Barrel Life

[malinois]

Hears another thing....What kind of barrel life are you all getting out there before your accuracy drops off below an optimun or acceptable level and what is acceptable 1 moa 3/4 moa. all items are open for discussion such as....Barrel material...rifling type..number of grooves....cut or button...caliber....twist and the velocity you are working at for a given caliber. I dont know if its been address here but this is a topic that should be on all high power shooters mind since these tubes are not cheap.

[Bob259]

Hears another thing....What kind of barrel life are you all getting out there before your accuracy drops off below an optimun or acceptable level and what is acceptable 1 moa 3/4 moa. all items are open for discussion such as....Barrel material...rifling type..number of grooves....cut or button...caliber....twist and the velocity you are working at for a given caliber. I dont know if its been address here but this is a topic that should be on all high power shooters mind since these tubes are not cheap.

Add how hot the loads are...

[malinois]

Yes almost forgot moly and non moly or coated with anyother junk bullets and like bob said the hot loads too..thanks bob

[Jim T.]

Some of you might be interested in the topic at the link below:

http://6mmbr.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=3622340

Sure glad Mark Pharr chambered my 6.5x47 short, looks like I will be shooting my 3 groove Lilja for a long time.

In my opinion, I think the most important aspect of barrel life, after optimum bore capacity, is how hot a barrel is allowed to get. That is, if you shoot max pressure loads but never allow the barrel to get overly hot I think you will get better barrel life than someone who is shooting milder loads but allows the barrel to get molten hot.

What I have heard on this subject:

Stainless lasts longer than chro-mo;

Cut rifled lasts longer than button, polygonal may outlast both;

Can someone explain why moly matters? I have heard that most of the top barrel maker's warranties are null and void if you use moly coated bullets.

Grooves don't matter? Throat life?

Twist does not matter.

[malinois]

Yeah I try not to get the barrels hot but when I'm working on a load I shoot em just like I shoot them in a match.....I shoot five shot strings in 2 1/2 min wait a bit then shoot another five.....that way I get a true indication on what the rifle will do under match conditions....

[Jerry G]

Heat is the biggest factor in steel going south on you. There are many factors that contribute to that problem.

Back to acceptable groups. If they ever get as large as 1 min, I think it is time for a new tube. Some hunter would be so happy to get one that only shot 1 min he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Make a friend and just give it to him for little or nothing.

[kevinbear]

Heat is a huge factor, as silhouette shooters we have to shoot 10 shots in a realatively short time period, can't change that so that leaves volume of propellent in proportion to the bore, the burning temperture of the propellent, and a factor most people don't think about the shape of the propellent.
First, most silhouette shooters are using either 6.5's or 7's, all else being equel the 7's are easier on barrels.
Second, ball powders have a lower flame temperture than extruded as a general rule.
Third, ball powders are not as abrasive as extruded powders. Visulize tiny round spheres hitting already heated steel as opposed to little cylinders with sharp ends.
That being said I still use Varget in my 7-08's because of the unbeatable accuracy but after ruining the barrels in 3- 264 win mags with IMR 7828 I've switched to H380 and H414 for my Swift and 7 short mag.
[quote="Jerry G"]Heat is the biggest factor in steel going south on you. There are many factors that contribute to that problem.

Back to acceptable groups. If they ever get as large as 1 min, I think it is time for a new tube. Some hunter would be so happy to get one that only shot 1 min he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Make a friend and just give it to him for little or nothing.[/quote]

[malinois]

lol...give him your old barrel and then invite him to a match !!...of course he will have to buy his own replacement barrel next time after he's done killing your old one.

[thskeer]

Being a life long High Power shooter with 'some' experience has me think about barrel life a lot. In that game you shoot 10 rounds in 60 or 70 seconds, take 3 minutes to score and repeat. The barrel gets hot enough to burn you on a July day at Quantico! There the standard is sub-minute--- the X ring is a minute of angle except from the 200 yard line where it is 1.5 MOA, you are firing with iron sights, no spotter or coach. You need a sub-moa gun to be make up for aiming differences with iron sights.

In that game nearly every rifle I had influence over went to at least 2500 rounds before barrel wear created accuracy problems. Since people have gone to the 6mmX and similar cases gilt edge accuracy has slipped to about 1500 rounds according to some of my National level competitor friends.

