Barrel heating question

[19818119]

Gents,

Looking for some info on shooting strings with a thin barrel.

I've a Rem M7 that heats up very quickly (3-4 shots) and takes a fair while to cool. It makes running load development a long session at the range. What are the downsides to shooting a hot barrel? At what point does it becoming harmful to the barrel?

Cheers

 

[Hunt]

Re: Barrel heating question

If shooting a hot (factory) barrel, chances are that POI may shift thereby altering usefulness of load development. As far as how hot to let your barrel get, I don't let mine get any hotter than I'm able to hold it.

 

[Greg Langelius *]

Re: Barrel heating question

If I cannot hold the back of my hand against the barrel, I'm running hotter than I like to.

As for accuracy and barrel temperature, it's probably a function of how you develop and test your loads.

If you load for accuracy out of a cold barrel, then you may run into accuracy issues if the firing cadence you need to adopt forces you to shoot a hot barrel.

If, however, you develop the load's accuracy to correspond to a hot barrel, then such heating problems become something of a different kind of problem; one that's related more to bore life than accuracy.

Therein lies the tradeoff.

Greg

 

[19818119]

Re: Barrel heating question

Thanks for the info.

I wonder what the approximate difference in barrel barrel life would be between two identical barrels, one shot hot and the other not.

I suppose there are two many variables to hazard a reliable guess.

Rath

 

[Greg Langelius *]

Re: Barrel heating question

Hard to quantify, but I'm betting it's significant.

In 'Nam we had a spare replacment barrels for our M-60's and more'n a few of them were glowing when they were getting swapped out. They came with an heat-protective mit, and the spare barrel case was insulated.

That's an extreme case, but consider the effects of bullet/gasses wear and tear on metal that's been heated internally to at least several hundred degrees.

Greg