Wear out gun.

[ShadeTree]

If you're shooting enough to shoot out a barrel...all I can say is that you're living life right.

As mentioned, cartridges like the .223 are easy on barrels but even some pretty hot numbers can be easier on the barrel if you load it down and don't overheat it.

Someone mentioned the .22 Hornet...not sure it's possible to shoot one of those out within a normal lifetime, likely the same result from a .30-30. In a single shot- there's enough bullets available and so many powders to try that you could play with it for a very long time before you exhausted all the combinations.

That's one of the beauties of the Thompson Contender/Encore...so many barrels and cartridges, it's a tinkerers dream.

Barrel is kinda a relative term, barrel bore and grooves not likely unless a person would let it get really hot, or too hot too often, but with lots of shooting for a couple of yrs you can wear the throat beyond useable length for accuracy, no? In the big picture I guess that still isn't a big deal as the threads can be cut back and the chamber reamed and a person would be right back in business.

 

[Anonymous]

Barrel is kinda a relative term, barrel bore and grooves not likely unless a person would let it get really hot, or too hot too often, but with lots of shooting for a couple of yrs you can wear the throat beyond useable length for accuracy, no?

Useful barrel life really depends on what you'd consider useful accuracy. For the benchrest guys, a drop-off of 0.25MOA is reason enough to pull the tube and start again. In a hunting rifle, even fairly serious hunters might not even notice that level of degradation.

I've also seen some fairly trashed barrels that would still deliver the goods. Back some twenty years ago i hunted groundhogs on an overrun farm with the owner's son. He was wasn't savvy about shooting and he had an ancient .22-250 that had all the finish rubbed off one side from decades of riding in the gun rack in the truck.

That gun would put 5 in a quarter at 100yds and take out a groundhog way past Ft. Mudge. The first 2-3 inches of rifling were simply missing and the rest of it look like a sewer pipe. Round count was unknown...but I'm betting it was a lot and the guy had absolutely no regard for gun care.

I would never have thought that barrel was capable of anything approaching useful accuracy, and I couldn't have been more wrong. While that one rifle was pretty unusual- what the bore looks like and how many have been down the tube isn't always a good indication of what it will do.

 

[longrangehunter]

Of all the Factory guns out there you should look for a Remington 5R Mil-Spec in .223 Remington. I did have GAP install a Huber Trigger and bed the action even though it's in a H&S Precision stock with a aluminum bedding system.

I've read lots of people that have said these shoot lights out and mine does just that. They do also make these in a 308 Winchester, and 300 WM as well. These have a heavy barrel and would give you lots of shooting over their lifetime in a .223 or .308 Winchester.

 

[preacher]

.

When Townsend Whelen said only accurate guns are interesting, he never shot one with a plastic bottomed mag and trigger guard. To me, interesting guns are interesting and plastic doesn't do it for me. Maybe I'll wear out the 03 and replace the barrel with a 35 whelen when the day comes. Don't know, I'll figure something out.[/quote]

Life is short...none of us ever get to shoot/hunt "enough", so why bother with "make do" I say! I'd rather have the experience with a fine rifle than a "junk rifle". I guess I got "tainted" growing up poor and trying to make do with cheap junk. I finally got a nice rifle when I bought it myself at 16...on Credit at that, and I never looked back. I don't care if the new rifles are accurate "if they fail me later"by falling apart or "they have no soul", nothing unique about them. If one doesn't care, hey get after it. I like having an "attachment of some sort" to my rifles. I tried that with a couple M16A1s when I was young...just a machine, no soul. Throwaway guns I call em.