barrel life

[sherman]

Will reloads shorten the life of a factory barrel with faster then factory bullets?

[123456]

yep

[sherman]

How and why?

[azslim]

depends on how hot you make the rounds and how many you shoot, lots of variables in that question

 

I found when I was working up loads that the fastest one wasn't always the most accurate.

[10Turkeys]

Short answer is that it's the amount of powder that is burnt that is going to wear your barrel out, that being said if you just have a hunting rifle that isn't an overbored mag, I don't think you could wear it out in your lifetime. Long answer when I was in an Artillery unit, there was a formula that was used to find tube or barrel wear to decipher MVV (muzzle velocity variations), it was done not by how many rounds that were put down the tube but how many powder charges and which kind green bag (fast burning powder used for short range) or white bag (used for long range). The same applies to a rifle barrel also. The chamber area is the first part of your barrel to go (playing by Hoyle), when this part of your barrel goes it is still possible to keep reasonable accuracy out to 200-300 yards. I have never done it but rechambering is also an option, but the people that I have talked to that have had it done have said that it prolongs the barrel an extra 800 rounds. Doing the math I never thought that it was worth the cost, but that was for a barrel for competition not a factory barrel from a hunting rifle.

[Benbrown]

You didn't say for what cartridge your rifle is chambered. Generally, bore erosion is greatest with cartridges which are "over bore", meaning that case volume is quite large compared to the bore diameter. Although even very heavy powder charges will be completely burned withing a few inches of bullet travel from the chamber, there will be lots of superheated gases behind the bullet to work on eroding the steel in the barrel until they are all ejected. Long story short, if you stay within SAAMI pressure limits for the cartridges that you are reloading, barrel erosion will be about the same as if you just shot factory ammo.

 

It's not the chamber in centerfire rifle barrels that erode first, but rather the throat just beyond the chamber where the rifling starts. As 10turkeys noted, throat erosion will not appreciably affect accuracy in barrels used for hunting until it gets very bad. Benchrest shooters usually rebarrel at the first sign of thoat erosion--sometimes two or three times a year, because they seat their bullets to jam the lands and they may shoot up to several thousand rounds in an average year. (As an aside, some cartridges at or near bore capacity with short necks may start to erode barrels within 1,500-2,000 rounds with either factory ammo or reloads. The .243 Winchester, which is basically a .308 Winchester case necked down to .243, is one example of such a cartridge).

 

I have been reloading for my first centerfire rifle since about 1964 ( a .30-06 that I bought as a in high school Senior in 1961). I used it for scientific collecting while in grad school and while I worked as a wildlife research biologist. It has had at least 1,800-1,900 rounds down the tube and the barrel still looks (and shoots) just like it did when I bought it.

[billrquimby]

I shot 40-50 rounds a week for two months a year for three years when I competed in the silhouette leagues in Sonora in the late 1960s. Best I can figure, that amounts to 1.500 to 1,900 rounds. Before that, I suppose I'd fired another 200-300 rounds with that rifle. At any rate, one day my .270 could shoot a good group, and the next day it could not. Its ability to shoot accurately vanished virtually overnight.

 

Bill Quimby

[sherman]

The rifles that I load for are a 25/06 .270 and 30/06

[STOMP442]

As stated before when used in normal hunting applications you will be hard pressed to wear any of those out in your lifetime. Keep them clean and don't fire long strings when you practice and everything will be fine.

[catclaw]

Getting the barrel very hot (fast strings) and shooting long, heavy for caliber bullets with big charges of slow powder are the biggest culprits of reduced barrel life. Unless you are shooting prairie dogs where the action is hot or shooting across the course matches, don't worry about barrel life. Even the horror stories you hear about some barrels wearing out don't mean much to a hunting rifle. You can take a "worn out" 6PPC barrel, rechamber it to 243 and shoot another 2000 rounds through it as a hunting rifle and have better accuracy than you might deserve.