.22RF barrels will last several lifetimes of steady shooting with very judicious cleaning, ie: basically once in a coon's age. Back in the pre-war era, serious rimfire match shooters insisted on soft steel versus harder alloy steel for their barrels. Winchester catered to that by offering the M52 with a choice of low carbon or nickel steel barrels. Was that due to magical qualities of soft steel and lead? Don't know, but my personal theory is that it was easier to machine the soft steel and as such was easier to get a smoother finish in the bore which in turn aided accuracy. Boutique barrel makers of the time such as Harry Pope held to the use of low carbon steel for rimfire target rifles too. I wonder if one could specify a soft steel .22 barrel from a current barrel maker, and if it really would make a difference in this day and age?
Funny, we were just talking about Dave Maurer's Media, and case cleaning solution a coupla' days ago.
I hauled a 200 M. rimfire array down to Tucson Rifle Club's range at Three Points some years back,...and in the process of putting on a little shoot after the main BPCR event, was lucky enough to get some trigger time in with his original Pope ballard, ....I guess Pope ran the thing hard, and the guy that got it from Pope ran it harder,....than Dave got hold of it, and has probably exceeded BOTH of their aggragate round counts.
....The thing will pretty much still shoot into one hole.
....dunno' where this .22 barrel life idea springs from, and can't get on board that train.
GTC
