The barrels are on their way back to the
Faxon Mothership ... dropped them off at the
FedEx counter in
Walgreens at 8:22 this morning (after completing my shipping at
Giant Food and on my way to
Super Target).
A few details are still unaddressed ...
someguy2800, the port on the 16" is a shade smaller than .082", perhaps .081". The 20" port, ~.093". All I have to easily work for such measurements with are wire-gauge twist drills that I can check with micrometer or calipers.
Probably the
primary reason why I dismissed my initial thought that what I was seeing was a product of bad chambers was ... what are the chances that I bought 2 different
Faxon barrels (same style/form-factor but different lengths & Lots) from 2 different vendors weeks apart and they both have such flawed chambers? In addition to that, I had not seen anything in the chambers that might cause an issue.
Well. Sure got
that one wrong.
I received these barrels a day apart. The 20" barrel was part of a long-delayed shipment from
Faxon to
AR15Discounts. The 16" from
Brownells was in-stock and shipped immediately.
Upon removing each from its long, heavy ziplock bag, I visually inspected the exterior, wiping it down as I went, and did a quick look thru the bore whilst pointing the barrel toward the LED ceiling lightbar over the gunbench. I glanced into the chamber while illuminating it with a bright light. I eyeballed relationship of the gas port and barrel extension pin (did they appear to be reasonably well lined up?). I then secured the barrel in one of my
Lohman Sight Vises and ran a couple of mineral spirit (MS) dampened patches thru the bore, followed by one pass of a relatively new phosphor-bronze .223 rifle bore brush, followed by another MS patch and then a dry patch. I cleaned the chamber with a MS-dampened mop and then dried it. I then patched the bore & chamber with eezox-dampened patches and repeated the process on the 2nd barrel.
At the end of that, I dry-patched both bore+chambers and wiped down both barrels with my "eezox flannel" and placed them "in the breeze" overnight.
When I came back in after discovering the problems, I added some phosphor-bronze brush-action to my chamber-cleaning approach.
I guess that about covers it ...
OH ... who
needs thread locker on their gas block set screws? GOOD LORD!
I put them on firmly but dry and 3 of 4 were a *$%@#* to get off.
.