Serbu Firearms recently posted about Nitriding high strength parts more specifically, muzzle devices.
What set off Serbu Firearms was the failure of a muzzle device from a customers rifle who went and had his Serbu Firearms RN-50 nitrided.
Serbu Firearms states “PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: DON’T NITRIDE HIGH STRENGTH PARTS!!! Please share this far and wide because it illustrates how dangerous it is to expose heat-treated parts to a 1,000 degree F process! I don’t want to get into all the details about heat treating of steel, but just know that in general, if it’s high strength (like bolts, breech caps and muzzle brakes) it should NOT be nitrided! Yes, barrels are high strength but they’re not extremely hard so they can be safely nitrided. This customer didn’t know all this and had his entire RN-50 nitrided. Luckily when the muzzle brake grenaded it didn’t injure or kill anyone! What really scares the crap out of me is the breech cap. Yeah, I designed it with at least a safety factor of 3 (meaning it’s three times as strong as it needs to be) but now it’s somewhere around 2. Maybe. He’s going to get a new muzzle brake and new breech cap, but it’s not covered by warranty so he has to pay for it. Lucky he didn’t pay with an eye or with his life!”
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