barrel life

[Walker]

I read several places that a black powder barrel usually only lasts about 1000 shots, then the acuracy starts to decline. I am building a .45 long rifle for target shooting and was wondering if this is indeed gospel? (Seems logicaL)
And if it is, are there some brands or types of barrels that last longer?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Hope I am not opening a can of worms.

 

[musketman]

I read several places that a black powder barrel usually only lasts about 1000 shots, then the acuracy starts to decline. I am building a .45 long rifle for target shooting and was wondering if this is indeed gospel? (Seems logicaL)
And if it is, are there some brands or types of barrels that last longer?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Hope I am not opening a can of worms.

Perhaps with the old iron barrels, modern steel is more user friendly, now days, 1000 shots will just about break-in a barrel for some fine shootin...

:imo:

 

[Eric Krewson]

I have a gun with a Bill Large barrel on it that is on it's third owner, the first two very serious target shooters. The guy that gave the rifle to me said it had been shot 10K times before he bought it. He added another 5K and I am shooting it a good bit myself. Still shoots like a new one.

 

[cayugad]

I read several places that a black powder barrel usually only lasts about 1000 shots, then the acuracy starts to decline. I am building a .45 long rifle for target shooting and was wondering if this is indeed gospel? (Seems logicaL)
And if it is, are there some brands or types of barrels that last longer?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Hope I am not opening a can of worms.

If that's true, I have a number of worn out rifles around here. No, I do not believe that. With the modern steel used in the barrels and the proper care of that barrel I see no reason why it would not last many many times that estimate.

 

[leslie]

With reasonable care they will outlast at least a couple of generations.

 

[Landngroove]

I have read that shooting patched round balls, wears a barrel out. How many shots? I don't know. The articles I read said that the patch actually polish the bore, thus after many firings the bore size increases. I am sure it takes hundredes of shots for this to happen. I still shoot PRB's in my flinters, and cappers.

 

[roundball]

I read several places that a black powder barrel usually only lasts about 1000 shots, then the acuracy starts to decline. I am building a .45 long rifle for target shooting and was wondering if this is indeed gospel? (Seems logicaL)
And if it is, are there some brands or types of barrels that last longer?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Hope I am not opening a can of worms.

Where are these several places that you've read barrels wear out with 1000 rounds? If it's just on several muzzleloading boards, it's just more old wives tales being repeated by posters without any personal knowledge.

Wearing out a barrel is nothing you have to worry about in your lifetime...if accuracy starts going away after 1000 shots it's because of something else going on, not because the barrel is wearing out.

I've run about 1500 PRB's through a new TC round ball barrel during the past 3 years and it's still factory new looking, still has bluing inside the muzzle.

I wish I had the time and money to wear out a barrel in my lifetime...that would be some kind of fun !!

:redthumb:

 

[Stumpkiller]

I have a T/C Renegade I bought in 1982 and have fired about 300 to 500 patched round balls through her annually since. That's somewhere around 8,000 rounds. It will still cut 1" groups off cross sticks at 50 yards.

There are many different barrel steels (and iron) in use, all will have different hardness and wear resistance.

If you're looking for 0.25" c.t.c. group size competition bench-rest shooting then, probably, a barrel will have a definate and short lifetime. I know some varmint shooters who eroded barrels in 1,000 rounds with .220 Swifts in the '70's. They were also over-loading them to get 4,000 fps + with "heavier" bullets.

Probably more barrels are depleted through improper cleaning and abuse than are ever shot out.

 

[Birddog6]

If you shoot one ML all the time & shoot it on a regular basis, I can see where you may some day wear one out. But shooting several or 5-10 different ones, I don't thinkyou will wear any of them out.

With the new steel in the modern barrels today, you can get 7000-10000 rounds out of a 220 Swift before you will start to see any changes. (Staying in the limits of design, that is)

:imo:

 

[rich pierce]

Dang, what are they using in modern centerfire barrels nowadays that's better than the old 4140?

Barrels did shoot out in the old days and needed to be freshened every few thousand rounds. It is also hard for us to imagine how much some guns got used back then. They were sometimes used almost daily for a hundred years. Collectors have told me of guns with touchholes so blown out that the gun would barely send a ball down the range, frizzen springs so worn the frizzen would flop around, and the gun still being used in the same family 150 years later. There are many cases of guns being so worn the ramrod hole became exposed on the forearm. So it is no wonder they needed to be re-rifled now and then. Rare now to shoot out a barrel but dedicated target shooters who shoot several times a week year-around to be on top of their game, have worn out barrels and lost match accuracy. unfortunately with iron sights and these old eyes, a 4" group at 100 yards would be a good day, regardless of whether the gun is capable of better than that.

 

RE number of shots in a lifetime: My dad grew up in the middle of the Depression and hunted for the subsistence of the family - mostly rabbits and squirrels but daily hunting was required since they had no refrigeration. This was a small family of three and he told me later that he hunted at least once every day except Sunday (then they had a chicken). He was using a .22 rimfire instead of a ML rifle but that's moot. They almost always ate squirrels and he usually killed more than one per day but I'll err on the low side at one shot per day. At six days a week, we get about 300 shots in a year - in 10 years it's 3000 shots. If a muzzleloader was passed to a couple or three generations, it might easily be looking at 30-60,000 shots. That and many families had 10-15 people in the home so they needed more than one or two small animals per day.

