Cooling the barrel, Can you speed it up?

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Jeff000

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I was at the range tonight and the guy beside me was shooting a wsm or something but would take 12 shots (fairly quick) and then pull two bags of ice out of a cooler and put one under and one ontop of the barrel for a couple minutes and then he would put them back in the cooler and take 12 more shots

To me hot metal plus quick cooling equals warping.
Is this really a good way to keep a barrel cool?

And is there an easy and non messy way to keep a barrel cooler so I dont have to wait so long between shots. Or just to cool it quicker?
 
When I was down in Casper I saw a unit that ran water thru tubing from a cooler thru the barrel via a rod guide and back to the cooler. Guy would come off the line, hook her up and run it for a couple of minutes, dry patch and reload his 15 cases. The guy was from St George UT and shoots in some hot weather. I used the same logic and just stuck my barrel in a bucket of water and used a patch to suck water up the barrel. I can in 2nd out of 100+ guys at 300 that day so it didn't hurt, plus the barrel makers run water thru them when they make them so water does not hurt as long as you dry it up after. Water left in a barrel (or a rain drop that gets in the end of the barrel) will make a pressure mark in the barrel if you send a bullet over it. I've also used just a wet towel over the barrel to cool it faster, again in 100+ F weather.
 
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Ok I will have to try the wet towel thing next time out, Just have a cooler of ice water I assume.

With a blued barrel will I Have to worry about it damaging if its a bit wet when I shoot still?
 
I saw an article in some gun rag about a couple varmit rifles with water jackets. I wonder if they'd weigh your rifle 'dry' or shooting weight?
 
Pee on it:D I don't know what the range officer will say. They may decide to use you for a target!!!
 
While a film of water on the inside your bore may not do anything for your group size, I have dunked my .375 in a pond to cool it off during some rapid fire drills. After 4 rounds the barrel is too hot to touch, so I found this was a quick fix. With a target rifle, I might be inclined to patch it dry, but with a hunting rifle I just let it sit inverted while I set up the next stage then shot again - and dunked it again.
 
Heat and pressure = short barrel life

Regardless of price or type of the rifle, the most I would do is to put a wet towel on it to let it cool down. In high volume shooting sessions I always bring 2-3 rifles so that I wouldn't put too much stress on any single unit.

Dunking the equipment in water is close to abusive behavior. You may as well ignore the heat and continue to shoot. Soldiers do it all the time at war. My $0.02.


Danny
 
Danny Boy said:
Heat and pressure = short barrel life

Regardless of price or type of the rifle, the most I would do is to put a wet towel on it to let it cool down. In high volume shooting sessions I always bring 2-3 rifles so that I wouldn't put too much stress on any single unit.

Dunking the equipment in water is close to abusive behavior. You may as well ignore the heat and continue to shoot. Soldiers do it all the time at war. My $0.02.


Danny
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I dont have 2 or 3 rifles, I have 1.

I think I will try the wet towel thing next time out. and if I think any might have got into the barrel I will run a patch.

If I was a soldier and was shooting I wouldnt care if the barrel was glowing red, you cant just stop and wait 10 minutes for it to cool, you have to do what you have to do to keep it shooting. Using that as an example isnt relevant at all.
 
Splatter said:
I saw an article in some gun rag about a couple varmit rifles with water jackets. I wonder if they'd weigh your rifle 'dry' or shooting weight?
Click to expand...

I have this article somewhere.

Just like the water cooled .30 cal WWI/II machineguns.

The fellow machine a water jacket for his barrel and had fittings & hoses plumbed into a 100+ litre Coleman Marine cooler filled with ice.The pump he had would circulate enough volume to cool two rifle.

He stated that he could shoot all afternoon in the hot sun and his barrel would stay cool.

Mind you he had a little trailer to take all his gear into the groundhog fields and a portable shooting table, so his rig wasn't exactly portable, or quick to set-up/tear down.:rolleyes:

It was a well designed system, but I think he had WAAAY too much time on his hands.;)

SKBY.
 
There was an article in Shooting Times a couple of years ago about cooling barrels and they used CO2 and Nitrogen. They just hooked some clear tubing, that was close to chamber size, to a regulator and put the tube in the chamber. You could try a simple version by using one of those duster cans that you buy in stationary stores, silicone the tube from the can into the primer hole of an empty case.
 
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Well - I've had relatively good luck by simply placing the rifle in a vertical position with the bolt open. You create a natural "stack" - air that is warmed inside the barrel becomes bouyant and rises, causing cool air to enter the breech. Exploiting the stack effect substantially improves barrel cooling from letting the rifle cool in the horizontal position.
 
I guess it depends on how hot we're talking about here, back in the old days with machinegun barrels that got to hot, if there was a handy source of water around, we would immerse the chamber of the barrel into it and let it percolate itself to reasonably cool before fully dunking it to stop permanant warping. As such, I have used the tube and cool water down the bore method with HBR barrels on very hot days and found no accuracy variations that I can't blame on my own poor performance, it does cool the barrel very quickly though, depending on how much water/ice you have. One quick pass with a tight patch and it's free of water as well as some minor powder fouling. I don't have any experience as to what would happen with moly treated barrels. bearhunter
 
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I think I thought I remembered recalling todbartell talking about using rubbing alcohol to cool a barrell some time ago, and by some time I mean CGN BC.

I could be wrong though.

With the wet towel method, methinks you'd want to be damn sure no water got in the bedded/action area of the stock if it were wood. That'd skew your groups for sure.
 
This method is not new but it is to me.

I am experimenting with a bottle of CO2 and a soft hose jammed into the chamber............just opening the valve a little and in a minute the barrel has cooled considerably. A little seems to go a long way. No residue in the barrel but that doesn't matter anyway, if the barrel was hot enough to need cooling, it also needs cleaning and that gets done last anyway.
 
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