  The Teludyne Tech StraightJacket is a completely novel product. This is not a “heavy” or “bull” barrel rifle in the traditional sense. Teludyne press fits a 1 1/4″ sleeve over your barrel and fills it with a proprietary media alloy, then they weld a cap on, threaded to their own muzzle brake system. The StraightJacket wicks heat away from your barrel and bleeds it off the jacket, giving you not only more rigidity and accuracy, but also much less wear and tear on your barrel’s throat.  The marketing promise from Teludyne is that your best 3 shot group will be your average 10 shot group. This Rock River 24″ varmint rifle averaged just under 1 MOA in 3 shot groups before it was StraightJacketed. Now it shoots five shot groups into about 1/2 MOA.  This was shot with Hornady Superformance Varmint, which is made specficially for prairie dog hunting using longer barrelled AR-15 rifles. Our chronograph measured the velocity at over 3500 feet per second, even better than the box velocity.  The shock was when we tried a 20 shot string. It fell into about 1 1/2″ at 100 yards, which is roughly 1.5 MOA, but notice that most of the rounds were in a 1/2″ hole. Shot from a bipod, human error probably contributed to the 6 rounds that were outside of the main hole.  The second upper was from a STAG 3G, which is made specifically for 3-Gun competitions. Those guys and girls shoot a lot of rounds in quick succession, yet require good accuracy for long shots with the gun heated up.  Using Fiocchi range ammo we averaged about .5 MOA – .7 MOA for 5 shot groups at 100 yards, with only a 4x Meopta scope.  20 rounds of the same Fiocchi ammo fell into again about 1 1/2″ at 100 yards, and again, only a handful of rounds fell outside of those two groups next to the bullseye that are less than 1/2″ apart.  The StraightJacket has been vastly improved since our original article. It is lighter and has a Cerakote finish now. The threads on the Teludyne muzzle brake are now cut for standard suppressor threads as well. Note that chip in the Cerakote on the edge of the brade from a 2 foot drop onto tile of the Rock River gun. It is much superior to the old finish.  You can now buy not only complete Sine Pari uppers from Teludyne. They now have this AR-15 barrel kit for $985. It comes with the barrel nut and a special straight gas tube. .  We have not done any A-B testing with the proprietary Teludyne muzzle brake for recoil reduction, but it definately doesn’t cost you anything in velocity. Our chronograph tests were right where they should be for the 18″ barrel of the STAG 3G. |
Teludyne Tech StraightJacket
https://www.teludynetech.com/
The concept of “accuracy” reaches far beyond a 3 or 5 shot group when you shoot your rifle in competition or varmint hunting, where 3 or 5 shots is nothing. It isn’t unusual these days to find off the shelf, inexpensive rifles that guarantee “MOA accuracy” out of the box, limited to a 3 or 5 shot string. But when you get up into 10, 20, and even 100 shot strings, it is a virtual guarantee that the accumulated heat in your barrel will throw your shots into a much bigger circle than MOA, (which is roughly an inch of dispersion at 100 yards). Back in 2010 we first examined a product called the “Straightjacket” from Teludyne Tech that was designed to cure the effects of heat in rifle barrels. The Straightjacket is a 1 1/4″ wide sleeve that is fitted around your existing barrel. It is filled with a heat-wicking media of a proprietary metal alloy, and the overall system is much less weight than would be a comparable 1 1/4″ heavy, or bull barrel. Our original look at the Straightjacket was on bolt guns, but now in its 4th generation of the Straighjacket, Teludyne has come up with a system for the AR-15 that is said to make your best 3 shot group into your average 10 shot group. What we originally called the “Ultimate Accuracy Makeover” has become the “Ultimate AR-15 Makeover,” and we got some amazing results from our two test uppers. The Straightjacket is still a niche product for people who shoot a lot of bullets, fairly quickly, at things far away, and it ain’t cheap. AR-15 upper conversions are currently $1049 and bolt guns can be converted into Straightjacket guns for $849 ($1049 titanium). From its introduction to this day the Straightjacket challenges everything we “know” about accuracy, and that alone makes it exciting to play with, and worth the investment if your budget allows it.