Doesn't have anything to do with how long a barrel will last but it does shed some light on how much lead was sent down range.

 

[jim gray]

Technically the barrel looses some potential accuracy every time you shoot it, but it will be a long time before that accuracy loss becomes noticeable. With reasonable loads and thorough cleaning a new muzzleloader barrel should outlast even the most dedicated shooter.

I think most of the wear a barrel will experience would be due to rough cleaning and not patched roundballs or soft lead bullets. In my opinion, and this is based on the hardness of the metals involved, a bronze bristled cleaning brush would scrape a lot more metal out of the barrel in each pass than either of those two projectiles.

 

[Zonie]

I suspect the person who said 1000 shots would wear out a muzzleloader's barrel was the same guy who liked to use Hydrogen Peroxide or Ammonia in his gun to clean it.

Speaking of worn out barrels, I had another opportunity to see some more barrels that will never make it to 1000 shots.

Yup, another Gun Show.
There was 1 TC Hawken .50 there for $125. :shocking: :shocking:
The outside of the barrel had decided by itself that it would rather be Browned. Of course, without any help, it was having a tough go of it. More like large splotches of rust, mixed with the factory blueing.
The guns bore was much more successful with its desire. Rust build up so deep you could bearly see the rifleing.
Someone must have wanted to keep the deep dents, scratches and dings on the stock because they had varnished right over them using a high gloss varnish, complete with brush strokes! :shocking: :shocking:

Another rifle, a CVA .45 had bore pits you could trip over.

With people like the owners of these guns,cleaning them, I can see where the 1000 shot maximum idea came from. :: ::

 

[Walker]

Many thanks to all who wrote in response to my question. The consensus seems to be that with modern steel, I will probably be shot out before the barrel is and I will take comfort in that. However,since several people questioned the credibility of the source of the statement,I did want to indicate that I got it from what I believe is a reliable source and I give the partial quote below:
(These were modern muzzle -loading guns.)

"I used three rifles, all accurate, to test the longevity of barrel accuracy and after about 1000 rounds, deterioration was definately evident.I went to a larger patch and things picked up a little and then to a larger ball ... But the best accuracy was gone forever.Groups went from 1 and 1/4 inches at 75 yards to 2 and 1/2 and even a bit more by the time the 2000th shot...."

.......from page 53, Chapter 7 "Black Powder Accuracy" in "The Complete Black Powder Handbook" by Sam Fadala.

Again my thanks to all.

 

[leslie]

Sam Fadalla has been known to be wrong before.There is a lot of good stuff in his books but like any other authority on any subject use with caution!!

 

[SAJones]

Back in the days when I could still shoot, I participated in NRA bullseye matches. I fired against a guy w/ a .45 that looked like a smoothbore; I wouldn't even begin to estimate how many thousands of rounds he put through it. He could still put 10 holes in the 10 ring at 50 yards with it.

Before the term "fire lapping" meant firing some kinda specailly coated bullet through the bore, competition shooters used to use the term for breaking in a new barrel. Accuracy would improve as the bore wore (lapped) smoother. Granted, most ammo was copper jacketed or hard lead, but I would think the same holds true for muzzleloaders. I know my Don Getz baarrel seems to do better after about 800 shots.

Also, the older ML seem to have had very deep rifling compared to out newer rifles. No one has ever satisfactorily explained that to me; maybe to compensate for some barrel wear? Do know that old guns were freshed out, even Lewis had his "small gun" freshened by John Shields on the banks of the Columbia, no small feat under those circumstances. And there is a persistent story among collectors that many old rifles were smooth-bored when the rifling wore out. Maybe we have improved on our ML rifles somewhat?

 

[roundball]

"I used three rifles, all accurate, to test the longevity of barrel accuracy and after about 1000 rounds, deterioration was definately evident.I went to a larger patch and things picked up a little and then to a larger ball ... But the best accuracy was gone forever.Groups went from 1 and 1/4 inches at 75 yards to 2 and 1/2 and even a bit more by the time the 2000th shot...."
.......from page 53, Chapter 7 "Black Powder Accuracy" in "The Complete Black Powder Handbook" by Sam Fadala.

I read some Fadala books along with everything else I could read back when I was starting out in muzzleloading, and basically accept writer's comments at face value unless & until I learn differently.

Today, I have to say at least personally, that I can't agree with his statement as a generalization about muzzleloader barrels, as it is not the case with any of my barrels.

Three of them are already well over the 1000 mark and shoot groups at 100yds like what he referenced at 75yds...and I'm just a weekend shooter not a marksman.

I just wish I had the time and money to wear out a muzzleloader barrel shooting patch balls
:redthumb:

 

[leslie]

Which edition of the book are you looking at?I dug out my 3rd edition and apparently everything has changed my pg. 53 is chapter 8.Blackpowder accuracy is ch 23,Ican't find anything like the quote you have maybe he changed his mind.