Rate of Fire - Newbie question

A

apprentice

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I am a relative newbie but have lurked here for a couple of months and learned a great deal from everyone's posts. I recently picked up my first firearm ( a used P89) and have had a couple of fun trips to the range.

My question :

How fast of a rate of fire is healthy/unhealthy for the average semiautomatic? After about 100 rounds in twenty minutes my barrel and slide had gotten noticeably hot. I'd like to visit a range that allows more rapid fire or at least double taps (I've got some used hicaps coming and would like to know how they would function in rapid fire) but have only seen this topic addressed briefly in the Ruger forum.

Thanks
 
You can't fire the gun fast enough with just 100 rnds to hurt it. It would take several hundred to a thousand rounds of continuous rapid fire to even begin to over heat it. I'm not sure of any polymer that might touch the barrel, but I don't think it would hurt. Trust me, unless you intentionally try to burn it up, you won't. And even then, I don't think you could pull the trigger fast enough without cramping up before your gun crapped out.


Some revolvers will overheat and swell the cylinder, causing it to bind, with a lot of shooting, but this isn't a common problem with automatics.
 
I wouldn't worry about over heating your pistol through shooting. I have shot many IPSC matches where we had stages in which over 30 rounds were fired in less than 20 seconds. No troubles with my gun from it yet. I have only seen an overheating problem in a pistol once. A local shooter tore through about 500 rounds in his open gun in about 15 minutes and cracked his comp.
 
The biggest problem is buildup of deposits in the feed ramp and barrel. So clean afterwards, and again in three days.
 
If you can tell that your gun is "noticeably hot", then it isn't. In other words, if you can touch it, it's not hot.

What's hot to us, ain't nothing to steel.
 
I asked this a while ago in the context of rapid fire from a FAL (semi-automatic battle rifle in .308). The answer was.. metallurgical properties of the steel do not change until it reaches over 900-1100 degree F.

My rule of thumb is to "stop" when the gun is too hot to hold, or starts smoking (the lube/CLP is vaporizing).

-z
 
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