To re-cover a bit of old ground so you don’t have to go clicking around, the Teludyne Straightjacket is a completely novel, patented product. The barrel you see in the pictures is not a “heavy barrel” or “bull barrel” at all. It is a regular barrel that has been fitted with a Straightjacket sleeve. You might ask “why would I want this instead of just a heavier barrel, like you see in a lot of long range competitions?” The answer lies in physics. A heavy barrel is just more of the same barrel. All of the particles of the single steel alloy in a normal heavy barrel are lined up with each other, so when they heated up from repeated firing, all the molecules heat up, and they all tend to exhibit the same behavior, albeit slower because there are more of them to heat up. Therefore, though a heavy barrel is more “accurate” over long shot strings than a normal thickness barrel, the improvement is only marginal.
The Straightjacket uses a second, proprietary metal poured over the barrel to stiffen the overall rigidity the way a single alloy can’t. Because there are two materials, the barrel steel and the media, the heat link is not connected at the molecular level. This results in a heat resistance and improvement in rigidity that is equal to more than the sum of its parts. The media has a higher conductivity to heat than does steel alloy, so it wicks heat away from your chamber and barrel as well, preventing a lot of the throat erosion you would experience with a standard rifle barrel, heavy or not . This gives you exponentially longer barrel life and exceptional consistent accuracy over long shot strings, over the longer life of the firearm.
The difficult thing about the Straightjacket is that you can’t really try it out to see if you like it. As we explained in the original article, you have to send your gun, or in the case of AR-15s, your upper, into Teludyne, where they will permanently install a Straightjacket . The outside sleeve is press-fit onto your barrel, then filled with the proprietary media, which bonds itself permanently to your barrel, and a cap is welded on top, threaded for a muzzle brake or suppressor. Teludyne has its own muzzle brake system which eliminates a good deal of felt recoil and it is now cut to standard ½” x 28 TPI suppressor threads.
Look at the pictures in the first article and you will see, there is really no going back once you install a Straightjacket on a bolt action rifle. But with the AR-15 platform you can buy and send Teludyne a separate upper that will not affect the rest of your firearm. We have never actually heard of a case of someone where was unhappy with the performance of their Straightjacket rifle, so it isn’t a huge leap of faith sending your gun in. Google around on it and you’ll see that the only negative comments are from those who just don’t believe the positive results. These days people are somewhat suspect of positive reviews of new products because of the advertising payoffs that you clearly see in the print mags and on TV, but Teludyne is one of the majority of companies we review here who have never spent a dime in advertising on GunsAmerica, and have no plan to ever do so. The StraightJacket isn’t going to make you a better shooter, but it will make your gun more capable of top notch performance under heavy fire conditions, and it will make throat erosion nearly absent, no matter how many rounds you put through the barrel.
Since 2010 Teludyne has installed over 1200 Straightjackets. Two major manufacturers are currently evaluating OEM Straightjacket models, and there are shooting clubs out there that have even created a “Straightjacket” class for their competitions. This is because guys were showing up with SJ equipped deer rifles at F-Class matches and scoring with the big boys, who had of course spent thousands of dollars more on their traditional heavy barrel, custom bedded rifles than did the SJ guys. The performance of the StraightJacket is so unique that several top competitors refused to let us use their name for the article in hopes that they wouldn’t lose their competitive edge. There are lots of youtubers and bloggers out there who have already used the system for years, and some of them even have a Sine Pari upper in hand for new testing. My only concern is that once the OEM guns do come out the rules bodies from shooting competitions will ban the StraightJacket, but the nice thing with ARs is that you can take the barrel off of the upper fairly easily, so it will be easy to decide if you want to shoot SJ or not.
