Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Barrel temperature

Nope, not at all its about as straight forward as it gets...

Dober

I've used Mark's method... a restaurant type probe thermometer is a whopping $7 purchase. I've used that or my old Taylor glass tube thermometer... either work.

Mule Deer, I've dumped water down my barrels to cool them on hot days.

Question: do you patch it back out again, just to be safe...? From overpressure from the water in the tube, I mean.

The human hand makes a wonderful thermometer, about 120-130 deg becomes uncomfortable.

I used to bring my infrared RayTek temp gun to the range but found my hand works just fine.

MtnHtr

Mtn, couldn't agree more and that's mostly what I do, but Mark's method is also very solid and simple... here's a few pics to illustrate for the literary impaired:

Jeff,

I tried water down the bore but found pouring it on the outside worked just as well, and didn't complicate things.

123 etc.,
The .002 compression figure is typical. If measurement indicates a head space figure (Hold it right here for a second. If anyone chimes in about how headspace is a measurement to the datum line of the cartridge, I swear I will find you and slap you upside the head)of say, .750, the gunsmith will run the reamer in to give a figure of .748 since the shoulder will compress about .002". While temperature does alter dimensions, heat transfer to the receiver will likely keep torque andtherefor, compression of the shoulder, reasonably constant.
In other words; a person could lie awake nights wondering about this but I think there many other things more worthy of insomnia than this.
Some benchrest competitors (mostly hunter class where barrelsare lighter and cartridges larger than in the varmint classes) were running water through their barrels between targets and claimed better scores as result. Never tried it myself.
Stories are told of buffalo hunters urinating through their barrels to loosen fouling and cool the barrel. It is assumed a professional hunter would posess a steady aim and so be able to apply the liquid to proper location. I don't think I need to point out the potential hazards should a bolt close inadvertently. Best to remove that bolt. And use a good rust preventitive between shooting sessions. I have no first hand experience with this as a means of cooling a barrel or loosening fouling.
I do have some solid second hand experience with this method as a means of warming up a rifle, however. It seems our hunter was struggling through hip-deep snow on a cold day on Vancouver Island. Snow had packed into the action of his Browning bolt action rifle and frozen to where cycling the bolt was impossible. Having no other source of heat handy, he decided his best option was to urinate on the rifle to melt away the ice. Apparently, this was successful.
My involvment came about the following fall when the rifle was brought into the shop because the trigger wasn't working. Now, I have had rifles come in which stood in the corner of the corral over the winter. I had one rifle brought in which had been lost and left leaning against a tree for a year (a bit of a funny story, that one). I worked on a 22 which had spent it's life leaned up in the corner in an abbatoir. But,I HAVE NEVER SEEN A RIFLE AS THOROUGHLY RUSTED AS THIS. When I pulled the barreled action out of the stock, at least 1/16 inch of wood came with it! The hunter gave me the explanation when I asked if the rifle had been stored near saltwater. As a professional gunsmith, I had trained myself to maintain a neutral expression through many customer dissertations but I'll confess to having some difficulty with this one! GD

greydog-

Your postings are always informative, and this one is especially so.

The buffalo hunters may have used a rifle cleaning funnel, which was a common accessory for military and sporting cartridge rifle users, from the 1860s through WWI.

I hope the owners of this image won't mind a link to an image of a funnel used by the British in WWI. I assume it was for water and other bore cleaners.

With the larger target supplied by a funnel, the problems of aiming and injury from mechanical causes are certainly decreased.

--Bob

Greydog:

I understand what you mean. What I was talking about is that the .002 compression gives the barrel a pretty tight fit on it's own. The heat, causing the metal to expand, adds even more tension, and my thoughts were that this added tension could cause warpage. You know, like you only need .002" for proper headspace, and you give it .007." That would make for a very tight fit, and heat expansion would make it even greater.

As an example, I used to have a blackpowder revolver. After shooting it, I would take it completely apart and soak it in a pan of very hot, soapy water, then I rinsed it in hot water. If I dried it off and attempted to assemble it while it was still warm, None of the parts and screws would fit until I let it cool to room temperature.

Incidently, your posts are the most informative and knowledgeable of any of the gunsmiths on here. You seem to know exactly what you are doing and how to do it, and you seem to rely on what works and doesn't work, as opposed to theory.

I have read articles in books and magazines where the authors made statements about things I had experienced and knew about. I knew right off that the author had never experienced these things first had, and had probably just copied the information from another book, written by someone who also didn't know what he was doing.

Really.

GTC