Mini-14 Barrel Shroud

[Snowjob]

One of the things that has made me reluctant to buy a mini-14 is how much the barrel heats up with shooting. Has anybody had any experience with a barrel shroud? Does it make much difference?

Cabella's has one and says "Barrel Shroud improves barrel cooling on your Mini-14 during a long and continuous day of shooting. Top-quality shroud is made of tough aircraft aluminum alloy."

So I would assume the concept is that the aluminum absorbs heat from the barrel and then dissipates it at a faster rate than the barrel is capable of doing. Am I even close?

 

[nemesis]

One of the things that has made me reluctant to buy a mini-14 is how much the barrel heats up with shooting.

The barrels of all my rifles tend to stay pretty cool unless I shoot them. I don't think the Mini-14 has any more reason to get hot than any other rifle. Some rifles can compound the heating problem by enclosing significant amounts of barrel surface with forearm but the Ruger doesn't fall into this category.

 

[Snowjob]

I've not seen other semi-auto rifle barrels get so hot that they turn red or from which I've seen smoke rising from the top of the barrel.

 

[P95Carry]

Two rapidly fired 30 rounders thru AK does tend to get barrel ''smoke rizin''!

Anyways .. the Mini ....... I fitted the guard shown below ages ago .... as much as anything to prevent the barrel when hot sticking to a tarp etc . as I have had happen before with FAL, AK etc ..... even if not ''smokin''!

I quite forget where I got it but .. getting foresight off to fit was a PITA. I had to make a barrel plug from brass and use a modified puller and rubber mallet.

 

[Gunsnrovers]

The Mini-14 does have a relatively thin barrel that does heat up pretty quick and the accuracy does tend to fall off as it gets hotter.

It doesn't absorb the heat, but it keeps your hands off it and off anything else when you set it down or in a rack.

More then a few folks on the Mini-14 board have claimed the shroud helps accuracy as the adds to barrel rigidity, but I don't know enough to verify that.

 

[James Bondrock]

Apropos of nothing, I have read that the AC556 (a 13-inch-barreled select-fire Mini) has been known to set the wooden handguard on fire.