Update Post:

Today 1-24-2018 I received a response to my follow up email sent yesterday.

It was professional enough...

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Thank you for your email. I apologize for the late response as I just received your email from one of my colleagues. I took a look at your forum post and I am not sure what went wrong with the barrel and why it's in such a poor condition. I would be disappointed as well to receive that! We'd be happy to let you return that barrel. If you would like an exchange or a refund we can definitely do both at this point, whichever you'd prefer. I would have to inspect our other barrels for their condition if you would like an exchange. As of yet we haven't had anyone who had such an issue with the condition and poor fitment with these Israeli barrels. I'll also email you with a return shipping label so you can mail back the barrel. Please let me know which option you'd like to go for in terms of a refund or exchange. Again I apologize for this situation, but we're happy to get this straightened out for you. I look forward to your response.
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I am going to try an exchange and see if this was isolated.

My concern really isn't the cosmetics, but the fact that it drags severely on my bolt... sometimes enough to lock up the slide requiring removal of the barrel from the frame to get the bolt out of the barrel breech.

It is obvious that there is pretty radical change in the locking end of these new Israeli barrels... I am wondering if my OLD Mk XIX .357 bolts are at fault... maybe this new design works fine with modern .357 bolts. Surely they wouldn't test/design these new barrels with 20 year old Mk XIX Bolts... maybe something changed just a tiny bit. It leaves extreme scrape marks on my bolts, as pictured below...

These photo's don't show the "3D-ness of these gouges in the bolt... but I circled the gouges in red. This seems to be the source of the extreme bolt drag.



I sure hope this isn't something to do with older Mk XIX Bolts... Maybe I can get a new barrel and find out.

I'll keep you posted.

MrBlackCat