Barrel porting is the process of machining holes or ports into a barrel to divert gases upwards to mitigate vertical recoil (Upwards of 40%). You should shoot significantly better with barrel ports, just like you would shooting a pistol with a trigger job. We are a massive fan of barrel porting here at Cajun Gun Works, and believe that you will be too!
Check out our barrel porting video if you want to have the most in-depth understanding of the subject. We go through all of the main points, pros and cons, and the test results that we have come up with. Otherwise, you can read through the important points on this page.
The less vertical recoil produced for the barrel porting will generate several pros:
There is no free lunch, therefore barrel porting can have major downsides if done excessively, which can cause malfunctions of the firearm and cause loss of expansion in hollow points. For pistols used in critical applications, we take reliability very seriously, and we recommend that you do too.
If there is too much porting, you may experience:
Our barrel porting works, and we can prove it. We have done extensive barrel port testing to ensure that our work performs how we say it will. Using data that we have collected, we provide our recommendations to you as a customer to make sure that you can depend on your firearm to defend your life, or the life of your loved ones with a firearm that we ported. If done properly, barrel porting can dramatically improve your shooting abilities without sacrificing reliability.
For self defense, you need to ensure your velocity meets the threshold to expand properly. Most manufacturers recommend 900-1000 fps (Feet Per Second) as the minimum for adequate expansion. We recommend maintaining at minimum 1050 fps for a 124 gr projectile for self defense to stay on the safe side. When it matters most, you do not want to leave anything up to chance. For range or competition use, velocity does not matter, therefore you can shoot any ammo you want through the pistols. These pressure recommendations are for self defense. These pistols will still run great with low pressure training ammo.
Compacts:
Full Size:
For any firearm that is going to be used for self defense, in law enforcement, competition, or any serious use, we only recommend our straight line ports on top of the barrel.
We have cosmetic milling that has 3 and 5 port options. For the 3 ports on compacts and 5 ports on a full size, we recommend plus pressure ammo.
Our recommendations are based on high quality, factory ammunition loads. We cannot determine if your ammo is going to meet our velocity recommendations with barrel ports due to different test barrel lengths used for advertising by ammunition manufacturers. To ensure that your results are as desired, we recommend chronographing your self-defense ammunition with your firearm to determine if the velocity is sufficient.
Here are some of our plus pressure ammo recommendations:
We recommend tuning any firearm with our various recoil spring tuner packs. Ammunition pressure varies from each load, from every manufacturer. To ensure that your pistol runs reliably after barrel porting, we recommend tuning your recoil springs to optimize the firearms performance. Barrel porting reduces the pressure in the system, so you must reduce the weight of the recoil spring in some cases to maintain the appropriate slide speed. You do not want to pick up the lightest recoil spring, because that will shorten your operational window (Watch porting video for an in depth explanation of operational windows). If you want to learn more about tuning the recoil springs, check out our tutorial at the top of our website home page, “How to select the proper recoil spring.”
Barrel porting will throw debris out of the barrel. This is a fact that some companies hide because it scares people away from the concept. We believe that you should understand your firearm, and behave responsibly according to the design. As an anecdotal, revolvers also expel gas out of the cylinder and can cause terrible injuries if you have any part of your body within close proximity of that expulsion, but people have been safely shooting revolvers since 1831. You can safely operate ported firearms even with the debris and gases escaping from the barrel ports. Cajun Gun Works is not responsible for any injury caused by irresponsible use of a ported firearm (Per PLCAA, 2005). Anything that you would not put close to a revolver cylinder during live fire, you should not put close to barrel ports.
If you would like additional information on barrel porting after watching the video and/or reading through this information, please give us a call or send us an email!
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197 Parkway Circle
West Monroe, LA 71292
(318) 738-1464
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Mon – Thurs: 9 AM – 4 PM
Fri: 9 AM – 3 PM
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