Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Barrel life!

I have a Rem 788, 222 Rem, it's the early 80s model with a heavier barrel. I've put 12,000 + rounds through it, most of them homemade RF jacketed bullets driven by 19-19.5 grains of 4198 (H or IMR). Never had the need or desire to run any other powder, although it did try some at various times, always came back to the old standard. My dad put a deep crown on it when purchased (a floorboard crown he called it) and I give it an annual cleaning before fur season and run it until the next fall. I've been running 50 & 55 gr SPSXs through it the last couple years and on a calm morning minute of Pdog is still easily attainable out to 300 yards.

WCH: I think we've discussed this before, but God knows Ive been wrong before...

I have shot out a lot of barrels and they all seem to follow the same pattern...shoot great for a long time, then groups open up gradually to an inch...then suddenly the barrel just pukes and starts to shoot patterns instead of groups.

Life varies most with how much powder they burn and how much you shoot them hot and dirty ( as in PD shooting...)

I have burnt a .22-250 in 2500 rounds

Most .223s crap out at about 9,000 rounds if shot hot and dirty....Ive got a Hart barrel now that is easily on 10K but is opening up to that inch mark...

My .222s don't have as much mileage on them, and at 4k rounds I haven't burnt one yet.

Am anxious to see how long my .204 barrel lasts...its on 1600 rounds now with no decrement in performance, but I expect it to crap out at about another thousand...

My surmise is that the 222 will last the longest simply because of less powder scorching going on...

I burnt out a .204 barrel in about 1600 rounds. I was using it as my primary PD rifle so shot it hot a LOT!

But my standard for a "burnt out" barrel is not keeping 10 shots in an inch, having found 10 shots is far more indicative of how often a rifle will hit PD's at 250-300 yards than 3-shot or 5-shot groups. That particular barrel would keep 10 in around .75" at 100 when new, and by 1600 it shot 100 of the same load into around 1.4".

Replaced it and the new barrel shot like the old one had in the beginning, but by then I'd quit using the .204 except as a more specialized round for 300-500 yards shooting. Do most of my shooting out to 300 with .17's, whether the HMR (out to 150-175) or Hornet. This means I do at least 90% of my shooting with .17's.

Dunno how long it takes to burn out one of those, but bought my HMR less than year after it was announced by Hornady in 2002. Also use it for most of my ground squirrel shooting, so it has had a LOT of rounds through it, and still groups five 17-grain V-Maxes into 3/4" or less at 100. Have only been shooting the .17 Hornet for four years, during which several hunting partners shot it to, because they were curious about how well it works. But even when shooting constantly in a big town the barrel never gets nearly as warm as a .204's or .223's, partly because it's only using 12 grains of powder, and hot powder gas is the primary cause of throat erosion. It still shoots as well as it did when new, five shots in about 1/2" at 100, but we shall see how long that keeps up.

JB: one of my shooting cards uses a 17 hornet for gophers...has 17K rounds through it now and no sign of falling off in performance. My 17HMR had 13K through it and still shot extremely well...though you had to clean it every 500 rounds or so....