First hoops are wrapped to form a base layer (top) and then a helical wrap is added (center)--its angle changing with caliber and bullet weight. After a resign is applied and baked to bond the elements together, the barrel is rough ground to the right dimensions. Then a fine grinding applies the smooth end finish (bottom).

Rifle barrels wrapped in a sleeve of carbon fiber were a revelation to shooters looking for heavy-barrel performance from a featherweight rifle. The miles of carbon-fiber filament that wrap a barrel liner weigh five times less than the same amount of steel. Stiff and lightweight, the barrels deliver more with less.

While these barrels--paired most often with hunting rifles--offered shooters performance gains, there are those who sought to gain more, looking for carbon fibers to provide more than a dramatic reduction in weight. Mike Degerness, president of Advanced Barrel Systems (ABS), is one of those guys.

Degerness has been using new technologies and different kinds of carbon fibers to not only lighten rifle barrels but more importantly to increase accuracy and longevity. The result of a decade's worth of experimentation is a carbon-fiber wrap that is so effective at managing heat--a barrel's number one enemy--it is being applied to military weapons, including belt-fed machine guns.

Like many others who developed groundbreaking firearm technologies, Degerness did not start off in the firearms business. In fact, his career in composites came after he retired from a 20-year run as a law enforcement officer and paramedic.

"Lincoln, Nebraska, is a hot bed of composites research," Degerness said. "I went to work with a small composites company that produced golf-club shafts, launch tubes for missile systems, and antennae masts for humvees."

Missile systems and golf clubs were fun, but to Degerness, they were not nearly as exciting as guns, especially for a man that had a passion for precision rifles. Before Degerness hit his teenage years, his father and Uncle John (John Anderson, editor of The Varmint Hunter Magazine) had him set up with a rifle and an education on the finer points of reloading, ballistics, and hunting. It was only natural that a few decades later, Degerness applied his knowledge of composites to rifles.

"We wanted to make a barrel more durable than lightweight, and that would be accomplished by reducing the heat generated by firing," Degerness said. "It was a long road to get to where we are with the barrels."

Most companies use polyacrylonitrile (PAN) carbon fibers exclusively to wrap barrels. The PAN fibers are petroleum based, a derivative of crude oil. They have exceptional tensile strength, and when wrapped around a liner at opposing angles and set in a hard resin, they provide an extremely rigid structure. According to Degerness, the catch was that his extensive testing proved this type of fiber conducts heat only marginally better than standard barrel steel.

"Carbon fiber conducts heat like fiber optics conduct light," Degerness said. "They have very little ability to transfer heat from fiber to fiber. Most wrapped barrels have fibers running generally parallel to the axis of the bore, and that limits the ability of the fiber to dissipate heat."

Barrel steel, depending on the alloy, has a thermal conductivity coefficient of around 21 W/(mxK), and PAN fibers have a coefficient of 19 W/(mxK), so they are not much help conducting heat away from the bore and radiating it out into space. The key to making the concept work would be finding a carbon fiber that conducted heat.

Degerness found his miracle material, pitch-based carbon fibers, on the race track. Made from coal, pitch fibers were used for Formula One racing brake pads. The material was also used in the space shuttle's skin for dissipating the extreme heat generated when reentering the Earth's atmosphere and moving it to noncritical areas. But there was a big catch.