Barrel life?

[pistolpete]

I have read that a semiauto barrel has a life of about 30k rounds. Is this true? Does the rifling wear out? After slowly wearing over 30k rounds, it might be hard to tell if it is you or the gun that has become less accurate. If true, my ten year old CZ 85B barrel shoould be a paper weight.
Anyone get a new barrel and see the gun become much more accurate?
Best Regards, Pete

[RsqVet]

Pete ---

Where did you read that? I would find it hard to believe that the tube would be DOA after 30K, especally for general service use --- serious high end competition shooters might do so for some advantage but for service use if it's safe and accurate enough for ya have at it. So far as wear the hood, lugs or other lock up areas probibly wear more and quicker than the bore and if worn these sure will affect accuracy as well. This would de design dependent.

[pistolpete]

I'll try to find where I read it. I did not think it was true due to the fact that I have more than that through my CZ 85B and she still works fine. I post again as soon as I find it.
Pete

[pistolpete]

Here is the quote:
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Typical barrel life of most 9mm pistols is only 25,000 to 30,000 rounds. With the Geco Steel jacketed ammo, this would mean a barrel life of only approximately 15,000 rounds. Ouch!!!

With copper jacketed bullets, most barrels wear in front of the chamber area, the most. (The freebore area in front of the chamber lengthens with use.)

With the steel jacketed stuff, I wonder if the barrel rifling lands wear more? Most of the Russian Ammo (Wolf & Barnaul) has a mild steel jacket that supposedly does not wear out barrels. I am wondering about that claim, now.

Fighting for Truth, Justice, and the last slice of Pizza!
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[Handy]

Barrel wear is greatly variable. .22 barrels never wear out. Softball .45 loads, too. 9mm, being jacketed and fairly high speed might do more damage to the bore, but I haven't heard of really any shot out modern barrels in that caliber, except maybe by bullseye shooters who notice a minor decrease in accuracy.

On top of that, some barrels where much better than others. The polygonal bores that HK pioneered and Glock embraced hardly wear at all in 100s of thousands of rounds.

[Double Naught Spy]

I changed out my 1911 barrel at 43K or so after it was becoming rather alarming that my barrel was void of rifling over about 3/4 of the length and what rifling was left was extremely shallow. I will say this, the custom mirror finish inside the barrel was very pretty when the barrel was clean.

[Peter M. Eick]

I burned out a 40 s&w barrel in about 5000 rnds of 135 grn screamer loads before I bought a 10mm. Trying to turn a 40 into a 10 with fast bullets is a sure way of wearing out the barrel. If you look at the worn barrel you will see that the rifling is not sharp any more, the leade looks pitted ahead of the chamber face and the back portion of the barrel looks frosty when compared to the front which is more glossy.

The killer combination is a comp gun, so I tried to put a lot of gas in it to work the comp, quick shooting, light bullets and lots of magazines. At the time, this was my wife's and my favorite gun so we shot it A LOT when we would go shooting.

The smiths down at Briley's who replaced the barrel were impressed with the damage! They asked me how I did it and when I explained they said it makes sense.


ps: the new Briley barrel is far more accurate then the old barrel and it is sure fun to shoot, but I don't abuse on the gun any more. (ok as much?)