How great a driver are you? IE: are you good enough that practicing on this barrel is of less consequence than getting a load that does exactly what you need it to do?
How fast do you need this car to go? IE: are you willing to buy TWO barrels, chamber them the same, burn the fuck out of the first one finding a great load, and save the second--albeit SLIGHTLY different--tube for actual purpose-driven use? Are you going to go full-retard on using proprietary and/or custom bullets and try to push them to the limits (whatever those are, by common definitions).
How long have you been turning wrenches? IE: are you experienced enough at hand-loading to know what a rifle wants 'close enough' to find a decent load within 50 rounds or so? Remember: this isn't some hotrod wildcat. It has a quickly-growing volume of data readily available.
This isn't a real barrel burner. If you spend half the barrel life finding something that is acceptable to you, then you either have really high expectations, or you suck at loading/shooting.
For me, a general litmus is about 1/2 Minute. When I get a rifle doing about 1/2 Minute for 5 shots either prone from bags, or sling prone, I tend to start thinking about moving that load out to intended full distance and seeing what it will do out there; if I'm lucky and quickly find something that is 1/4 Minute or better...buddy, I'm done with the shortline shit. For some rifles "full distance" is 300 yards, and for some, that starts at 1,000.
I do know that, despite the internet bullshit, if you have a shooter and rifle and load that can hang tough for a round MOA group at 500-1,000 yards for an appreciable number of rounds (like 10-20), then you have a pretty damn good situation.
If you need better than that, then you can really start tweaking things and buying better gear and loading equipment to bring that in to 1/2 to 3/4 MOA like the F-Class guys need. They, and similar types of shooting like Benchrest (the sport) are an exception to my comments above. Then again, so is their equipment. (I love those little rice-burner barrel cooler gidgets...)
If you need better than 1/2 MOA at 1,000 yards, you are seriously, seriously in the wrong forum.
-Nate
