I've never owned a gun with a stainless steel barrel. Is it worth it. What are the advantages?

Stainless rifles are generally regarded as having a longer accuracy life and are more corrosion resistant than blued. Most of the match grade (accurate) barrels are stainless. You can do a google search for the specifics of the steels

Oh yeah, You asked for advantages:

Your friends and hunting buddies will go "OOOHHhh!" when the see it.
My stainless M70 feels like a surgical steel instrument, next to a "simple" wood/blued gun
Makes your penis bigger.

Now those ares advantages I like.

And shinier too

Almost forgot... If your in the market for a stainless rifle you might check out Sako/ Tikka it seems they have a new Xploder model;.)




crusin for a brusin I know.

OUCH. lol

As far as I have read and seen from bu buddies rifles it's much easier to maintain and will hold up to the elements better.

A well made stainless barrel holds up a little better then a well made chromemoly barrel but they still rust . You don't have to worry so much about fingerprint rust spots but they do rust. They also lose a lot of strength at very low temperatures . If your talking a custom barrel manufacturer the top 5 are pretty much even as far as accuracy goes in a hunting barrel. Domestic Firearm manufacturers on the other hand vary tremendously in quality.

Oldelkhunter, You mentioned about s/s loosing strength at low temperatures. Could you elaborate. I just purchased a new rifle with s/s barrel and it can get pretty cold up here when hunting.

Can't speak for OEH but most barrel manufacturers will not let you order below a certain profile in SS. Basically they will not let you order an ultra light weight profile barrel in SS. Why I can not tell you, maybe there is a metallurgist out there that can give us a qualified answer. I would hate to start a fallicy descrediting SS barrels in general.

Guns with blued barrels don't work. You need stainless, and you need to pay a lot more for it.