Start with a top end barrel and you should get 1500 rounds minimum as a silhouette rifle before things begin to open up. Add that our average shoot is 40 rounds per day, not the 88 it takes in a HP regional course, and my Shilen barrels should last years!

Barrel wear is real, and flame temp is a huge part, but so is bad cleaning techniques!

If I spent as much time dry-firing as I do worrying about load testing and development, scope adjustments, etc I'd probably be a much better shooter, even if my rifle was a quarter MOA bigger group size! Greater gains can be made in quality of hold and trigger controll than in group size, percentage wise!

Time to go reload.... I heard VV 540 was better than VarGet in my 260 with 142 SMK's.......

[kevinbear]

thskeer
On average I go through about 75 rounds a match with checking zeros and practice so 1500 rounds comes faster than I would like but you peged it on every other point. I switched from bronze brushes to plastic about 5 years ago which has made a huge difference. I don't own a bore scope but this is what I believe, bronze bore brushes rough up the surface of the bore which in turn rubs copper off the bullet on it's trip down the bore. Then a guy gets the brush in there and scrubs the hell out of it again roughing it up even more.
Since I started using plastic brushes and chemicals to clean my guns they get less copper fouling and the barrels last way,way, longer.

[Jerry G]

My next bbl is going to be a 24" long, 6 contour with flutes. I hope Dan knows what he is talking about because it ain't cheep.

[thskeer]

Kevinbear,

Most of the matches I've been to did not allow for sighters, and I dont get too much pure practice (note my post looking for an Anschutz 2001 air rifle ), so I was guessing about 45 per match.

In truth, it is FAR easier to set up my swingers and shoot my SB rifles in place of HP practice. Access to 500 yd ranges here on the east coast isnt real good! I built a 40X rimfire that is an exact copy of my HP std gun, at least with your eyes closed, just for that reason. The differences are in the color in the stocks, and that the SB rifleas a Premier 18-40x boosted Leupold while the HP gun has a 14.5-35 instead.

I 100 percent agree about bore brushes too! There are awesome solvents now that will do way more than we can with a copper brush! Good point.

I do have a borescope, and I looked at Dennis DeMille's barrel a few days after he shot the national record for sitting rapid fire, 200- 20x followed by a 100-8x, and it looked "dirty" for about the first inch of leade. In truth it was throat erosion, about an inch in length, and it really diddnt hurt his accuracy with his short range load. I only mention that to highlight that some bullets are real forgiving of "jump" too. Berger LTB's are a great example of a projectile designed to be accurate even once you have to jump it into the lands. I wouldnt want to try that with an VLD though!

I keep gun books on each of my guns, another HighPower habit, and they help track exact round counts, though I dont think there is a magic number as amuch as I get a feeling shots are off-call too far. Then I start looking for why....

[malinois]

Dito I also went with the mirror gun set up too it works really well.....and true hi power ranges in the east are just a pain to find....we need to work on that somehow...I am even really thinking of building a 22 K hornet rifle and shoot hunters pistol 1/2 scale targets at half the hi power distances just a little more pop than a rimfire with more distance but thats another story....but you know I never really gave powder shape a thought on the whole barrel life thing but I can see it happening....do you know if anyone has looked at barrels with bore scopes to determain just how bad the extruded powders really chew up a barrel..

[kevinbear]

You get a silhouette course set up for 22 Hornet and I'll fly there a couple of times a year to shoot!! I've had 22 Hornets for over 30 years and done nearly everything one could do with a Hornet. It's second place in my alltime favorite calibers, first-7-08 remington, second-22 Hornet, third-220 Swift, fourth-.410, fifth- .358 winchester

[malinois]

I love the hornet and really like the potential of the K Hornet also. We do not have many 600 yard ranges out east set up for silhouette or 600 yarders period...So I got to thinking there are plenty of 300 yard ranges and with 1/2 scale targets available as a standard order thing also I would not have to spend many dollars getting a set or swingers to shoot. The hornet was a natural choice....it shoots hard enough for the 250 yd or meter rams and is quiet and cheap to reload and it wont chew up the targets either. I am thinking of using the cooper as the platform for this. its just beautiful the way the rams fall when hit with the hornet at range they drop just like the bigbore ones do with a gracefull thud...Dont worry about comming here...I'm comming to you ! Colorado is awhole lot better than florida.