It is very difficult to shoot big magnums without the barrel getting very hot in THREE rounds. No one has mentioned just how much the copper fouling accelerates when the barrel gets scorching hot, either.
Also, when the temps outside is 80* or more, it may take a long time for a barrel to cool, it it will cool at all.
When I am testing a few rounds, I cool the barrel by dousing the outside of the barrel with rubbing alcohol using a sopping wet rag. It will only take a couple of minutes to cool a hot barrel on a Hot 7 STW after 3 rounds. You have to oil a blued barrel afterwards.
When I was shooting p. dogs, I took a fellow on a dog hunt that had been a top engineer for Rockwell. He also did a lot of R and D for Federal, Browning, Anchutz, adn Pac Nor, in fact, he was the guy that did the initial development for the 17 HMR. Anyway,we were shooting 600- 1000 rounds a day on p. dogs swapping out guns to let the barrels cool. He thought that waiting to let the barrels cool was a joke because most often, even though we had rotated through 6 guns, the barrels were still not cool. When we got home, he cam up with a simple barrel cooling system using water down the barrel, which ended up being far better than the alcohol due to expense. 10 oz of water down the barrel and it is dead cold. We followed the water with 4 dry patches that were fitted on a tight Punch type of jag, dry the chamber, back to shooting. We used this process on SS barrels and chrome moly never seeing any affect on accuracy or barrel life. The water method was used for about 10 years or so shooting dogs, 4 two week trips a year in areas where the shooting was normally 600-1000 rounds of centerfire a day per person.
It has always amazed me that no one has ever tried this method of cooling their barrels, it is so simple it is stupid with never any negative effects on equipment.
Sitting at a bench, pounding the rounds down the tube to the point to where you can not see the target due to barrel heat, destroys the best of barrels...use some kind of barrel cooling system.
It takes about 3 minutes to cool and patch out a barrel using water from start to finish...very little inconvience. An added bonus in using the water system is that you are pushing 4 dry patches down the tube and there is some cleaning going on at that time, we felt as if our accuracy was maintained longer when we started cooling with water due to the patchiing out of the barrel.
We used custom guns on our dog shooting, mostly Hart barrels in 223, 6mm Rem, and 243 AI. Using 29" Max Heavy Varmint contours, we could set back the barrel at least once or twice. We eventually went to the 30" unturned blanks and would set the barrel back at least 4 times, usually after 1800-2000 hard rounds of 243 AI. At that point, the leade had only grown to the point to where we needed to cut off 3/4"-1 1/4" of the barrel.
The only reason that I mention the round count etc. above is that everyone is scared of what water would do to a barrel...it is really wierd how even the best and most informed of shooters have not try this method, and I was skeptical myself in the beginning.
I hope that this helps some of you keep those good barrels shooting longer.
