Cooling barrels?

Mark37082 said:

My biggest issue lately has been a very hot Suppressor causing mirage. I only have one suppressor. The second biggest issue is the sweat dripping in my eyes from heat and humidity.
@VinceMule - very impressive company you kept while shooting/hunting. Great ideas shared!

Click to expand...

VinceMule said:

No. I hunted with Rockwell's Number one engineer on the B1 bomber project. He also invented the 17 HMR, Browing Boss, built the 22 Rimfire Olympic rifles in 1990-1992, and was the lead engineer on the development of the Federal Gold Metal Match ammo, also R&D for Anchutz, Pac Nor, and PMC, and much more.

As we were shooting as fast as we could load and acquire targets on P. dog towns in S. Dakota, ground squirrels, and Jack Rabbits in N. Nevada, we were cooling our barrels from 223-243 AI with wash rags doused with 50/50 Water/Rubbing Alcohol. Finally, on the long ride home, he said, "Keith, there is a lot quicker and better way to cool barrels".

Well, on the next trip, he had a contraption rigged up in the back of a Bore Guide that had an O ring on the nose that would seal off the chamber. He ran room-temperature water down the bore for perhaps 20 seconds, and the barrel was dead cool. He then pushed 4 dry patches down the barrel on a tight punch type of jag, dryed the chamber with a shotgun patch on a 45 caliber pistol rod, and was back to shooting, all in 3 minutes. Not a single drop of water got on the outside of the gun or in the action. The process is a 3 minutes, back to shooting with the same sight settings.

After he had a few trips under his belt, he got in contact with Bill Davis, head of Aberdeen Proving Grounds Who had helped him in the development of the Olympic Ammo design, and Bill told him how they cooled barrels with water down the bore. Then he contacted Gene Harwood, who was a vice president at Shell Motor Oil in Mt. St Helens, and asked his advice. All three agreed that the water down the bore would not hurt any steel as steel would have to get to 800* before the water would warp the steel. My next concern was if microdroplets would damage the bore because water can not be compressed. They all three laughed at me assuring me that gases 1700* and hotter proceed a bullet down the bore, evaporating any micro particles of water.

So, since 1987, I have been cooling my barrels with water down the bore, the finest barrels made, and chrome moly barrels that I pushed an oil patch down at the end of the shooting day. There was also the added benefit of being able to shoot longer shot strings on the p. dogs due to carbon being removed on the 4 dry patches.

Dozens of us use this method now. On my 243 AI's with a 31" unturned blank, I would get three chambers as a rule of thumb, and the 4th chamber would be a 22-24" 6 BR, giving us 10,000 rounds on a barrel blank. Win 760 and later on, AA2700 is still used in the 243 AIs with H335 or AA2230 being used in the 223s and AI's.

Steve and Gene thought there may be a way to market the simple contraption to cool the barrels, but the concept is so unconventional that no one would accept it.

The simple contraption is sold at auto parts stores that screws on the top of a quart of oil. The nose on the piece fits perfectly in the back of a lot of bore guides. Any 1 or 2-liter soda pop bottle has the thread pitch of the quart of oil. The contraption that screws on the top of the quart of oil runs around $3-$4 last time I bought one.

We were all shooting Hart SS rifle barrels at that time along with Krieger, Pac Nor, and Shilen. Gene, was Director of the National Benchrest Shooters Association, and he set a World Record with the 6 BR in 1987 shooting his own 60g Bullets with H335 at 3700 fps on a Heavy varmint rig. Gene as a matter of his profession as a chemical engineer had to think outside the box as a matter of habit. Gene, Steve, and I shot registered Benchrest together, but we gave it all up due to how good the varmint hunting was at the time. Not one of us ever ended up with any kind of issue with these fine Benchrest Stainless steel barrels that were on Stolle Panda or Hall M actions. All of these engineers had bore scopes in 1987. Steve was doing R&D with Pac Nor and we shot quite a number of their barrels, particularly their three groove barrels that are fast and foul little.

We found out early on that barrels do not cool if you stand them up with the bolt open when the air temp is 85+ Degrees. Steve and Gene used to bust a gut laughing at me when I would tell them I was concerned about the water hurting the barrels on those benchrest rigs when I first started using water down the barrel. Later on, my regular P. dog hunting partner was a V.P., head engineer of a major Defense Contractor. The first time he saw me cool my barrel with the water, his immediate response laughing was, "Why has not anyone ever done this before?" Larry and I shot dogs together for 12 years before skin cancer finally took him.

Click to expand...

DUCKMAN11 said:

I use an air mattress pump.

Click to expand...

Koda_ said:

I don't know if barrels can warp

Click to expand...

bdlesh said:

What if you had a cooler with chilled water and a pump to circulate thru the barrel? You could have a tube with an o-ring to insert in the breech and a rubber hose of bore size for the return line.

Click to expand...

Phil Rizzo said:

I usually shoot 3 in this summer weather and blow through for a few minutes. When these big ones get warm it takes longer to get back "down" to our lovely air temps, for sure.

Walmart mattress pump and a drinking straw, powered by the battery booster pack I keep in the truck.

Click to expand...