Sellier & Bellot - Gun Barrel Wear

[North_Sylva]

[bobdbldr]

Interesting, that seems quite acceptable, would like to know which pistol they used and time between shots! They should keep shooting,, what measurements would be considered worn out?

[Janeau]

My guess is that they used a Glock !

[truemask]

That is pretty interesting. Looks like the most wear was at the chamber end. And even after firing 50,000 rounds it was still less than a human hairs' worth of material wear. Also curious how much rounds/wear it would take to make the barrel unfireable.

[driller212]

Pistol barrels effectively never wear out except for high pressure cartridges or necked cartridges. I've shot pistols with 80k through them that shot fantastically (obviously recoil springs and ejectors were changed in that time).

[R005t3r]

My guess is that they used a Glock !

Eyes work.

Check.

[SuperDave]

This doesn't really mean anything. Pistol calibers are notoriously easy on barrel life and there is no control group to compare these numbers against.

[hsatimmy]

What charge and proj? Control group?

Image is pretty tho

[All in fun]

Not sure why a control group would be used. They just mentioned what the wear characteristics were on some pistol using their ammo. I don't think they were comparing ammo, just talking about wear patterns from their own ammo.

[chewy06]

Numbers without any reference are as useless as saying nothing.

I think it would have been useful if they'd done a side by side comparison with the same make/model/age gun with a different ammo - or, several different brands / loads of ammo.

And really, for the results to hold up to scrutiny, you need a sample size greater than one.

The reference to the thickness of a human hair isnt valid either even though i see it used a lot when making comparisons to small measurements, it just plays to a lack of common sense on the part of the reader and is actually kindof insulting, since, we all know human hair varies very significantly (and we can all see this massive variation with the naked eye).

Id be interested in seeing way more information. How did the groupings vary as the barrel wore. How did the wear on the barrel "develop" - ie was the wear proportional to the round count, or, was there an initial period of heavy wear and then a slower progression? (ie break in). And, like others have said, at what point does this start to affect accuracy.

And, i guess, what is the lifespan one should actually expect from a handgun to start with? I have no idea. Is 50k a gun that has gone twice as far as it should have - or is it just broken in and has another 200k left in it? (barring springs and things like that).

I dunno. Oh well. And, thanks for posting, got my brain juices going this morning.