I love shooting my CZ550 30/06. I will often sit down and shoot 100 rounds or so in an hour. Some guy at the range said that if I didn't slow down I would burn up the barrel. Is this true? I didn't think 100 rds an hour was a big deal. How slowly should I be firing, when should I rest the rifle and how long is my barrel really expected to last? Thanks Guys!

I don't have a set rule for rate of fire because there are so many variables, such as air tempurature, caliber of rifle,et. I shoot a group, whether 3, 4, or 5 rounds and touch the barrel just in front of the chamber to see how warm/hot it is. If the barrel is more than just barely warm I let the barrel cool until it is just barely warm. On a cold day most rifle barrels will allow faster shooting before they are too hot to shoot, but on a summer day they heat up pretty fast and take much longer to cool. Shooting 100 shots in an hour is very extreme and a 30/06 will burn out a barrel in short order at that rate because of gases flame cutting the hot steel in the throat of the chamber. I haven't done any time tests but off hand I'd say on a 40 to 50 degree day I would shoot 30 rounds in an hour on a 90 degree day 20 rounds would probably be pushing the heat up. I had some factory ammo that I wanted to burn up for the brass and my 19 Y.O daughter was shooting my 30/06 and I wasn't paying any attention to how many rounds she was putting through it, by the time I realized that she was firing one right after the other as fast as she could put it back on target the barrel was hot enough to fry eggs on. This happened on a summer morning a few years ago. That my take on rifle shooting and barrel heat up.

Jim Carmichel wrote in one of his books about a Springfield '06 that had 50000 documented rounds thru it shooting national match course and still showed good accuracy. I put over 5000 thru a .308 across the course rifle which I bought used, milage unknown. I still shot well when i retired it from match shooting. This included many strings of rapid fire, 10 shot in 60 seconds. 30 cals are pretty easy on barrels. You can take more milage out of them with improper cleaning than a few 100 round per hour range sessions ever will.

It is an absolute proven fact that barrel wear is accelerated with heat and is not allowed to cool between shots.

Just shoot it how ever it makes you happy. They make new barrels everyday. Who doesn't need an excuse to re-barrel or buy a new rifle!?

You could buy a second CZ and never worry about shooting too much. A much cheaper option would be to not shoot it with a hot barrel (where hot means that if you can't comfortably hold your hand on the barrel, it's too hot to shoot).

if you can't pick up the rifle and hold it (hanging) in one bare hand by grabbing only the metal portion of the barrel then the gun is too hot to be fired.

The Garand with which I qualified had just come back from Korea. An ordanace NCO looked at the barrel and said he doubted if you could hit anything with it.I made expert.

The M2 carbine I tried to qualify with had the same history and it shot a 6 foot group at 100 yds.

I'm not sure what this proves, if anything, but it happened. roger

Well theres nothing written in stone about barrel heat wear or chamber throating .
It is how ever advisable to shoot no more rounds through the barrel , than ones bare hand can hold that barrel .
I generally shoot one shot per .45 seconds to 1.5 Min.. A string of #3 5 shot groups plus a clean out or fouler , then allow the weapon to rest while checking targets or switching another weapon to another target .

I rarely if ever exceed 40 shots in a hour. Exception would be High Power competition or Match qualifying .

Shoot Straight Know Your Target . ...

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Just shoot it how ever it makes you happy. They make new barrels everyday. Who doesn't need an excuse to re-barrel or buy a new rifle!?

Perfect sense!

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Originally posted by ElCaballero:
Just shoot it how ever it makes you happy. They make new barrels everyday. Who doesn't need an excuse to re-barrel or buy a new rifle!?

It sounds like a perfect excuse to me!

anyway, if your barrel gets too hot to touch, and you keep shooting that'll wear it out. also depends on how much powder your burning too. If it were mine id keep going till it was burnt out and rebarrel it to 30-06 again or something interesting.

I guess I need to buy a 22.

Thanks!

As far as I am concerned it IS written in stone that heat will wear out the throat of a rifle..anytime you get those lands red hot, they are going to flake..just like hitting it with a cutting torch...

I would suggets 60 rounds per hour for your rifle if you want it to last..I have shot enough full autos to know what the heat will do to a barrel....

I have similar concerns with my Tikka .270Win. Its not the scope or the mounts (Tikka original steel and a Zeiss 6*42 straight off another rifle).

At my last visit to the range I got around three inch groups at 200 meters, less than ideal conditions, but this gun used to place three bullets on the same wad at 100m. I'll tighten all bolts and try some more loads, but its winter and only the electronic range is open and thats FMJ only.

How can we check this without a borescope?

I just take at least two rifles with me when I go to the range.

I put up one of those big targets with multiple bullseyes.

Then I shoot a couple or three groups, or a short course of fire, with one rifle, then switch to another and do the same with that one.