[Tweakmeister]

I recently had my Steyr M9's slide trued after a mishap with an extended IGB barrel. The barrel was solid and appears to have been made of a much stronger metal than the slide.

While the slide was being machined, my gunsmith commented that the metal appeared to be of very poor casting quality (I didn't ask further but I read it as impurities/air bubbles possiblity contributing to the warping I experienced).

Does anyone know what kind of Metal is used on the slides?

I'm interested in researching its thermal properties as well (http://www.defensereview.com/modules.ph ... nt&sid=227).

 

[Gray_Wolf]

my gunsmith commented that the metal appeared to be of very poor casting quality

Whoa? the slide is made of cast, not steel? 8-O 8-O :?

 

[MrApathy]

my gunsmith commented that the metal appeared to be of very poor casting quality

it could of been he hit the hard tennifer treated exterior then the softer internal steel.

no gray wolf its not iron its a quality carbon steel with tennifer heat treatment. its possible for piece of slag to be somewhere either from processing the ore into metal. heattreating maybe didnt normalise and something inside got heated unevenly.

the article looked like junk many details missing. though when I see stuff like that I really would like to take a look at the pistol.

I am not an engineer, nor a gunsmith. I came to the aforementioned conclusions by employing logic.

flawed logic at that. he makes contradicting statements as well.

try checking out a few books on metallurgy and heattreatment followed by machining.

metal is a very weird thing its rarely the same. most people think two dimensional like steel is always steel when in fact there are so many grades of steel its not funny you start getting into stuff like infinite complexities which gives a good headache.

 

[bigtaco]

just based on the shape and the cuts, it's obvious that the slide is machined from bar. but the bar was cut from a slab of steel.

the steel gets alloyed with other metals to produce the exact grade of steel desired. it is possible that as the steel is pored into the slab and the slab cures from molten to hard that air pockets form. or that certain parts of the slab contain more or less alloying agents than others. these can be invisible until you x-ray the steel. in production quantities, using steel known to be high quality, these measures are rarely taken becuse they rarely yeild any actionable evidence.

so in other words, sometimes stuff gets weird; even with steel.

steyr on the whole churns out good product, but nobody's perfect.

it would make sense that the barrel is of much higher quality steel because you're asking a lot more of it in terms of heat and pressure resistance. the same that you're drive axles are much higher quality steel than the bracket holding on your side view mirror.