Speaker 1: You probably didn't take all the time you need in
between each round to bring it completely back down to
a cold bore. What you really need is something that
if you zeroed to your fifth or tenth shot, that
means you're actually set up for your fifth or ten shot.
If your barrel walked, you may not be zeroed anymore.
So guaranteeing you're going to get cold bar performance across
you know, the multiple rounds. Make sure that you know
that you have a lightweight barrel, so you're not you know,
humping in a honk and steel you know, heemoth out there,
but you're also going to be able to head exactly
where you want it to hit.
Speaker 2: But that's a good point, like you maybe actually cited
in for your tenth round. And obviously that deer, that elk,
this is a cold boar. You weren't shooting ten rounds
before you walked.
Speaker 1: Out exactly, You're not keeping a heater in the boar
before you get out there into this.
Speaker 2: Different I'm Ryan Gresham and this this is guntognation. Guntognation
is brought to you by Ruger Silence are Central, MTM,
case Guard and ARCon Firearms. Hey, welcome in a guntgnation.
Today a gun tognation. We're gonna get a little bit
science y, a little bit engineering stick, so stick with us.
Some of you guys will love this because you know
it's like the how it's made of gun things. So
today on the show a company that you may not
be familiar with, but you will be after this Avient,
and we've got Eves Cordo. Welcome in man Eves I
was we always try to explain Avient because you guys
work with a lot of companies in the gun industry
and the outdoor industry, but you're like this this name
that people don't know. You're like under the radar.
Speaker 1: Correct, yeh, BYTHERI, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Avient is a multi billion dollar, you know, publicly
traded multinational company headquartered in Avon Lake, Ohio. We are
in a ton of industries and people touch our products
throughout the day, you know, every day, so we're so
we're business to business, so you don't see us to
your point, anything from say the squishy part on the toothbrush,
you know when you're touching Neo. I have soft touch
materials that are in tons of different applications to components
in shoes, athletic wear, medical equipment a very prevalent. There
a lot in automotive as well. We're also one of
the world's largest colorance companies. We have additives, inks, et
cetera that we provide so you can either see us
or touch us on a regular basis, anything from high
performance phone cases to even shooting sports and outdoor high
performance gear.
Speaker 2: And the materials part of it is interesting because Yeah,
I like what you said earlier to say, you know,
with out material science and engineers, we'd still be making
everything out of wood or metal or or I don't
know what the left.
Speaker 1: The joke we say is you know wood steal in concrete,
ye'd be what the world is made out of. Yeah,
you know, advances in material science has led to so
many different advances in society. You know, it's not just
that you can make something smaller faster, it's how do
you do it where it's not going to fall apart.
So you have to get the right plastics. As soon
as we started transitioning to more plastics in cars, they
start while the cars started crumpling in collisions. It wasn't
like a big steel box where you crumple in the collision,
so they became safer, lighter weight, more fuel efficient, things
like that. So it takes materials along with the people
who are developing the rest of the systems as well.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting because yeah, you say, well, I want
this to hold a color, or I want this to
crumple but not crack. I want this to heat up
fast or not heat up fast, and I want it
to be strong. But also, I mean, there's all these
things that we kind of take for granted, especially gun
hus These are things that we talk about all the time.
Oh you got real hot, or it hit heated up
or it didn't heat up, or you know, there's times
when you want it super ridge and there's times you
need stuff to flex, and you guys are like this
secret sauce behind.
Speaker 1: All of that in many applications.
Speaker 2: I know we're going to talk about some of the
new the barrel technology stuff. Are there other areas in
the outdoor space that people may be familiar with which
you guys do one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I mean, we are very prevalent in archery. Gordon glass
is the material behind most compound bows, so you see
those in many brands, including the carbon components that can
go into cable guards, even the dynamo that's used in
bow strings as well, systems like.
Speaker 2: That dynama I'm thinking of fishing, fishing line.
Speaker 1: It's in a lot of industries, but yes, and lightweight
body armor. Oh yeah, so light it floats on water.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: Many different applications of that material as well, and that's
under the Avient name, okay, And so yeah, we also
are prevalent in outdoor high performance gear, including you know,
act power sports, so you'll see us in those systems
as well, and a lot of adventure gear, you know,
very lightweight, high strength climbing gear, packs, things like that.
Speaker 2: So you guys brought out a new I mean, I
guess I'm gonna call it a new carbon fiber barrel.