For our latest tests with the Straightjacket, we sent Teludyne two uppers from two of our favorite ARs, two guns that were made for shooting sports where a lot of rounds are fired fairly quickly at things pretty far away, varmint hunting and 3-Gun competition respectively . The first is a Rock River LAR-15 with a 24″ heavy barrel that came to us in an A4 configuration with an A2 buttstock. It had repeatedly shot sub-MOA out of the box, and those guns come with a guaranteed 3/4 MOA. The second gun is our prized STAG 3G, which was designed specifically for 3-Gun competition. It has an 18″ barrel with a rifle length gas system, and again, it is a gun that has always performed in 5 shot groups in the MOA and better range. The thing has been, with both guns, they did great in 5 shots, but when you opened them up to 10, and 20, the dispersion of the rounds downrange opened up considerably. This is important, because whether you are prairie dog hunting at 300 yards or taking long shots in 3-Gun after heating your gun up, both guns would be better if they could withstand long shot strings without a substantial loss in accuracy. So we sent them into Teludyne to see if they could do just that with the StraightJacket.
Information gathering for this round of StraightJacket testing was a bit convoluted because Teludyne has been working for the last year and a half on their 4th generation “Sine Pari” system, which is available now. If you didn’t take Latin in school, Sine Pari means “without equal,” and it is the motto of the US Special Forces, dozens of whom have quietly deployed SJ equipped ARs and bolt guns in the field today. Our two uppers went out at first when Teludyne was in the 2nd generation of the Straightjacket for ARs, and we decided at the time to send them back for the 3rd generation. Rather than send them back for Gen IV now, however, we decided to just shoot them and give you the results. The main difference between Gen III and Gen IV “SIne Pari” is in full-auto fire. The Sine Pari system, which is now being made exclusively at Teludyne, is made to handle slightly more heat than Gen III, but our guns are fine for the aimed semi-auto fire they will experience. Our tests are with Gen III, and at some point we hope to get in a Gen IV SIne Pari for a followup, hopefully when ammo isn’t in such short supply.
We tested the Rock River 24″ with Hornady Superformance Varmint ammunition in 5 and 20 round groups. This is a 53 grain round with a special bullet made for downrange energy retention, and it is a head and shoulders favorite for prairie dog hunters. Our 5 round group average at 100 yards was just over .5 inches with the newly StraightJacketed upper, which was a definite improvement in the gun, but the real performance boost was at 20 rounds. As you can see from the target, all but six shots went into a .5 inch hole at 100 yards, aimed from an Atlas bipod and shot in 60 seconds. We used an inexpensive Nikon .223 4-16x scope for this rifle, and we felt that it reflected the setup that an average shooter on a modest budget would bring out for dusting prairie dog towns. Likewise the setup for the 3G. The scope was a Meopta 1.5-4x and at 100 yards our average 5 shot group was just under an inch, with the 20 shot group at just under 2 inches using common Fiocchi competition .223 ammunition. Obviously, the magnification and cutting edge ammo made a difference for the Rock River, but we wanted to try to duplicate what kind of setup the average shooter would be using in the field for both guns, without cherry picking the best results. Most 3-Gun shooters don’t use more than 4x magnification due to the majority of close shots, and who can afford anything but range rounds for competition? Overall the performance of the Straightjacket was impressive, and it is no wonder that the Sine Pari system is being looked at by Rick Porter of Team Hornady in 3-Gun, as well as many other competition shooters.
If you look back to our first article on the Straightjacket, a lot has changed since the early days of this technology. Our biggest complaint on the old system was the finish. It was too delicate and scuffed easily, for those of us who tend to bump into things. Our new test uppers came back with a Cerakote C-102 Graphite Black finish and it is night and day with the old dull black finish. All the new guns will come with this finish, and it is nearly scuff proof. “Nearly,” because of course the finish on the Rock River was inadvertently tested with a 2 foot vertical drop onto a tile floor ouch. But even that only chipped the Cerakote a little. The other thing that has changed some is the overall weight of the Straightjacket sleeve and media. Our first SJ guns were bolt action deer rifles and we still use them today for long distance shooting. They are noticeably front heavy, but not as heavy as they would be with a steel alloy barrel the same 1 1/4″ wide. The new Straightjackets are lighter, not completely weight neutral, but they add much less weight than our Gen I version. A 16″” Sine Pari upper weighs 48 oz. (the 12.5″ weighs 40oz.) compared to a common M-4 with all the same parts weighing 39oz. Both of our test uppers balanced nicely in the guns, and neither of them were the 16″ version.
