10,000 shots fired from one barrel. Who has?

[rich pierce]

There is a focused barrel steel discussion in the agun Building section and Eric  Kettenburg asked whether there is any specific data on fatigue of barrels made of different steel formulations. So far nobody has contributed any data.

Who among you has fired a single muzzleloading rifle barrel 10,000 times or more?  How many times, what barrel maker of steel, and did anything "happen" ( loss of accuracy of heaven forbid, barrel failure).  Or "do you know a guy" who keeps records and shoots a lot?

Thanks!  I figure the shooters will have the data!

[Daryl]

Roger Fisher put 45,000 shots through his 45 flinter, then had to rough up the bore to get it shooting the same again. Remember the thread?  It was a Getz barrel iirc.

[Dennis Glazener]

I remember the thread but couldn't remember the number of rounds other than it was a pile of them Seems to me he kept on shooting the same rifle after tinkering with the bore and the load.
Dennis

[Shovelbuck]

I've got a .54 flintlock with a Montana barrel that has 13,000 or so through it, I stopped keeping track at 12,000.  Loads have been 80 to 120 grains of FFF with .535 balls. Unbreached it during a major stock repair a couple years ago and it still looked like new. Had to half sole the lock last year and put a touch hole liner in.

[bob in the woods]

I have a .54 cal Green Mountain 1 inch x 36 in barreled precision target rifle with over 15,000 rounds through it.
I also have a .54 cal 42 in c weight swamped Colerain barrelled rifle [ flintlock ] with over 10,000 rounds through it.
My smoothbores, have Getz, Rice, and Long Hammock barrels. The Rice has at least 5000 through it

[Eric Krewson]

I have a Bill Large barreled gun and and am the third owner. The friend who gave it to me (second owner) said he shot a pound of powder a week through it for about 15+ years as did the owner before him. When he gave it to me he estimated it had had about 50K shots through it. He shot about 50 gr of powder or less per shot, it was a .44 and shot .44 balls.

The only thing I found was it was no longer a .44, much closer to a .45. For me a .44 ball was really loose, I moved up to a .445. It is still a 1 hole shooter at 50 yards.

[Heavies]

I am quite new to Blackpowder muzzleloaders, but have some experience in high powered rifle shooting.

The things that wears out barrels, while actually shooting, is velocity, friction and heat.

Strikes me that black powder muzzle loaders does not generate much of any of the above mentioned.

I think when it comes down to wear on a muzzleloader barrel, it would all be from the loading rod, and wear from the patching material. 

The soft lead and lower pressures would not wear on the barrel much at all.

IMHO, careful use of the rod and careful cleaning, the bore should last a very very long time and many rounds down range. 

[Daryl]

I've been trying to tally up the # of rounds I've put through my GRRW 14 bore barrel, with loads from (30gr. for winter bunny heads) 82gr.3F to 165gr., once tested to 200gr. and accidentally double charged my moose load of 165gr. = 330gr. 2F but with only one ball. I've shot bullets with 82gr. to 1,000gr. - once.
I suspect it has 10,00 rounds through it - or close to that number.  Still going strong - getting to be too strong for me.  It's no longer a fun plinker.

[George Sutton]

I had a Douglas .45 caliber that I put well over 10,000 rounds through. At the end of it's life (I retired it) the accuracy was seriously degraded. I believe the only way to get these barrels to shoot better, after shooting this many rounds is to bore them out to a larger caliber. I only used a wood ramrod and spit for patch lube. I shot it with a load of 65 grns of Goex 3f, a .445 round ball, .018 ticking patch.

[bob in the woods]

The only area that I found effected by the 10 to 15 thousand rounds was where the ball/patch rested on top of the powder charge. I use a bore protector on my loading rod [ range and target shooting ] so I can't see much effect there. When accuracy started to degrade a bit , an increase in powder charge of only 5 grains brought it back. So far so good.

[Steve-In]

I guess I put somewhere between 5000 to 7000 rounds through my Montana barreled .54.  While no where near the 10K mark it still shoots great.  Mostly set it aside when I made my flintlock.  Any degrade in accuracy is due to not shooting every chance I get.
I suspect a lot of guns with high shot count have more owner issues then barrel issues.  Old eyes, wear and tear on our bodies all show.