Cooling your gun barrel

johnniet

johnniet

Gold Member
Joined
Jul 12, 1999
Messages
4,688
I already asked the THR guys and got different opinions.

I bet that people here know more about the properties of steel. :)

Is there any reason not to use something to cool off your gun barrel while re-loading?

The usual answer is "just shoot another gun while it cools", to which I have two answers --
(1) For the time being I will only have 1 gun;
(2) I want to know whether you can do this anyway.

Ideas include cold packs, taking a little battery-powered fan to the range, even dunking the barrel in some water or motor oil while re-loading.

Is there anything you think would be a good idea?
Is there anything that would be a really BAD idea? :)
 
Probably not necessary for any reasonable sort of shooting, I'd say.

Military machine guns have quick-change barrells for the most part, with changes reccomended at (help me out, current military types) every couple of hundred rounds or so.

lighter barrells do tend to change point of impact as they heat up...
 
Anything you do to cool it that doesn't cool it perfectly evenly is going to cause a lot more inaccuracy than it cures.

Heavy machine guns have quick-change barrels so you can change the barrel when the rifling wears out after hours of continuous firing. The first few rounds might have a slightly different point-of-impact due to the cold barrel; after that there's nothing to worry about until the barrel wears out.

What kind of rifle are you using and what kind of shooting are you doing?

A properly set-up bench rest rifle should not change point-of-impact as it warms up -- if it does you need to do some tuning. A light sporter probably will change point-of-impact as it warms up -- that's why you sight it in by firing 1-3 rounds at a time and let it cool. It's where it hits when it's cold that's important. Anything you do to hasten cooling is likely to cool it unevenly and move the point-of-impact in some other direction, seems to me, and what's your hurry anyway?
 
I cannot think of any way of cooling a barrel that wouldnt cause more problems than it would solve, nor can I think of why it would be needed short of sustained full auto fire, which isnt really a sound application anyway, at least for weapons not attached to a gunship.

If you have really heated up a rifle it may be prudent to clear the chamber and lock it open for a brief time in order to avoid a cookoff, but you really have to be working at it to get it that hot.

You could always get a Lewis gun.
 
Hm...now you're really going to think I'm nuts...it would a .22 pistol, a Buckmark with a bull barrel, which I am picking up on Tuesday.

The last time I shot a similar gun (same model) the barrel seemed to get hot quickly, and I had to set it aside and let it cool down.

On the other hand, that gun also misfired several times, and they brought the smith out to clean it. (For some reason this always happens to me with rental guns.:p) Could that have something to do with why it got hot?
 
If you do a lot of shooting rapid fire the barrel will feel hot to the touch, but that's normal. It won't affect accuracy and a .22 pistol certainly won't cook off on you. Let it get hot, it won't hurt anything. :cool:

I think you'll enjoy that Buckmark. If you miss the X ring it won't be the gun's fault.
 
Originally posted by Cougar Allen
It won't affect accuracy and a .22 pistol certainly won't cook off on you. Let it get hot, it won't hurt anything. :cool:

Should I keep a pair of gloves in my range bag? I wouldn't know what to get, but I've heard that there are "shooting gloves" out there.

I think you'll enjoy that Buckmark. If you miss the X ring it won't be the gun's fault.
Click to expand...

Just what I wanted to know! :D
I thought I should mention it, since you were one of the first people to recommend trying a .22.
And yes, I have missed the X ring many times, but I'm gradually improving.
Click to expand...
 
Shooting gloves are for when it's cold out and your hands are freezing. They're thin enough so you can still get your finger into the trigger guard and be able to feel the trigger.
 
In 1977 I had a 22 LR Stoeger Luger the barrel of which is much lighter than your Buckmark (in fact the Luger felt like the junky toy that it was). The magazine capacity was 10 rounds.

I shot the Luger continuously for a little over an hour, stopping only to reload. It must have taken about a minute or so to discharge all 10 rounds and another minute to reload the magazine.

Sometimes I would empty the magazine in less than 10 seconds. There were occasional failures to feed due to short recoil. Perhaps 200-250 rounds were fired in all.

I did not experience cookoffs. It was my first handgun and I wasn't aware that it could happen. My first shooting manual was Larry Koller's How to Shoot and I don't remember whether they mentioned cookoffs.

Another problem I experienced was that the cases would sometimes bulge just above the rim (firing out of battery???). Lubricating the toggle joints fixed the problem.
 
Thank you Owen. This has happened to me a couple of times, and only with .22s (but of course I shoot them more!) In both cases the range managers seemed surprised, so I haven't been sure what to put it down to.

When I go in to pick up my gun (it's the same one mentioned in the "hero" thread in Community) what brush do I ask for?
 
The only cook-offs I've ever experienced were with military weapons in extreme conditions. The .50 was likely to pop one occasionally.

The M60 fired from the open bolt to promote cooling, a design feature borrowed from the Germans, as I recall.

We did have a cute little open-bolt blowback .22 rifle that was made in Canada, called the Gevarm, I think. I shot one at the range one day, and found the silly thing going full-auto on me, frequently firing 2-4 rounds per trigger pull.
The owner said "Oh, it does that all the time..."
 
Dental picks are really useful in cleaning guns, but make certain that they do not get near softer alloys as indiscriminate usage can lead to some nasty gouges. Someone needs to make a pick that is softer than steel but harder than leading and carbon. Plastic toothpicky/flosser thingys can work well on softened crud.

Friend of mine with a Ruger GB melted one of those plastic fold on bipods you used to see. It was prone to cookoffs. The ballistic unloading of magazines is far easier on fingers than unloading them by hand. If you fire 20 some odd rounds through a Rem 870 as fast as you can and then lay it on a nylon case it makes a gooey mess.

If you can get a Buckmark to overheat you have one hell of a trigger finger.

:D
 
Overheating? Well, I've managed to get the wood furniture on my CETME to smoke enough I had to put it down for fear of it igniting!:eek: But... it smelt good!

As to handguns, I don't think an average session on the range with any modern handgun would present an overheating problem... then again... it just hasn't happened to me yet...;)
 
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