The question a lot of people ask is whether the Straightjacket kit is compatible with their existing hardware. Nearly all handguards that use a standard military barrel nut can be adapted to work with the Straightjacket, and custom versions can be made for hardware from Daniel Defense, Yankee Hill, Midwest Industries and a few others. As above, we did have to replace the Rock River handguard with a Samson, so call Teludyne and ask if you are worried about the extra cost of replacing hardware. There are no hidden or surprise costs to the Straightjacket. You won’t get calls from Teludyne that your {part} needs to be replaced like you would a mechanic or something. It is pretty much send your gun in and get it back in a month or so, Straightjacketed. Generally the word “straightjacket” is something that belongs on someone in a loony bin, and it was probably the looniest among us who originally sent those first guns to Teluydyne sight unseen. These days it isn’t so loony, and it is pretty sane to order Straightjackets for everyone who wants their gun to shoot the best it can.
The newest news from Teludyne is that they are now shipping complete Sine Pari uppers, for ahem, $1,688. It comes with a whole list of high end options listed on the information page, and it looks as though it was specifically made for MIL-SPEC, full-auto fire. It also comes in a 12.5″ SBR version. You can also buy just the barrel assembly kit, with barrel nut, for $985. and this kit should be available from “two big gunsmithing suppliers” soon (probably Brownells and Midway). The delivery time on full Sine Pari uppers is 3 weeks, but it is subject to parts availability, which is still a little tight right now. If you send in a gun they can generally turn AR-15s over in 2-3 weeks, and bolt guns in 4 weeks. Keep in mind, however, that this article is being emailed to over 800,000 people this week, and the line could get pretty long pretty fast. Our first article kept Teludyne busy for several months, and even after our SHOT Show article from 2012, where we reported on the findings of H.P. White on the claims of the Straightjacket, orders piled in for a long time and continue today. Sooooo, if you want to get your gun done in time for Camp Perry, don’t stand around hemming and hawing about the thousand bucks and just do it. The Teludyne Straightjacket is a great investment in making your gun shoot better and last longer.
I just got my 300 win mag done with the straight jacket and the performance is out of this world. I’m getting 2818fps with my 220 grain Sierra matchKing hand loads. The only question I have is why did they shorten my barrel? it was 27″ and now it’s 24″. I don’t mind because it works well, but why was this necessary?
My guess is because the loss of velocity per inch of barrel in 300WM is insignificant and the barrel whip of a 24″ barrel is going to be less than that of a 27″ barrel, with or without StraightJacket. The recoil is going to be even more punishing but the muzzle brake should take care of that.
The other thing that should be mentioned is the extreme wait time for them to fill your order. I’m nearing a year now and I’m still waiting. I’ve paid them and everything. When I placed the order the guy said it should be “no more than 3 months” When I e-mailed to ask for an update a few months ago I got a standard copy and paste response that said pretty much “blah blah, you’re important to us, blah blah, we recently re-tooled, blah blah, we don’t know when your will be done… That’s a lot of money to pay to still have to wait over a year… I probably won’t be doing business with them again unless they can give me an accurate lead time.
I would say this. Every single person that thinks they can do better with some other company’s precision barrel is just not paying attention. I have the new Sine Pari series assembled with a RockRiver lower and a M-223 2.5-10×40 Laser IRT with BDC 600 and took it out with friends. One friend in particular showed the usual skepticism. Blah blah blah its not that much better, my training will over come your rifle, accessories, too expensive, blah blah blah. Side by side 30 rounds later this more experienced shooter who was so darned sure ate his words and admitted it was the most amazing thing he had ever seen. Just 30 straight shots and his standard AR was shooting wild while mine had not changed performance one iota. You bet your butt its a better gun. There is nothing made that even comes close.
