There’s an ad in the new Rifle magazine that states: CRYO your gun: 50% more accurate. Snake oil or real? Anybody done this?

Benelli

Specifically the barrel. Benelli makes excellent barrels

CRYO is cold stress relief, works to some extent on some rifles does nothing to others

For rifle barrels? Pure snake oil.

I have an R-1 Benelli and they claim it is a thing. Mine shoots good.

Conclusion after much internet research... Snake Oil!...

Was that an article written in 1999?

Cryo treatment was all the rage in the 1980's and 1990's. It is intended to stress relieve metal and can prolong the life of engine parts and high wear/stress parts in heavy machinery.

In the gun world, it has little benefit for 99% of rifles once they are assembled. Some manufacturers continue to use the process to relieve stress during the manufacturing process and generally before cutting chambers. Some guys will tell you they can "feel" the difference when cutting chambers.

I do not believe there is much evidence that cryo treatment can make a $hitty shooter suddenly become a sub-MOA wonder weapon. Probably best to save your money and buy a quality firearm.

I had a couple of..22 rimfire barrels done, but they were new, so no before & after, but I did win some state & national championships with them.

Krieger used to do it, might still do it. Stress relief. I don't know if it's going to increase accuracy AFTER the fit tho.

Go to 3:10 where he starts talking about stress relief and cyro - lest someone call me a liar.

Had my Weatherby 30-378 Accumark frozen. With an N of 1 though, I don't know what the effects might have been. Figured at the most it wouldn't hurt.

Never had one done, but know of several. Results varied in those I’ve seen/used, but accuracy never got worse. Didn’t always get better though. No magic there. I was at a gunsmiths when a customer came to pick up a barrel he’d had done, gunsmith had kept the box in his freezer, customer commented it must have been really cold when crepes, because it still was. We had a good laugh.

Old70

I think Benchmark cryo reliefs their barrels.

I have one rifle that has the barrel done. The rifle builder wanted to do it; I was not sure I wanted it done. I thought (at the time it was BS) I can tell you this rifle is a fantastic shooter. But it could be a great shooter even if it wasn't done. This we will never know.
Rifle has a Shilen barrel it's chambered in 300 Winchester Mag.

Heck, Pope or Shoyen or one of those guys used to bury barrel blanks in the yard for a few years before rifling them. That was a hundred or so years ago.
I think pizzing into the wind through the barrel will be the next thing.
Python oil.

Crying treatment does nothing to the barrel dimensionally. At least nothing that can be accurately measured.

If your barrel is effed up for other reasons other than the stresses imparted during the barrel making process, then cryo treating will not improve or fix that. (Rough bore, fouler , variance in bore size crown etc.

Cryo treating cannot fix other problems with the action such as bedding, ignition. Nor the ammunition or the shooter.

Didn't Melvin Forbes credit Cryoing as the reason most of his rifles would shoot so many loads to the same point of impact?

No! Melvin never claimed that, and I have known him since the late 1980s. He did once comment comment to me that cryo made some sense, since like heat-treating it tended to stress-relieve barrels. But he never used it.

Instead he believed the reasons his rifles shot so well were because Douglas used heat to stress-relieve their barrels (as do many button-rifle makers, including Dan Lilja), plus the full-length forend bedding of Melvin's very stiff stocks.

He also thoroughly tested everything he did to confirm his results.

Might also add that all the publicly published articles on cryo-treating I read back when it was all the rage based their conclusions on minor differences in group size, usually on too-few groups.

Have also talked personally with not just John Krieger but other barrel-makers, who concluded cryo made the most difference when done before machining barrels, or at least between certain stages. And yes, they had also done considerable testing.

probably 1988 or '89. or was it a molybdenum disulfide bullet coating?

Might have been. All sorts of "new and magic" stuff has come and gone over the years....

Back in 2002 there was a thread on this subject to which I contributed (under an earlier login): https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/52175/re-cyro-barrels#Post52175

I am of the same view now as I was then.

Could be marketing on Benelli’s part but they do make a fine mass produced barrel whether it be a shotgun or rifle barrel.

I had a rifle back in the 90's that I couldn't get to shoot. My rifle builder couldn't figure it either so he suggested we try that before rebarreling again. It had no perceptible effect. That rifle, in 338 Jamison, is the only rifle in which I found that different primers had any effect on accuracy. I had never used Remington primers but the minute I changed to the Remington's the rifle started shooting. Freezing was a waste of money.

I stand corrected. I knew that I remembered him saying something in an interview about his rifles shooting many different loads to the same point of impact due to stress relieving but he may very well have been talking about what Douglas does to their barrels. My memory isn't the greatest.

Kind of makes sense. My one Douglas barrel, although not supremely accurate, does shoot many loads to pretty much the same point of impact at 100 yards.

i remember that i'd seen cyro and bullet coating in Petersen's Hunting and Shooting Times back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. my "new and magic" stuff is powder coating on cast bullets .

+1.... But how does one debate with "internet experts" that don't understand cryo as part of the heat treat cycle vs as a stand alone "stress relief"? Freaking amazing.... I've faced the same thing on this site (only!) re the loss in ductility of 400 series stainless at low temp...

I have had several rifles that were "walkers" when shot much. Cryo on the barreled actions settled them down. It may have been coincidence, I don't know, but they stopped "walking" their shots off when getting hot. A few were still "finicky" about bullet style/weights, but didn't walk. These rifles all had skinny barrels. I think skinny barrels are "of the Devil" anyhow, sent from Hell to torment me at the range"!!! lol They do aggravate me to no end. I've had a few skinny barrels made by Shilen, Lilja, Kriegar, and all were top notch. My track record with factory skinnies is dismal indeed, ha.