There's probably a different way to say this, but a
new technology when it comes to carbon.
Speaker 1: Fiber barrels, it's novel in the sense of we have
introduced a new layer to the carbon fiber wrapped barrels
on traditional There are many ways of doing carbon fiber
wrap barrels that are out there today, but the traditional
way one would think of is you have a steel barrel.
It's reduced in size, turned down to a smaller barrel,
and then you put carbon fiber on top of it.
Carbon fiber, we're talking about lightweight, high strength. You want
higher G on a barrel, right, So that's where you
get that benefit from carbon fiber, which is there's a
reason it's used in airplanes and helicopters, all sorts of things.
So they put the carbon fiber directly onto the steel,
or some people leave an air gap between the steel
and the carbon. Put the whole system together, and that's
your finished product.
Speaker 2: For those of us who are just dumbass trigger pullers,
if they want something to be lighter and they have
this steel sleeve, the steel barrel and they wrap in
carbon fiber, why don't you just leave the carbon fiber
off and just have a pencil thin barrel.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're not going to get any stiffness. I mean,
your barrel's gonna whip around. You know, anybody who's no accuracy,
it's exactly exactly and sustained accuracy, overshooting, whatever small changes
you're going to get as the barrel heats up, you're
gonna start walking that in different directions. So what we
did at Avient is we did something that we call
reverse benchmarking, so benchmarking to make a me too product. Right,
somebody makes it, we want to make it too them.
Find out what they do well and do it as well.
We did reverse benchmarking, which said, let's go and find
out what's in the industry today, what exists, how do
they do it now, Let's find out what the gaps are,
what are the challenges. The number one that we found
was retention of heat in the bore of the barrel.
So Avian set out to create a new system and
we actually had to develop new materials in order to
do it. Really that actually drew the heat out of
the bore of the barrel.
Speaker 2: So carbon fiber barrels, I mean all barrels heat up.
Carbon fibers is also heats up. How does carbon fiber
heat up compared to a like a regular steel barrel.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting because carbon fiber in the light like
a long and actual filament of fiber, you can conduct
that heat very well straightforward through the fiber. However, when
you wrap it around a barrel, you're actually going in
a transverse plane. You can actually insulate the system unless
you because it's typically made with epoxys or other resins.
Unless you formulate that well, you might actually end up
trapping the heat in there, so.
Speaker 2: It actually makes it stay hot or longer correct the
barrel okay.
Speaker 1: Correct than a traditional steel barrel of the same size,
which the more mass you have on steel, the more
it'll kind of average out your heat. You don't get
as hot, but you stay hot longer, so you can
end up trapping that heat in there, and that'll affect
your performance. You know, anything from muzzle velocities will drift
over the course of shooting to you know, ultimately having
challenges with you know, being able to continue and you
have to open the bolt, let it cool.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: We've all been there, of course, and so I wanted
to address that, reduce, mitigate that issue, and pull the
heat out. So what we did is we went back
and looked at different material properties and we actually landed
on a ceramic that we were able to specially formulate
so that it meets all the same performance standards of
the performance of the other carbon fiber barrels, but adds
in an aspect that actually draws that heat out through
what we call low thermal inertia properties. It's just one
more property that people you know, may not know about.
Thermal Conductivity gets talked about a lot in steel and barrels,
but it only tells half the story. Thermal conductivity is
how well a mass absorbs heat versus thermal inertia, which
actually talks about how well volume gets rid of heat.
So thermal inertia favors low density materials that drop the
heat into the environment faster. Thermal conductivity it likes big, thick,
heavy steel barrels.
Speaker 2: You guys, this is very interesting because you go, Okay,
where's the area that It's like, this is a cool
area that we could actually improve because we know how
to do this material science thing. Let's do this. We
haven't given away they're thinking, wait, there's a ceramic thing
and there's a barrel this We're gonna explain all of
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guys go, okay, we could do this. We have this
custom recipe of a carbon fiber I'm sorry of the ceramic.
Before we get into how you did this with the
ceramic and the carbon fiber and the steel barrel, let's
get into ceramics a little bit, sure, because people hear
ceramics and they're like a ceramic, like a ceramic pot,
Like you drop those things and they just shatter. It's
real brittle, it could be break easily.
