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Old December 10th, 2010, 01:03   #45
Danke
 
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Danger Zone
You'd run into a couple problems with CF. First will be packaging vs. strength.

Different materials have different properties and strengths. While you could wrap up some cloth around a long mandrel and produce a tube that looked like a barrel you would have a problem

You would have to duplicate the OD of the metal barrel so it would slip inside the cosmetic outer barrel. As a result you'd have a soda straw strong tube there. Same goes for glass, ceramic and the rest of the exotic choices.

After that price will kick in, the CF has to be laid up by hand.

Then you'll have the seam since CF is a cloth that's wrapped up and impregnated with resin. That means a ridge inside the barrel. Now maybe you can do something fun with that and give it a twist like a TK barrel but once again you spending more time by hand dealing with this.

CF is a great material when you do something like aircraft or a car's frame or body where the outside is smooth but the inside can be left rough and unfinished. For an airsoft barrel what counts is the inside. The opposite of the normal use of the material. That's not saying it would be fully impossible to do, just the expense of doing it would invalidate the exercise.
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