How hot is too hot?

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velocette

velocette

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Barrel heat that is. With my bolt rifles with slim barrels, 5 rds and the barrel is too hot to touch. My semi auto rifles, with bull barrels, 10 rds & too hot to touch. Yesterday, I fired 10 rds in about 5 minutes with my 30-06 bolt rifle & the barrel was so hot it would burn my fingers.
So how hot is too hot? Am I damaging the barrels by allowing them to get hotter than I can touch?

Roger
 
It's fine, go to a tactical precision, or 3 gun match and you'll see several 10,20,30 round strings in short manner.
 
Flesh is very temperature sensitive. Over about 160 farenheit it feels very hot.

Steel, not so much. Most steel doesn't have any issue with temps below 800-1,000F, in my recollection.

In other words, "too hot to touch" doesn't mean much to your barrel. If you have a wood stock, and it starts to smoke, then i'd probably take a break. If it's synthetic, i dunno.
 
First time out with my Mosin I shot it hot enough that the shellac melted off and the underside of the handguard had the machining marks from the barrel burnt into it. It still shoots perfectly fine.
 
You'd have a difficult time getting your barrel too hot unless you're shooting a F/A firearm
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Dunno 'bout that. Just had a thing on another forum not too long ago about a guy with a new Savage 22-250. Shot 300 rounds in one day on a prairie dog hunt. Barrel was toast. Opened up from sub 1" to over 4".

Savage replaced the barrel, but made it clear they'd only do it once.

It seems to depend on the caliber. Obviously a 22-250 gets way hotter way quicker than a .223. One thing I do know is that, once it's ruined it's impossible to un-ruin unless you re-chamber or put on a new barrel. In my world, it's just easier to slow down a little. Unless I'm getting over run by the Chinese hoards, there's no reason to abuse my guns.

If I can't hold my hand on my barrel, it's too hot. I expect my varmint rifles to shoot sub 1" groups. If they don't, I change whatever I have to make them right. If you've got some crap mil-surp that wouldn't hit a barn from the inside when it was new, then maybe it's not so much of a problem.

Most shooters are more interested in turning money into noise and blasting off thousands of rounds rather than precision and accuracy.
 
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How hot is too hot?
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It depends on the chambering and what you want the rifle to do. Extremely high velocity rounds in guns that are meant to be precise, heat matters. I do not let my .220 Swift or .17 Rem get too hot to touch, because the overbore condition will cause throat erosion to accelerate dramatically when the chamber heats up. OTOH, my Armalite M15A2C shot about 1.2 MOA when it was new, and still shoots the same, despite countless mag dumps that cause the handguards to creak as things cool down. A smaller round like the .223 is not nearly as hard on the throat, even when hot.
 
My Savage Edge .223 rifle has the smaller barrel. I shoot it about 10 times and its warm but not to hot where I can't touch it. I only shoot about 10 rounds and take a little while to let it sit and move back to a further range.

I would say about 15 shots would be the max on my rifle. But like the others have already said, flesh is temperature sensitive unlike steel, and .223 is not going to overheat the barrel to any extent to damage it.
 
At highpower competitions, 10 rnds in a minute or so are standard rapid fire strings, usually with 2 strings back to back with only enough time in between to score and repair the targets in the pits. Slow fire is one round per minute for 20 rnds plus sighters. Things get toasty, but I don't think anybody's barrels are getting unduly worn at that pace, and there are some very pricey barrels on the line.

-J.
 
The answer to your question is YES, if your barrel is too hot to hold your bare hand on, then, you are getting it too hot. The throat of the barrel will be washed out and gas cut long before the riflings are. I've shot out the throat of several rifles shooting PD's and so have the guys that shoot with me. That kind of shooting (fast) can make a barrel heat up pretty fast. The centerfire rifle .222, .223, .22/250 will all get too hot wheather slim or heavy barrels, the damaging heat and errosioon is inside the barrel, not the outside, Al
 
Ok yes i have an answer for all of it.

A barrel is going to wear out over time regardless of heat.

However yes the hotter it gets the more suseptible it is to damage durring fire.

