Swamp Collie,

Regarding your Omega with WeatherShield, I don't know what to tell you. I don't own one. Recently I was looking at ML's at Cabela's and noticed that Weathershield description. I was surprised to see that the word "Stainless" was completely omitted from the product description --- completely omitted. See here http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/te...815&hasJS=true . I just don't know but perhaps what you have isn't really stainless steel. Like I said, I just don't know.

Here is what I do know. I have a SS Kodiak Pro which was lent to someone I used to call a friend. He hunted with it. Discharged it. Stored it that way. And I played h&*l getting it back. It was finally returned to me 10 months later uncleaned and I can tell you no rust colored the cleaning patches and there is no visible evidence of pitting or corrosion.

Breechplug speaks of his Accura barrel "blinding him". This bore is just that shiny as well. I know --- even with our lower humidity here --- this treatment would have ruined a blued barrel. Cancer would be in the metal and the corrosion would persist throught it's life. That $20 saved my rifle from the mistake of lending it to the wrong person.

There is going to be corrosion in every barrel just from using it it. What we do is control the rate our barrels are corroding by cleaning and using protectants. I would agree that with the proper care that the corrosion is sufficiently controlled in a blued barrel such that no evidence of corrosion can be observed. So in other words, when a blued barrel is sufficiently protected, the benefits of the corrosion resistance of Stainless Steel are not readily perceived. However, Stainless steel has corrosion resistance which is "inherent" to the material which does not rely on human intervention (use of protectants). As such the protection stainless affords can only be observed (in relation to blued counterparts) when the metals are subjected to the same unprotected corrosive environment.