controlled situations, your personal barrel / chambering , and probably more important shooting style are going to vary results.

I’m in no hurry to burn up my barrels, even when I can take them back a thread (will get my new lathe in March... getting itchy already.)

Yessir, and that's probably why nobody is anxious to make any definitive claims on the subject either way

For years I kinda looked at the stuff as being snake oil. After using it in my varmint rifles I am sold on the stuff.

I'm about to order some of this to coat shotgun barrels. My thinking is to apply to the barrel with one choke installed, and then coat the remaining chokes (for the same shotgun), separately, without removing the first and installing the second, third, etc.

I cannot see how this would be a problem, but before I learn something unpleasant the hard way, can anyone tell me if that's wrong?

I read accounts of people using DBC in their shotguns and muzzle loaders. Makes sense to me.

DF

I was not convinced early on as well. Bought some and tried it and it really does work. Sometimes you need to apply a second time to get best results though.