Speaker 1: This is something different, correct, This is completely different. In fact,
the world of ceramics, a lot of people you know,
especially you know who don't follow deeply in material science
and everything like that, may not know what a polymer
is or ceramic is, et cetera. So a general idea
is that it is anything that is not an organic
or a metal that is cured and hardened by heat.
So it's a very broad definition. Yeah, and so by
utilizing specialty materials, we actually made what's called tough, a
very highly toughened ceramic that is very impact resistant, very stable.
Not to mention it's housed between carbon fiber and steel
very well, you know, bonded together. The whole system is bonded,
so we're not fracturing the ceramic. And even if if
we were to take it outside smack it down on
a curb, we've done this tests. Smack it on a curb,
put it back on, go shoot the same groups really really,
so it's very resilient. And also people oftentimes will think
of ceramics as insulators because they are used as insulators
in certain applications. But because the definition is so broad,
we're able to utilize more conductive materials, you know, and
lower thermal inertia materials that actually can facilitate the cooling
faster than anything out there. It's also just an added perk.
Very lightweight.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you that because we want
it to be lightweight. We have these carbon fiber barrels.
That's part of the point of it. And then you
also said that less dense is going to shed heat faster.
So less dense we usually think of being lightweight exactly, so.
Speaker 1: You can get a larger you can get a bull
barrel contour for a considerably lighter barrel. So one of
the things that we like to say is that you
get b bull barrel performance Sporter barrel weight very cool,
and so if you were to compare this, it's about
forty to sixty percent lighter than an equivalent contour. It
just depends on what our customers are looking for because
it's a custom tunable system.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, So talk to me about how because you guys
aren't barrel makers, correct, you work with gun companies and
barrel makers and that kind of thing. Talk about how
this thing is manufactured.
Speaker 1: Sure, what we do is we partner with our customers
who are the original equipment manufacturers OEMs, and what they'll
do is they'll send us barrels that are turned down
to a contour that we agree upon, We then receive it.
We prefabricate our carbon fiber tubes. One of the reasons
being when you filament wind so that's the type of
carbon that we use is filam on carbon, which basically
span a mandril and you pass fiber back and forth.
When you do that, when you come down to the ends,
you actually get different wind angles, so your carbon fiber
is kind of all over the place. We cut off
those ends so that the carbon layup is exactly the
same from chamber to midpoint to muzzle, all the way
through uniform layup. We sleeve that over the steel and
we actually inject the ceramic slurry in a liquid slurry
into the interstitial space, fill it up, cure it, and
then we put it on a precision grinder, take it
down to a beautiful finish. Go sto our customer.
Speaker 2: Does it cure with heat?
Speaker 1: It does?
Speaker 2: How hot does it have to get heated up to?
Speaker 1: You don't have to go much over say two hundred
and fifty degrees? Oh okay, so it doesn't you know,
change any heat set in the barrel properties or anything like.
Speaker 2: Okay, gotcha. And this slurry is like a custom mix
that you guys that's is it specific for barrels or
is it something you found.
Speaker 1: It's something we actually developed specifically for this application. When
we were taking a look at how did we want
to go about improving the performance of carbon barrels, we
realized that we needed something that was high heat stable,
but also something that would shed the heat. And we
took our knowledge of both of those things, you know,
from our experience in solving other customers problems over the years,
put those together and came up with this fine you
know product mix.
Speaker 2: So shedding the heat. Talk about that because when people
shoot these barrels, as far as like you know, we
always touch a barrel and see as it getting warmed
up is a heating up. This is a little bit
different than what we're used to.
Speaker 1: It is traditionally, you know, when you touch the outside
of a barrel, you say, oh that's hot, you know,
and you say, okay, now I need to slow it
down or open the bolt, let it cool. You're going
to notice the heat on the outside of this right away.
If you defired five rounds and a steel barrel, five
rounds in an Avian modified barrel, you go and touch
the outside, the steel is actually going to feel quite
cool because you've only shot five rounds. But it's the
same amount of energy. We just brought it out to
the surface and then brought it into the environment faster.
So contrary to a lot of what's you know, the
popular belief of you know, you touch it, Okay, it's hot,
it's got a cool down. It's the difference between what's
happening in the bore and what's happening on the outside.
On an all steel barrel, it wants to average out
the heat, right, It wants the whole thing to be
one temperature, so when you feel it on the outside,
that's the same temperature as what's on the inside, whereas
our system it's a little different.