But not to the extent of burning up a barrel completely in a hundred rounds or so while hot.

The guy that burnt up a savage in 300 rounds, i could see that. Especialy if he never stopped and cleaned the barrel in those 300 rounds and was the barrel new. Lol terrible way break it in.

Just my 2cent$ worth
 
Well imagine this with that Savage 22 250 mentioned above.

300 rounds in say, 8 hours, is one flaming 22 250 round every minute and 36 seconds.

And with an overbore rifle like a 22 250 no surprise that it was toast.

I have much the same experience as noted in posts above. For my hunting rifles I am out to preserve their accuracy so I am very careful about letting them cool between rounds as I work up a load. I also clean them every 10 rounds when I am working up a load.

I usually take a shooter rifle to the range and plink at a second target while my hunting rifles cool off between rounds.

For my AK or AR I let em smoke the oil off.
 
I rarely shoot more than 5 shot groups from my high powers without a cool down period, but that's primarily because I'm trying to print consistent groups. But my normal pattern is to shoot 2 shots and then I begin 5 minute cool downs after each shot.

I shot 60 rounds back to back. They were hand loaded 130 gr. 3150 fps rounds from a 700 chambered in .270 without cool down. The amazing thing is it still produced great groups even after it had reached extreme temps. Probably not real good for the throat though?
 
Too hot is when your poi is drastically changed. I find when I use a rifle with sporting barrels, 3 or 4 in a row will change poi. Target or bull barrels don't heat up as quick and will allow you to shoot more at a time.
 
Exterior heat is irrelevant in terms of the potential for destroying accuracy. It's the temperature at the barrel throat that matters, because that's where flame erosion starts toasting the chamber leade and wiping out the rifling.

Sure you can shoot an M60 until it glows, but I'll bet you weren't concerned about trying to shoot MOA groups with it afterwards. In fact opening up your groups just gives you a bigger beaten zone.

One of my favorite cartridges is the 257 Weatherby. I shoot three shot groups and I wait until the barrel is comfortable to the touch between them. This may be unnecessary caution, but for the use of this particular cartridge (deer at extreme ranges) I'm not willing to sacrifice any accuracy at all if it can be avoided---and it can.

Besides, everybody knows the time when you are waiting for your barrel to cool is when you're supposed to shoot your pistols and your 22's :)
 
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=652120

The more overbore the cartridge (22-250, 220 Swift, 6.5-284, most any magnum) the faster they burn out. A 22-250 can be expected to typically have a barrel life of 800-1,200 rounds. If you let them cool between shots and run moderate loads, the life may be extended significantly. If you hand load, the cost of the barrel replacement is as much or more per shot than the cost of ammo.

I subscribed to Handloader Magazine. Back before the .338 Lapua and such were available, they made up a rifle specifically for 1,500 yard shooting. Something like a .30 cal with a .404 Jeffry case IIRC. I do remember that the barrel was toast in maybe 300 rounds or less.
 
My heavy barrel Remmy 700 SPS Tactical can fire a 30 round string and the barrel is only warm to the touch. This is in .308. This is what I like about it, very slow to heat up. Since I'm shooting for groups, I'll typically take about 10 seconds between shots. After 3 groups, I'll go downrange and check the target, gives the rifle about 10 minutes to cool down, then I'll shoot the other two groups.
 
Back before the .338 Lapua and such were available, they made up a rifle specifically for 1,500 yard shooting. Something like a .30 cal with a .404 Jeffry case IIRC. I do remember that the barrel was toast in maybe 300 rounds or less.
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Are you thinking of the .338-50 Talbot? It was a .50 BMG necked down to .338, and it destroyed the throat in about 250 rounds.
 
For my AK or AR I let em smoke the oil off.
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+1.

My brother only gets concerned with how hot his AK is if we are done shooting and he is afraid it will melt the foam in the case. We have to let it cool then for a bit. I'm a little gentler with my AR, but not too much. They take a beating and work fine but I think the AR platform does stay a bit cooler than the AK. They get pretty hot.
 
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