When is barrel to hot?

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MEHavey said:
Gee, Xin Loi....

That's the rule if you're (a) going to preserve barrel/throat life; and (b) minimize POI drift/warp effect.
and if it's your weapon, save your pennies forit.
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Everyone who shoots USPSA, 3gun, or any other action oriented sport is breaking this rule, as are people who shoot a round of skeet by themselves.

Heat contributes to throat erosion in overbote rifles. Shooting anything until its red hot is also ill-advised. That is a mile away from the claim that you should never shoot a gun of any type until the barrel is hot.
 
I said press on guys.
Do it. Your guns.

Too hot to even hold as an everyday/voluntary matter of course ?
You gotta be kidding
Not mine.


BTW: I shoot skeet quite often alone w/ a Clay Delay after work
Somehow my Model-12s/Ithaca-37s/870s never get that hot
 
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Not the whole gun, just the barrel. That doesn't take much at all.

Guns in USPSA are routinely shot that fast. And the barrels last 30-100k rounds.

A 6.5-284 would react very differently. The same "rule" does not apply to all guns. Not even close.
 
I'm still trying to figure out how anyone can get the barrel of a single action, solid frame revolver too hot?

Jim
 
Sorry but it's absurd to believe that anything too hot to touch with bare skin is hot enough to damage the steel.
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You are not damaging "the steel" where your hand is likely to be.
In high pressure rifles/some pistol cartridges you ARE setting up/accelerating erosion in the throat (which is much hotter than the barrel), AND warping POI if there is ANY eccentricity in the barrel and/or bedding.

But y`all as have a mind to, just go ahead and run magazine after magazine after magazine.
It's neither my barrel nor my ammunition. As RSO I'll just ensure the baffles don't come into play.
 
I suppose it depends on my gun. When I'm at the range I take it pretty easy but that's mostly to save targets, ammo, and focus on fundamentals.

I've fired 250 rounds of .357 magnum without more than a few minutes of break time through many of my revolvers and I never felt the gun was "too hot". Ruger's have so much steel I figure I'm paying to be able to SHOOT! None of my guns have any issues and I've shot them to blistering hot before.

A glowing gun would be troubling however, I've never gone past "hot". If I got a GP100 barrel to glow I'd take a picture and share with ya'll because that would really be something.
 
Howdy

I shoot Black Powder in Cowboy Action Shooting. I cannot explain why, but Black Powder tends to heat up a barrel much more than Smokeless does. I shoot an Uberti 1860 Henry as my main match rifle. One of the features (or lack of features) of the Henry rifle is it lacks a wooden fore end. And the barrel and tubular magazine are machined from one solid bar of steel. On a hot summer day, after just 10 shots of Black Powder 44-40, the barrel will be too hot to hold. That's why I always wear a glove on my left hand when shooting during the summer.

Henry07_zps6828738f.jpg




Same thing with my little old Stevens SXS. After just six rounds of Black Powder shells, the barrels are too hot to touch. That tiny little for end does not protect my hand much and I have to be careful not to touch the barrels with my finger tips.

stevens%20hammergun%2003_zpsi2udi3im.jpg




My Colts heat up too, but after five rounds they are not too hot to hold.

colts_05_zpse777f03b.jpg




Bottom line, although my Henry and SXS heat up a lot on a summer day, I have never worried about the heat damaging the barrels.
 
MEHavey said:
http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com...urely-kill-a-barrel-243-win-fast-firing-test/
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Couple things: 1) That's a bottleneck rifle cartridge. Not a straight-walled pistol cartridge. There is universal agreement that the extent of "overbore"-ness of the powder column is a huge factor in barrel life. All bottleneck high-pressure rifle cartridges are already doing much more damage to their barrels than pistol cartridges.
2) You will note that the very first comment says, "oh well, the faster firing protocol closely matches what occurs during competition." As I noted above, if the "rule" were that you cannot even fire a gun to the point where the barrel is uncomfortable to grasp firmly with both bare hands, a great many shooting sports could not be shot.
 
Jim K said:
I'm still trying to figure out how anyone can get the barrel of a single action, solid frame revolver too hot?
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I shoot them until they're uncomfortable to hold all the time. Even .22's.


MEHavey said:
You are not damaging "the steel" where your hand is likely to be.
In high pressure rifles/some pistol cartridges you ARE setting up/accelerating erosion in the throat (which is much hotter than the barrel), AND warping POI if there is ANY eccentricity in the barrel and/or bedding.

But y`all as have a mind to, just go ahead and run magazine after magazine after magazine.
It's neither my barrel nor my ammunition. As RSO I'll just ensure the baffles don't come into play.
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1. This is the revolver forum. We're not talking about AR/AK mag dumps which may get the barrel to 1000°.

2. You didn't say getting a barrel to 700-1000° is dangerous. You said, "too hot to touch". 1st degree burns can develop at 118°. At 162°, human tissue is destroyed immediately. This is nothing for the steel contained in a firearm. To suggest that these temperatures are dangerous to a firearm is as I said, absurd.
 
Exactly. Nobody was talking about getting a barrel actually red-hot, nor are we talking about 220 Swifts. Maybe everyone else has more nerve damage in their hands than me, but I cannot comfortably get a firm, two-handed grip on my shotgun barrels after shooting a round of skeet. I don't think that's abusive.
 
Like Driftwood, when I was into CAS and shooting BP Cartridge the guns heated up quite quickly. Even my SAAs when firing only 5 rounds. But then I was shooting max BP loads (37g BP/255g 45 Colt) and I live in the AZ desert. Heck, you can get a blued gun too hot to handle just leaving it on an un-shaded shooting bench in the summer. (smile)

Dave
 
Dave T said:
Heck, you can get a blued gun too hot to handle just leaving it on an un-shaded shooting bench in the summer. (smile)
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That's what I was thinking... There have been times I've left a gun sitting in the sun for half an hour with an ambient temp in the 90's and it gets uncomfortable to hold. On a warm day the difference between too hot to hold and a normal temperature is only 50 degrees.
 
C0untZer0 said:
I wonder about this since I've seen the barrel heat up on a M60 to the point where it glows red hot and the Army issues oven mitts to change out the barrel.

I've always just thought a steel barrel could heat up and cool down and it wouldn't hurt anything...
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Actually it changes the temper of the barrel and sometimes the barrel takes on a temper bend, why they teach how to change barrels on lt machine guns and spares are carried in the fld. The correctional custody barracks at Homestead in the 80's had a chain fence with posts of m60 barrels, all had a slight bend and many had practically no rifling left!
 
Jonesy814 said:
I don't see how you could get a modern single action revolver hot enough to cause damage considering you have to stop shooting every 6 rounds to unload empty brass then reload the cylinder
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That was my thought, I have shot automatic weapons until the barrel glowed, and probably reduced longevity that way, but you would have to have Jerry Miculek double action speed X10 to get anywhere close to that level of abuse.
 
Well if it's to hot to hold in my hand,more than likely,I won't be shooting it. Now are we talking about a hand gun barrel or rifle barrel?
 
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