Speaker 2: Okay, So people might go, oh, this barrel's heating up fast. No,
it's it's shedding heat. It's like it's evacuating the heat right.
Speaker 1: Exactly, And so go take a short one minute break,
come back and touch it again. It'll be quite cool.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay, we got to talk about the testing that
you guys have done on this, because you've done some
extreme things.
Speaker 1: We have, well, in order to prove out a concept,
you have to go after all the possibilities. How hot
does a barrel get typically, Well, it depends, you know,
certainly on what caliber you're running, how frequent you know,
certainly a bolt action is not going to get quite
as hot as a you know, a five five six
if you're running mag dumps. Yeah, but I mean you
can you can get steel, you know, prior to failure
on steel, you can get it over a thousand degrees
you know, on AAR fifteen systems and things like that.
This system that we're you know, mostly talking about here
today is is civilian facing and everything like that. We
do have a version that we are actually actively working
with the government on some military grade that have actually
been successfully proof tested on and torture tested on media
machine gun systems.
Speaker 2: Okay, so now we're going folato.
Speaker 1: Correct, which we're not here for in this system. You know,
it's not gonna you know, you can't take it out
back and run you know, a two hundred round belt
on you know, a home grade you know, a civilian
grade system. But we do have that is something that
Avient is working towards.
Speaker 2: So then that's able to handle even hotter temperatures.
Speaker 1: Correct, yep, But this can handle you know, anything that's
going up to you know, about four hundred to six
hundred degrees depending on how you run it fahrenheit. I
certainly don't do that with my own guns personally, but
I know people out there who do. But you know,
you'll see in organic systems there is breakdown at those
high temperatures. But it's how fast you get to those
high temperatures that really makes the difference.
Speaker 2: What if people said about the system and they started
shooting it, well.
Speaker 1: One of the first things is that they notice that
we're able to stay on target, however long we're shooting for,
you know, especially when we get out to you know,
long range testing and things like that. The initial feedback,
like we talked about touching, feeling that heat right away
is one of the key things. But also the fact
that you know, you can just stay on a target,
keep running rounds, and you don't walk off the paper,
walk off the target like you do see when a
lot of systems do get particularly hot.
Speaker 2: And also talk about if somebody says, well, I don't
shoot that many rounds or I don't I'm not mad dumping.
I'm you know, I'm a deer hunter. I mean I'm
I shoot you know, my five ten twenty rounds to
side in. But when I'm shooting a deer, I probably
shoot once or twice. Correct, But you had a good
point of why this still might matter definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, this system truly can be beneficial to any
type of shooter. The reasoning you touched on. When you've
got in, you site your rifle. Sure, you might be carrying,
you know, the rifle into your stand waiting. It might
be nice and cold outside. You have a nice cold
boar shot. However, when you took that rifle to the range,
you know, whether it was two weeks ago, whatever, you
probably didn't take all the time you need in between
each round to bring it completely back down to a
cold boar. What you really need is something that if
you zeroed to your fifth or tenth shot, that means
you're actually set up for your fifth or tenth shot.
If your barrel walked, you may not be zeroed anymore.
So guaranteeing you're going to get cold bar performance across
you know, the multiple rounds. Make sure that you know
that you have a lightweight barrel, so you're not you know,
humping in a honk and steel you know memoth out there,
but you're also going to be able to head exactly
where you want it to hit.
Speaker 2: I mean, that makes all the sense in the world
to me, because I know when I side in now
I don't once I noticed that bullets are walking. Oh
maybe we should cool it down. At that point, I'm
probably already into seven, eight, ten, twelve rounds. Sure, depending
on how difficult this sighting is take, you know, and
how long it's taking. And then when it's like not
super hot, we do the you know, the redneck you know,
grab the barrel test and you go, yeah, it's fine,
but that's a good point, like you maybe actually cited
in for your tenth round. And obviously that deer, that elk,
this is a cold boar. You weren't shooting ten rounds
before you walked out exactly. You're not keeping a heater
in the boar before you get out there. Totally different. Yeah,
very cool. And this is what's this called again?
Speaker 1: So this is Avian's composite heat release technology and four barrels.
Speaker 2: Okay, and uh you know what we'll do. People are going, Okay, cool,
how can I find it? Who's making it? All that stuff?
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shooting preference. Are con firearms, so ease? We said, Okay,
you guys. Avian is not a gun company and actually
not really even a barrel making company. Correct, So how
do people find.
