Barrel getting hot..

Z

Zak Smith

New member
I can easily shoot 1 aimed shot per second with my AR, and after a couple mags through it, the barrel is pretty hot -- too hot to touch for more than a moment, anyway. The same is true for my FAL, however, it heats up easier.

How hot is "too hot"? I don't want to do any permanent damage to my barrels, or severely reduce their lifespan. Is this even a concern?

thanks
 
I doubt that semi-auto fire will overheat the barrel such that the metallurgy is affected. Aimed fire, anyway. Your hand sez, "Ouch!" below 200 degrees; the heat treat of the metal has to be up over 900 or so before you start losing the tempering...

Belt-fed full-auto is a "whole 'nother story". At range exercises with 50-cal, I've seen old, worn-out barrels dumping bullets out around, oh, 50 to 100 yards--from angles of elevation of maybe 10-15 degrees. Of course, you had to get them into the bright red to do that...

There is a finite life insofar as throat erosion in front of the chamber, which affects the inherent accuracy of your rifle. The more and more often you shoot, the sooner comes the day ya gotta buy a new barrel.

Have fun, Art
 
I cannot really back this up just off the tip of my finger, but I do beleive overheating a barrel consistantly will lead to a much shortened barrel life. Anything automatic tempts one to this excess.
 
No - doing a lot of blasting out of a overheated barrel will wear the barrel faster than a barrel fired less frequently - but only maybe by 1000 rounds or so... out of a service life of over 8,000 rounds some as hight as 15,000 rounds...
So - your not really damaging it at all. Your just using it up.
How many thousands of rounds do you fire anyway?
 
Herodotus: What I mean by "over-heating" and what you mean might be two entirely different temperature ranges.

To me, over-heating means temperatures up in the range where the actual metallurgy of the steel is affected. More particularly, loss of tempering, of the hardness. To me, this means (probably) above around 900 F; I'm not sure you can get there with semi-auto fire in casual shooting in smithz's style.

FWIW, Art
 
Art -

If 900 F is around the temp where metallurgy is affected, is it possible for a gunsmith to silver-solder a muzzle brake on without affe cting the hardness or tempering?

thanks
 
Hi, Smithz,

Silver soldering can be done carefully enough not to affect the barrel metal by using a heat sink inserted in the barrel. Further, out at the end of the barrel, the pressure is low enough that there would be no problem even if the heat treatment is affected.

Jim
 
If you need to go to 900 degrees to affect basic metalurgy, I don't think you can get a rifle that hot with semi-auto fire. I have heard of AK-47s getting hot enough to make thier wood stocks smolder, but wood burns somewhere around 450 degree+. I would think of that as hot. At 900 degrees, I am sure the stock, if wood, would have long since burst into flames! I think a man would be branded for life if he ever touched a barrel that hot.
So I doubt if rifles ever get that hot.
 
Thanks for all the information guys. So in summary:

1. semi-auto "rapid fire" can't even approach temperatures which will affect the metallurgy, without something else melting first (like the handguard, or the gas tube).

2. "rapid fire" or firing with a hot barrel will accelerate throat erosion, which will degrade accuracy

3. heat can affect accuracy depending on the particular gun

4. a barrel is only around $250, and if I assume I can get 10k rounds through it, replacing will only be about 15% of the cost of that amount of ammunition!

-z


[This message has been edited by smithz (edited April 26, 2000).]
 
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