I remember wayyy back when reading an article on a gunmaker/journalist trying to break the "Mythical One Mile per Second" barrier. I don't recall much from the article other than they burned the barrel out in some incredibly short period of time. Sub-20 rounds or something crazy like that.

So here's my question: what's the fastest YOU'VE ever actually burned a barrel out?


(For sake of argument let's say the group size has increased by 300% or more or velocity has dropped off significantly.)

Mer personally, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to achieve the distinction of even burning ONE barrel out! My hottest barn-burner is a 7mm RMag and I seriously doubt I'll shoot out the barrel on a 6.5# rifle. (*Because I won't shoot it that much!)

The fastest I've ever burned out a barrel is a little over 560 round in a stock 243 shooting jack rabbits. This was done in one weekend in the mid 80's

I was shooting 70 grain Hornads SX bullets at 3,600 fps and yes, it was on purpose. I was pouring water down the bore to cool it down.

My .22-250 (Ruger Mk II VT, originally a one holer) doubled the size of its groups after 1310 shots, slow fire. I had it rebarrelled with a .308 Lothar Walther Match SS.

My son and I burned out the barrel of a Remington Model 600 after shooting less than 30 rounds of hyper velocity ammunition. The caliber was .243. The ammo was a Winchester factory load with 55gr molybdenum coated bullets going close to 4000fps. The rifle had been shot before but the bore was in excellent shape until the one range session with the molybdenum coated bullets. Grouping degraded so fast and shots were so erratic that it took us a while to figure out what was happening. We tightened screws, fiddled with the scope, looked for something between the barrel and the stock. No matter what we did the groups kept getting worse and worse. Then I gave the bore a good inspection and it looked like the bullets had been passing over the rifling. To this day I suspect that the ultra high velocity and super lubricating coating allowed the bullets to jump the rifling and wear the lands down. The bore looked just like the bore of a shot out machinegun.

I had the rifle rebarreled with a .308 factory take-off barrel I was able to locate. I haven't put a moly coated bullet in any rifle since. I see no meaningful advantage to it.

One afternoon in a pd town in sodak. I shoot 5-600 rounds through a Rem 700 veavy barrel .223. The barrel was smoking hot all afternoon.
That was about 15 years ago.

Two Model 700 barrels in .17 Remington were bad after 900 rounds. Accuracy was still real good but the first couple inches of the barrels got so rough they took a long time to clean, versus when they were they could be shot 50 times and cleaned of copper fairly quickly. Also, with the second one I noticed velocity went way down and primers started cratering after whereas the same load gave higher velocity and did not crater primers when the barrel was new. Also, I had a 7MM Weatherby barrel get pretty eroded near the chamber in 600 rounds and accuracy started going bad, maybe 25 percent larger groups. Finally, I have a custom .220 Weatherby Rocket barrel for a Thompson Center TCR which has a lot of erosion at the throat after about 300 rounds, but it is still accurate, but like the .17 Remington barrels, now takes a long time to clean.

I pooched an 11.5" M-16 chrome-lined bbl with just under 400 rounds (three nearly consecutive sets of four 30 rd mag dumps). I had run that particular bbl pretty hard for several years - four 30 rd dumps, followed by cool-offs - and saw no appreciable wear or accuracy loss.

I didn't have much coin in this upper and was curious. When it cooled down the first 3 inches of rifling was pretty much gone, and the gas port was no longer round (viewed from the muzzle with a magnifier). I tested for accuracy and it had become a 12 MOA blaster. Interestingly, I still bring it to MG shoots and have put many thousands of rounds through it since that day. It is still a 12 MOA blaster, but no worse. It probably has seen over 10k.

Sam

about 4 hrs shooting PD's with a swift.

I watched my buddy burn a 243 barrel out shooting pd dogs in about 4hrs.

He just wouldn't listen when I told him to slow down.

He was making lots of money so a new barrel wasn't a worry to him and there were on hell of a lot of PDs that needed to be shot.

I read this article earlier today. Although not exactly on point (this article's main purpose is testing steel vs. brass cased 223 ammo) it gives in detail (with photos) the barrel wear after 10k rounds.