I would first warm the barrel with a couple clips and retry for accuracy. Most M4’s are made with quality parts that should give you a decent grouping without going through the added expense. If you do have a problem and the money, I would go with the Teludyne. I can tell you, I have seen wicked barrel whip with Rugers but not with the better quality M4’s.
I noticed the comment about how eventually the rule-makers will start banning StraightJackets from competition. Yeah, that might happen until those same rule-makers discover that the number of competitors has dropped and
their events are starting to either lose money or become non-starters because not enough people have signed up.
Then there will be a StraightJacket listing and event.
This sort of thing has happened before, and for some reason the bans just don’t work; outside of costing a given event a number of competitors.
Barrel restoration/improvement,
After seeing the improvement we have seen on so many different barrels, our conclusion is that the normal big reasons for a barrel’s loss of ability is NOT throat erosion or rifling wear, except were poor cleaning methods are used causing physical damage to the lands at the muzzle. It seems that because we now can see them, we get caught up in microscopic details that under the circustances have been proven to us, to not matter nearly as much as they have been given credit for. The reason you see things like cracks in the bore under the scope is that the rifling surfaces are actually getting tougher(surface work hardened) but the meat of the barrel is stretching and bending becoming much easier to adversely shock with pressure each shot, thus, cracks form around the toughest areas of the surface hardened bore…and yes, we can make these shoot well again too.
It is pressure damage to the structure of the pressure vessel that a rifle barrel makes up that is causing the most loss of accuracy. How? The barrel is simply “going limp” no matter what caliber or profile, or shooting method.
At roughly 60,000 psi every shot, what else should it really be? If you can maintain equal pressure between shots, thus maintaining consistent velocity, then maintain a consistent square release of the projectile from the muzzle we can make it shoot again or for the first time! This leaves things like throat erosion out at the start of an equasion that really depends on the muzzle’s behavior for the best outcome. We stop barrel whip and the effect heat has on metal movement.
Rebarreling with a quality barrel is NOT cheaper in any scenerio we can find considering all the tasks that are normally required and included in our service, except some ARs, and that new barrel still retains the shortcomings of a stand alone steel barrel. You will be amazed by the consistencey of a factory mass run barrel treated to the StraightJacket!
Stress relief, either hot or cold has an effect that is quickly, nearly reversed with the reintroduction of heat.
Anything you can bolt on your rifle is there to make you more able to deliver it’s potential to the target and its ALL based on your barrel, so lets get that working FOR you instead of against you, then bolt on some cool stuff.
To date, No barrel has been “to good already” to improve with this system.
We have had three hunting rifles SJ’d. The 300WM decreased the group size 40%. The others retained their sub-MOA over any number of shots. The rifles are amazing. You CANNOT just buy a great barrel and get this performance. The BEST barrel still will heat up and lose POI. I have plenty of bull barrels and none can come close to the performance of the SJ rifles. No amount of training can overcome the loss of POI when the barrel heats up. We took an inexpensive Savage and built up a tack driver that holds POI under all conditions.
The folks at TTI are committed to their product and really DO guarantee it. NOTHING I have ever seen will change the accuracy of a rifle like a StraightJacket. We also got the silencer adapters for them and the combination is Heavenly.
Highly recommended. (Not compensated or formally associated with TTI.)
I agree with everything you are saying. I just received my SJ on my 300 win mag and it’s incredible! but i noticed they shaved the length down from it’s original 27″ to approximately 24″. Do you know why they did that?
Last year I sent my 1987 Ruger MKII 270 to Teludyne for the straight Jacket. It had endured many years of many rounds and had opened up to about a six inch five-shot group. When I got it back from Teludyne I had some difficulty getting the right rings for my scope and then after shooting the gun it appeared the scope had malfunctioned (it was the original Leupold 3-9 Vari-X III) the groups had begun to open up and string all over the place, so I bought a new Vortex Viper PST (a VERY sweet scope for the money) and the same thing happened. I had emailed Teludyne asking a question about barrel tension against the stock and low and behold I received a call that afternoon from Rob Miller, the CEO of Teludyne.
