Barrel life w/jacketed bullets

[mnshooter]

I know that lead bullets are very kind to barrels and jacketed will wear a barrel faster, but, realisticly, how many jacketed handgun rounds would one need to fire to notice any appreciable barrel wear? Specificly in medium to top end .357 and 44 magnum.

 

[HSMITH]

They will actually take quite a few, but how you shoot the gun and how you clean it are REALLY big factors.

50K rounds isn't impossible with good accuracy, especially if your bore only ever has patches through it and a coated cleaning rod. Skip the brush, save the bore.

Hammering out the rapid fire and getting the barrel quite hot doesn't help barrel life and COULD selectively anneal the bore surface since it gets a LOT hotter than the rest of the barrel. If you do hammer the rapid fire out of your gun, including autoloaders, DO NOT USE A BRUSH other than nylon.

In 357 and 44 mag the forcing cone will be hosed long before the barrel. You can set a barrel back a couple times easily and clean up the forcing cone and leade of the rifling. One barrel should take 100K rounds with reasonable accuracy, but it might need two or even three trips to the doctor for a barrel set back and re-cut.

 

[RyanM]

In a .357 or .44, it would take more rounds than most people will fire in a lifetime, with reasonable loads. If you decide to do something crazy, like make 90 gr, 2500 fps loads, it would only take a few hundred to damage the barrel.

 

[Jim Watson]

In the early days of the .44 Mag, I read of a shooter who went 20,000 full power loads, half jacketed, half cast, and noticed the forcing cone wearing out to a knife edge. He had the barrel set back a bit, rethroated, the extractor rod shortened in proportion, and resumed shooting with no loss in accuracy. Don't worry about it.

 

[mnshooter]

Thanks for all the replies!
I do like cast for economies sake, but they are dirtier than jacketed. Never really cared for the plated stuff.
I'd like to think I'm going to shoot enough to wear things out, but in all likelihood, probobly never will.

 

[caz223]

I shot some incredible amounts of JHPs in my .41 mag blackhawk, and it's as accurate as the day I bought it used.
I had wrist problems for years before I started shooting smaller calibers.
In any of the magnum calibers your wrist will wear out first.

 

[mnshooter]

Well, it sounds like barrel life is not really an issue.

Thanks to all that replied.

Jeff