Personally, I shot an already shot out .220 swift on a old military build. It was a "12 moa Blaster." Being a novice back then, I checked everything and still could not figure it out until I began researching the causes.
Additionally, I got a green mountain .22 barrel so hot in an alfalfa field shooting ground squirrels that it would shoot two or three feet from the point of aim at 15 yards. However, after it cooled off, it is still good to go after 6500+ rounds.

http://www.luckygunner.com/lab...edium=email#reliable

I shot my first .375 H&H out in 14 months, but also did my first 3 safaris in that time.I guess that is hardly worth mentioning on this thread.

I have only shot one barrel out, took 20 years and approx 4500-5000 rounds in my hunting 270.

I have a LVSF in 22-250 that has about 1200 rounds through it and accuracy is starting to degrade a little.

1280 rounds through a 25-06 barrel

quote:

Originally posted by SDhunter:
I have only shot one barrel out, took 20 years and approx 4500-5000 rounds in my hunting 270.

I have a LVSF in 22-250 that has about 1200 rounds through it and accuracy is starting to degrade a little.

We've got about 3000 rounds through the 700 BDL 270 I bought in the late 60s, it's still going strong. Never shot it fast enough to get it smoking hot like some of the above posts though ...

P-Doggin' really seems like the "right way" to burn a barrel out all-right!

Sounds like Good Times.

About 4 minutes.............M-60 machine gun in a high pucker factor situation

I guess I dont shoot enough...I have never burned out a barrel...I have shot my HK300 over 3,000 rounds and my Marlin 39 I have no idea--bunches--- and they both still shoot better than I can hold them.

Ed

Damn, you guys have me way beat!! I thought I burned my 25WSSM rather quickly with hot loads at the 1k mark!

i heard a story...can't swear it's true but it is a good story...about a guy who shot 40 rounds through a 257 weatherby as fast as he could load them. the way the story goes, the barrel was ruined and the first 4-6 inches of rifling were just gone.

i have a 17 rem that quit shooting good groups. don't know the round count but i suspect the problem was the teenager(me) who was cleaning the rifle. i think the cleaning rod did more damage than shooting it.

A barrel is generally worn out after 5-10 seconds of use

quote:

Originally posted by jørgen:
A barrel is generally worn out after 5-10 seconds of use

I will second that. There were days in Vietnam when I fired over 10,000 rounds from an M-60 before getting cook-offs -- where the rounds would fire simply from the residual heat in the chamber.
Back in base camp on standowns there was always literally tons of exchanged ammo that anyone could fire and I would take M-16's out and fire them as fast as I could to see how long they would last before cooking off and wrecking bolts. Needless to say the barrels were properly burnt out.

quote:

Originally posted by 458Win:
There were days in Vietnam when I fired over 10,000 rounds from an M-60 before getting cook-offs -- where the rounds would fire simply from the residual heat in the chamber.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAwrmOapb4

Sam

Less than 40 rounds from any of the three barrels I had in 22-378 Ackley Improved. The famous Eargesplitten-Loudenboomer.

60gr Nosler solid base bullets at 5400+fps.

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
Less than 40 rounds from any of the three barrels I had in 22-378 Ackley Improved. The famous Eargesplitten-Loudenboomer.

60gr Nosler solid base bullets at 5400+fps.

OUTSTANDING!

I built a 6.5 Gibbs for a Marine Col in Hawaii. He used Rocky Gibbs formula of filling the 30-06 case with 59 gr of old 4831 and a 140 Sierra bullet seated to hit the lands. He [fireformed] 150 cases in about 1 hr down my test tube. He then grabbed the barrel and got stuck and ended uo with 3rd degree burns. Brand new McGowen XX barrel smoked. Small wonder we did badly in Nam.
Aloha, Mark

The 243 is rumoured to be a barrel burner but I know guys who have been shootign the same rifles with several thousands of shots fired, for many years. But these guys shot factory ammo. I think the local factory ammo is quite tame.

I've always wondered if some of the high round counts aren't where guys have been shooting mainly mild factory ammo over the years.