The basic A1 and A2 flash hiders do a very good job. The only real difference between the A1 and the A2 is that the A2 lacks the three bottom slots. Most matches are held in broad daylight, and cardboard targets aren’t going to notice muzzle flash. A deer hunter, for instance, cares not one whit about muzzle flash. Also, there are a lot of uses where the shooter doesn’t really care if there is a visible flash or not. In a rifle-length 20-inch barrel it isn’t too bad, as there is enough length and time for cooling and pressure loss to keep flash manageable.

The flash hider on your AR-15Īn AR barrel with no flash hider is problematic. By mixing the cooler ambient air with the expanding bubble in a random pattern, there is no longer a large flat surface, or bubble, to glow. A flash hider hides most of this by creating turbulence. The hot gases, expanding into the cool air, emit photons from heat, not from burning powder. The muzzle flash of your rifle is the same principle. Turn the light off, electrical flow stops, and the filament cools and stops emitting photons. The filament is not consumed, it is not burning, it simply ejects photons due to the heat. The filament, due to electrical resistance, is heated up until it is hot enough to be incandescent, and the glow is in the visible spectrum, which throws off … light. The electricity flows through the filament, and the filament glows due to the electrical resistance of the material involved. It expands too quickly to mix until it has sufficiently cooled.Īn example of incandescence is your common light bulb. At that temperature, the gas is incandescent and the glow happens to be in a part of the spectrum we can see.Īlso, the uncorking pressure of rifle ammo, typically 10,000 PSI or higher, produces a smooth-surfaced gas bubble. That gas leaves the muzzle in an expanding bubble.

The confined combustion temperature of your average rifle powder is on the order of 3,500 to 3,700 degrees, Fahrenheit. The powder burns at a high pressure and temperature. Actually, the bright flash we see is incandescence. In rifles, the powder has all been burned by the time the bullet is 3 or 4 inches down the bore. In some handgun cartridges, the powder has been fully combusted before the bullet leaves the case. If you have not combusted all the powder the case contained in its travel through 16 inches of bore, you’re using the wrong powder. A thermal scope will see it every single time.ĭisregard the notion that flash is unburnt powder. Hot gas is hot gas, even if it isn’t incandescent in the visible spectrum. In fact, a rifle may produce a visible muzzle flash only part of the time, but through a thermal scope it will flash every time. What does a flash hider do, and what exactly is flash?įlash hiders keep muzzle flash down in the visible spectrum. For when you absolutely, positively, have to clear off the benches on either side of you. That’s what a muzzle brake does.A good muzzle brake is loud, as the gases are re-directed back at you or the guy next to you. You can use the leverage the barrel provides, and not just negate the added gas component to recoil, but pretty much negate all the recoil. – A muzzle brake jets the gases out to the sides or top, or causes them to slam into a fixed barrier, decelerating them.

Ar muzzle brake vs flash hider