Speaker 1: This by buying our customers systems?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So we have actually gone live in you know, on
advertisements and everything like that and are available you know,
in stores with a couple of different customers. Uh. To
begin with, you know, Thompson Center starting with their Encore line,
so that should be available very soon, but also with
Cold War Solutions, which is an arm of a thunder
value Precision okay, and there are others out there. It
just depends on how our customers want to advertise and
use the Avian name. Because we're business to business, we
can be behind the scenes, and so some of.
Speaker 2: Them may actually say this is an Avian h C
h R composite yep, CHR. Okay, chr. It's thinking by
completely guns with this in there, or people are going
to be selling barrels just by themselves. There will be soon. Okay,
all right, very good. You've been doing a lot of testing,
and talk about the type of test and you've been doing.
You should what you would the gun that you brought here.
You said, oh, yeah, it's good. I think I was
just shooting out to fourteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Sure, it's where did you go for that, I went
to saw Mill Tactical in South Carolina. Okay, so that's
a great range. Definitely should check it out. Also shoot
up at thunder Valley Precision in Ohio and you know,
great facilities both of them to shoot out to long ranges.
But yeah, we we definitely do a lot of long
range studies like I mentioned, you know, being able to
hit you know, your your target multiple times over, but
also you know, at local ranges and things. One of
the key things that we've been studying is how you know,
of course, how does a barrel heat up, how does
it cool down? But it's all about the bore of
the system, right, and so measuring and determining what are
your cool down factors while maintaining your accuracy. And so
we've been consistently, depending on what type of you know,
competitive barrels out there across the board, we've been outperforming
them in cooling rates cool down times anywhere from five
percent to sixty percent laster.
Speaker 2: Cheezum. I bet the long range shooter guys love this.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, PRS and NRL guys you know, have definitely
been eating it up. And okay, just been talking.
Speaker 2: About you know, yeah he gets excited about.
Speaker 1: It, definitely, but yeah, maintaining So we talked about the
value to you know, your your hunter you know, might
take the gun out twice a year once to zero
wants to you know, go hunt. But you also have
the you know, significant benefit to the p r S
and n r OL guys, you know, lightweight, easy to
maneuver between you know, portions of a stage, while also
maintaining that point of impact.
Speaker 2: I mean, I could also see this being great for
even ars, don't you think it is? I mean ars
they heat up, especially you're running a class. We're not
talking about precision, you know. I'm thinking of this if
like the car being class type thing of Like, Okay,
I'm not worried about if like my zero walked a
couple inches at several hundred yards, maybe that's not the
but it's like your handguard won't get as hot, right.
Speaker 1: Right, so it you'll of course feel heat more quickly,
but it's dissipating into the atmosphere much faster. Okay, so
you don't actually get too big of an issue where
you know, your fore end gets too hot to handle
anything like that. One of the key things also is
because of the lightweight, load density of the system. We're
actually able to make on ar systems. We make bull
barrels as opposed to so like a lot of people
used to have seven to fifty gas block dur an
O three quarter inch or even you know, the pencils.
We actually bulk it up to the large size, the
nine thirty six gas block, so that it's a it
basically looks like just a cylinder. Yeah, first of all,
I think it's pretty. Second of all, you get more
volume there, you get more so your pulling that heat
out faster, so you don't see the same peak temperatures.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Interesting, And it's stiffer on the end by being thicker.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we talk a lot about the heat part.
Does this have any other advantages for the shooter?
Speaker 1: By being low density, you know, and lightweight material just
like any carbon barrel, it's going to be lighter than
it's steel alternative, So definitely as far as you know,
hoisting it, walking around with it, et cetera. So you
get those two and like I said, you know, we
didn't want to make a METO product. I wanted to
make something that was outperforming what's out there currently. And
we couldn't make it heavier. Yeah, right, so we kept
going lighter.
Speaker 2: Very cool, all right, Avian Technologies, Eves, Thanks for being
on with us and explaining and hopefully you know it's funny.
I always say there's a lot of different ways that
people enjoy guns. And there's the techie guys who want
to know how does it work? You know, is this
a delayed blowback system? And the house, the gas travel
and all that. There's those those gun owners who love
this stuff. So hopefully you stuck with us on a
little bit of science time on Gun Talk Nation. Thanks
for watching, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: M HM.