Anyone shot out a barrel yet? Fire cracking? degraded accuracy? chasing the lands? How many rounds down the pipe? shooting habits? Barrel length? velocity? hot load, light load, factory load? brass life? clickers? free bore length/diameter? or anything else you may have discovered. I am thinking about building a rifle to use not abuse but use/shoot often for play and practice. I plan on shooting the barrel out and rebarreling as needed. Starting with a true sub 1/2 minute gun and rebarreling when load development will not allow 3/4 minute. Is 600 round asking/expecting to much?
7 PRC barrel life? and?
- Thread starter stazmania
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lancetkenyon
Well-Known Member
You would have to shoot an awful lot to have already shot out a 7PRC barrel.
Varmint Hunter
Well-Known Member
600 rounds should be "doable" for 3/4 moa, assuming that loads are reasonable, and the bore is properly cleaned at appropriate intervals. Most of my magnums are toast at around 1,000 rounds, some even sooner.
One thing that I noticed is that as the bore begins to go, it becomes increasingly more difficult to find a good load. Some shooters refer to this as a barrel being finicky. A fresh match barrel will often shoot many loads well.
Ucsdryder
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I bet it does double that. Closer to 1000-1200. A 28nosler you might expect 600-1000 from what I've read.
H1000, N160, and N165 will extend the barrel life considerably. N500 series will hasten throat erosion and fire cracking. Shooting steel eats barrels, while hunting, just verifying zero after load development will give many years of excellent accuracy.
Never tried 160 or 165.
whats the consensus on temp stability?
whats the consensus on temp stability?
You asked like 100 questions without actually asking a question. Burning a barrel out is physics. More capacity, hotter powder(energy per weight/charge), faster shooting without cooling, and bore size are what dictates barrel life. It is like a broken record. Barrel life will be much better than a 28 nosler, identical to a 7wsm, worse than a 284 win. If you smoke a 7wsm or 7prc barrel in 600 rounds you fd up. Do some googling and look at multiple sources. Case capacity will dictate the answer to 99% of these repetitive questions.
Thank you that is a lot of good info. The 7 saum is a great comparison. I think it will be worth it for a fun gun. I have big barrel burners but I don't shoot a lot of round through them. I have small and medium calibers. I know I asked a lot of questions, that is to help get more response from shooters that may not even consider or think about certain aspects/characteristics of a cartridge with out provocation. This is the kind of info that I am looking for. Again thanks for the help and if anything else comes to mind or you have a recommendation please share.
Bat Vesper or Borden timberline magnum? Or maybe? If I can get the prc to run in an extended Wyatt box bdl hinged floor plate set up maybe down the road I will get a 338 edge barrel? I know a lot of questions with out really asking any thing. Just looking for creative input and having fun.
So I will go at it from this direction I short the barrel out of 2 28 noslers. First one I was not nice to it gave up at 600 rounds second one I was much nicer too it went at a little over 900. We are about to complete our 3 7 prc barrel. The one that's fully up and running has only seen factory ammo thus far. We are 86 rounds in and seeing 2840 with horrible es and sd from factory 180 eldm. The 175's were at 2970 to 2990. The clicker issue any good smith should be able to remedy this. I know mine has done it with the 6.5 prc and I asked him to do it on the 7's as well. Dies will be here this week to start handloading the 175 elites and 180 hybrid Berger's. Hers is a 24 inch barrel both mine and my dads are 22. I expect all to go to that 1k round mark. Don't have much more data for you other than it's really fun to shoot in a 9lb rifle. I have a 7 max that I absolutely love. Owned that gun a year and run it hard I'm at 678 rounds down that primarily running 190 class bullets. The 7 prc fit her needs so when I get off work on Thursday I don't have to handload at 1 am then get up at 5 to go to the range on Friday. The 7 prc was built for a purpose rifle for her to hunt deer and elk from 0-800 and still be shootable at the range and get good quality practice while not worrying about excessive recoil and barrel life of a 28 nosler but still plenty of horsepower in the 7 prc case.
Great info. This helps all that are interested in the 7 prc. Thank you
With these large 7's, if you can swing it, have two barrels chambered at the same time, and I have never regretted following this advise given to me.
