{"id":973,"date":"2014-02-07T13:02:24","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T18:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/?p=973"},"modified":"2023-12-28T17:00:11","modified_gmt":"2023-12-28T22:00:11","slug":"the-problem-with-nickel-boron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/2014\/02\/the-problem-with-nickel-boron\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem With Nickel-Boron"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago I discussed <a href=\"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/2013\/08\/firearm-action-coatings\/\">metals and coatings for firearm actions<\/a>.  I noted the NiB (nickel-boron) gets discolored by fouling, but my photos only showed a sparkling new NiB-X BCG.  Following is a picture of what it looks like after a few hundred rounds of use, followed by ultrasonic cleaning and then aggressive scrubbing with steel and brass wire brushes.  For comparison I show my heavily-used chromed BCG on top.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/img\/NiB-X_v_Chrome.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/img\/NiB-X_v_Chrome-640.jpg\" alt=\"AR-15 bolts: Chrome and NiB-X, as clean as they get\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Is this just a cosmetic issue?  This is the only cleaning I&#8217;ve given the NiB BCG.  I haven&#8217;t lubed it and I have subsequently run a few hundred rounds more without any action failures.  However it seems plausible that if fouling can bind to the surface this stubbornly it <em>could<\/em> build up to the point of overtaking the nickel-boron&#8217;s lubricity and causing a stoppage that only traditional lubricants prevent.  As noted in the original article this is not a problem with <a href=\"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/img\/OBR_BCG.jpg\">chrome<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/img\/BCGsTop.jpg\">NP3<\/a>: All photos of those to date have been <em>after<\/em> they were used and wiped clean with minimal brushing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> A number of people say it&#8217;s unfair to compare a BCG from a piston gun to one from a DI gun, since the latter is subject to much harsher fouling.  So for comparison I pulled and cleaned an NP3-coated BCG I&#8217;ve been running in a DI gun: pictures in <a href=\"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/2014\/02\/the-problem-with-nickel-boron\/comment-page-1\/#comment-599737\">my comment below<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago I discussed metals and coatings for firearm actions. I noted the NiB (nickel-boron) gets discolored by fouling, but my photos only showed a sparkling new NiB-X BCG. Following is a picture of what it looks like after a few hundred rounds of use, followed by ultrasonic cleaning and then aggressive scrubbing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arms","category-ballistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po3d1-fH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}