Silencers 101 | Suppressor Care
How to Attach a Suppressor

How to Attach a Suppressor

How To Attach A Supressor

If you’ve ever wondered how to mount a suppressor on a gun, you aren’t alone. Not all guns ship ready to attach a suppressor, and there are a lot of different suppressor mounting methods on the market.

This isn’t a new thing either. When Hiram Maxim invented the suppressor well over a century ago, people asked how to attach a suppressor then as well. Surprisingly, little has really changed from those pre-WWI days and now, and we are about to show you why. From threaded barrels to weird adapters, all sorts of ways to mount a suppressor have been tried, so let’s take a look.

The Importance of a Good Suppressor Mount

If you don’t have a good way to attach your suppressor, you are liable to seriously damage it with bullets hitting the internal baffles from a suppressor not properly concentric to the bore. In the early days of suppressor use, people could buy precision-machined adapters that fit certain popular rifles that would just bolt onto the muzzle and provide a threaded mounting surface for their Maxim suppressor. That approach has fallen by the wayside but still lives on in a different approach.

Either way, without a good, solid way to mount a suppressor, you are in for a world of problems. Poorly threaded barrels and adapters will eventually damage your suppressor and maybe even your gun, so it is important to get it right the first time. You may not have a second chance.

Direct Thread Mount

This might be the most common way to mount a suppressor on a gun. The barrel is simply threaded, and the suppressor screws on. Silencer Central offers a special CNC barrel threading service, but we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Many common and popular guns do not come with threaded barrels. There are many reasons for this, ranging from cost to the fact suppressors are not something everyone chooses or can use. For better or worse a suppressor and tax stamp typically costs as much or more than your gun. And even when using a modular, multi-caliber suppressor like the BANISH Suppressor, a suppressor represents a real investment in time and money. So most manufacturers simply leave threading up to the end-user.

However, a great many semi-auto sporting rifles come with barrels that are already threaded. Typically this is because they are equipped with a flash hider that makes it easier for hunters in low light conditions to not have their vision ruined when taking a shot. Many suppressors will screw on directly in place of these flash hiders.

However, most other guns ship without threading, although some bolt action rifles may be available with a threaded barrel. Many handguns can be ordered this way as well, or drop-in, suppressor-ready barrels can be purchased.

In most cases, factory threaded barrels are precise enough for mounting a suppressor. However, it never hurts to have them touched up by professionals if you are worried they might not be perfectly concentric to the bore. Some Eastern European military-style and surplus rifles may not be safe to mount suppressors on until their threading is checked by an expert gunsmith.

How to Attach a Suppressor to a Non-Threaded Barrel

While the days of clamp-on threaded adapters are basically gone, many suppressors are designed to mount on a muzzle brake or similar device. This offers several unique advantages. For one, it is often very easy to mount or dismount a suppressor. For another, it allows the use of a muzzle brake or flash hider when you want one without having to constantly swap out different devices on the threaded muzzle.

Many suppressor-ready muzzle brakes are threaded for common suppressors or quick detach platforms. Silencer Central offers suppressors and muzzle brakes that are compatible with each other and various popular patterns.

You typically find these kinds of setups on semi-auto sporting and tactical rifles due to the fact they almost always have threaded muzzles and some sort of flash hider or muzzle brake setup. However, nothing says they cannot be used on other types of guns, as almost any centerfire rifle benefits from muzzle brakes and flash hiders.

There are still some esoteric and oddball clamp-on or other sorts of methods to mount a suppressor on some kinds of guns that lack standard barrel threading. But they are such unusual cases that they’re not really worth discussing.

The Importance of Correct Barrel Threading

The thing all suppressor owners dread most, other than filling out ATF paperwork, is an off-center suppressor. A suppressor not properly lined up on your barrel can lead to bullets not exiting the suppressor properly and striking the internal baffles or the end cap of your expensive suppressor.

Threading a barrel is a precise practice that is still surprisingly done by hand in many cases. That means a threading job is only as good as the quality of tools and gauges used and the skill of the person doing the threading.

However, there is a better way. Recognizing that many of our customers had hunting rifles without barrel threads, we started Threading Central. Using state of the art CNC cutting machines and highly trained machinists to operate them, we’re able to do a more perfect threading job than is possible by any other means. In fact, our operation is more advanced than some manufacturers’ threading operations!

Not only that, but you can literally just mail in your barrel or stripped action for threading and have it mailed right back to you. We even will sell you a quality hard case at a nominal price to ship your gun in if you don’t have a safe way to mail it. No matter if you want a standard thread pattern or something unusual, we can cut it for you in the most perfect way possible.

Ready to get a Suppressor?

As the nation’s largest silencer dealer, Silencer Central has locations in all 42 silencer legal states. We offer a complete selection of leading suppressor brands, including our revolutionary BANISH Suppressor line of multi-caliber, user-serviceable titanium silencers. Plus, we are the only silencer dealer who can offer you the ability to purchase and receive your silencer by mail. What are you waiting for? Check out our selection, and let’s get you going on the path to your next suppressor!

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