barrel life?

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TMD
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Re: barrel life?

Post by TMD »

Quality of the barrel and how you use it will be more of a determining factor over anything else. If you're into rapid fire mag dumps with hot supers I'm sure any barrel will wear out in under 10k or so rounds. For the casual shooter you'll spend thousands in ammo long before you wear out a barrel.
DeaneM1A
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Re: barrel life?

Post by DeaneM1A »

I put 3,200 rounds thru my S&W MP15. It was a mixture of sub and super. I saw no loss of accuracy. I then rebarreled to .277 Wolverine.
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USBP379
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Re: barrel life?

Post by USBP379 »

DeaneM1A wrote:I put 3,200 rounds thru my S&W MP15. It was a mixture of sub and super. I saw no loss of accuracy. I then rebarreled to .277 Wolverine.
How's the Wolverine working for you? It appears to have a pretty good ballistic advantage over the 300BLK. But that's on paper.
cdl
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Re: barrel life?

Post by cdl »

Assuming a 16" barrel with 4000 rounds and a bullet travel time in the barrel of 1.0 milliseconds per round ... your barrel life is 4 seconds... :lol:
Whole Bunches
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Re: barrel life?

Post by Whole Bunches »

Still keeping records on throat wear in the Blackout. Calculations that a-s-s-u-m-e 1" of throat wear = worn out are remaining consistent at:

~12,000 for plain 4140 steel (Remington, H&R, and Delta Co Arms)
~13,000 for 416R stainless steel (Core15 bbl)
~13,000 for plain CHF 4140 steel (2 Ruger American bbls)
~14,000 for nitrided 4140 steel (Micro7)
~15,000 for nitrided CHF CMV steel (2 bbls by Daniel Defense)
~16,000 for chrome lined 4140 steel (Robinson Armament; have a 2nd one coming in)
~22,000 for "double" chrome lined CHF CMV "machine-gun bbl steel" (I have 2 bbls like this made by FN)

This is with jacketed or copper plated bullets fired at a rate of 5 shots (shots may be fired sorta quickly) and let bbl cool to ambient temp. Super or subsonic, it doesn't seem to matter. What I'm seeing makes sense to me...the harder the steel, the longer it is lasting and a treated bore is lasting longer than a plain bore. No accuracy decrease seen so far. No matter how you look at the numbers, the bbls last a long time.

1" of throat wear is the standard that the US Military used, at least from the 1930's through the 1970's (I do not know what current standards, if any, are now used or what gages are used now). On 3 30-06 bbls I wore out, when the TE reached 1" within 250-500 more rounds the 100yd groups went from inches to feet.
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Dolomite_Supafly
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Re: barrel life?

Post by Dolomite_Supafly »

Nitriding the barrel will extend the life of a barrel. The type of steel used and if the barrel is hardened can also extend the life. Most gun barrels are not hardened and are generally about as soft as mild steel. I believe so heavily in nitriding that any barrel I buy will have it, including bolt actions.

Bullet type used can also reduce the barrel life. Copper washed steel bullets do cause the barrel to wear faster. Fortunately the cost savings by shooting steel, even after buying a new barrel sooner, is still cheaper than shooting quality ammunition until barrel failure.

But I believe the biggest killer of barrels is cleaning. Improper cleaning techniques as well as cleaning more often than needed contributes significantly to barrel wear.
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