Firearms steel: Domestic vs import

[Dawes]

This is kind of a left-field question, but maybe someone is familiar:

The Chinese company Norinco has produced copies of various firearms that are exported to the US. Now, it's chiefly copies of the Remington 870, Winchester 97, and Ithaca 37 shotguns. While they're usually quite reasonably priced and seem to perform well, some have raised questions over the quality of the steel used in their manufacture.

Is the Chinese steel considered to be of lower quality than the equivalent US steel?

 

[Metalguy]

No specifics on guns, but its fair to state that the Chinese do not have a good reputation for other steel products, esp. piping flanges, etc. I've also heard of material problems with their one cylinder "China" diesel, a small unit of ~15 HP-IIRC.

However, I am not real excited by the quality of the steel used by American manufacturers. Yes, it works, but it is a far cry from what's typically used for aircraft parts.

 

[diamondjim]

China in its modernization has
built some new steel factories and
are probably to the state of the art
in its design.
But it also has some very old
production facilities much like
the US. You do have to know the
source to determine the quality.

 

[hacksaw]

norinco may have had some production problems in the early export market, but believe they are considered high quality now

 

[Dawes]

Well, it's certainly hard to beat their prices. The Ithaca 37 version has a machined steel receiver and steel trigger housing, and can be had for around $200 or so. Fit and finish appears to be well executed also. Machined parts (versus cast, MIM, etc.) in US production guns really send costs soaring.

Looks like their Quality Control and production processes (with regard to firearms, anyway) are steadily improving.

 

[Carburize]

The biggest material related problem with these imports seems to be control of heat treatment and achieving consistent hardness levels. The failures I have looked at have mostly involved rapid wear or deformation of parts due to low hardness leading to poor fit and bad lock-up.
The second feature that has been the root cause of two failures is poor geometry - sharp stress raisers initiating fatigue cracks after only a very limited time.