From my three or four sentence email he had determined that I was having a problem. He was right. We had an approximately 30 minute conversation and he assured me that no matter what, Teludyne would honor their unconditional satisfaction guarantee. In a couple of weeks, after trying a few more things, there was no change in my gun’s performance, so they sent a pickup order and we shipped it back to them. They would run the gun through their custom shop and assured me I would be impressed when I got it back.
During the approximately six weeks they had the rifle I spoke with their gunsmith, Dave, and exchanged a couple of emails. I was glad to know it wasn’t just me; Dave was having the same problem. They continually assured me they would fix it or else…
At the end of about six weeks Dave emailed that the rifle was on its way. When I received it I realized they had placed the Gen III system on the gun. It was lighter and had the new muzzle brake and ceracote on it. NICE!
So, I finally got to take it out last week to work up a load. I had to use a rickety wooden bench at our gun range because the stable concrete ones were already in use. Even so, my “work up” loads, Berger 150 HVLDs over Reloader 22 and Winchester 748, were all within about an MOA and one group was much better with three rounds going into a single hole in an approximately .5 MOA overall five shot group. By the way, the temp outside was 92 degrees. I’m now itching to hone my loads and try it with a 10 or 20 round group.
These guys are for real and they will stand behind their products 100%. And to those people who might think… “I can put a new Kreiger heavy barrel on my gun for less,” I say, no you can’t. Unless you are a gunsmith or machinist who is expert in cutting and fitting barrels you’ll spend at least $850 on a barrel and machining; and then there are no guarantees. These guys GUARANTEE their work. Not a concept found in many businesses anymore. I can guarantee you I will have more guns fitted and will definitely buy a Sine Pari when I can finally purchase a Colt LE 901… which I am STILL waiting for.
I am VERY impressed with Teludyne. Not just for their work on my gun but for their commitment to integrity and fulfilling their promise with no excuses. These are the kind of people I LIKE doing business with. These are the type of people we should ALL like doing business with.
Where is the documented evidence to support your claim that the straightjacket prevents “a lot of the throat erosion” resulting in “exponentially longer barrel life?”
your right johnry , unless you plan to shoot long range in competition it wouldn’t be worth it , just have a heavy barrel cryogenically treated and install it on your gun , and a lot cheaper
You obviously haven’t actually done this and fired a magazine out of your rifle before shooting for groups. Cryo *lines up* the molecules if anything, which would make the effects of heat even worse. Try heating your gun up and shoot it for accuracy and see how much it sprays bullets as compared to cold bore groups.
Admin –
I think Drut’s comment was more about the price of Teludyne’s product than it was about the cryo barrel. $1000 can buy quite a few upgrades to your AR and, while the performance of Teludyne’s Straightjacket is impressive, that $1k could get a lot of training and a few upgrades. Those upgrades and (more importantly) the training could do more to shrink the shooter’s groups.
Thanks for that clarification papa bear Mike. But it does say that it is a niche product for people who do this a lot. If you spend $5,000, a couple times a year, on prairie dog hunts in Wyoming and your .5 MOA rifle turns into spray and pray after 20 rounds, a $1,000 investment isn’t a big deal. And because of the extreme reduction in throat erosion, you have to take into account the lack of a need to replace pretty much any competition barrel after 1,500 rounds as is standard practice. Your theoretical benefits to training sound great, and they really make you sound like a great armchair expert so congratulate yourself on a job well done, but I don’t think you shoot that much. $1,000 is less than the flight, rental car and ammo for one match, when ammo costs “normal” prices even.
Really cool idea, i’m just struggling with the idea that this thing is worth $1000. I could do alot of great upgrades to my rifle for that kind of money!