Hi folks,
Recently bought myself a Tikka T3X CTR in 6.5CM. I’m getting into long range shooting, and learning the ropes as a first time firearm owner. I’ve been shooting for a long time, but never owned my own rifle until this year, so firearm maintenance and stuff like that is fairly new to me.
Regarding barrel heat, and how rapid fire on my bolt action can degrade the barrel quicker, and cause problems with ammunition if the chamber becomes too hot/ammo sits in the chamber for too long… my question is, how much shooting is “too much”?
I haven’t and don’t plan on firing this thing as fast as I can - I just want to adopt some good practices now to prolong my barrel life.
My next range trip I plan on gathering data on 4 different types of ammo, shooting a minimum of 20 rounds of each. A tall target test, and probably another box or two shooting at 200 yards.
Would shooting 10 rounds (~30 seconds between each shot), waiting 5 minutes, and then repeating be sufficient to keep the barrel warm but not hot enough to cause problems? There will probably be a longer cool off period between boxes of ammo, so that wouldn’t be a sustained rate all day long. The barrel is considered “medium/heavy contour” at just under .780” I believe.
Any advice/wisdom in this area would be greatly appreciated. I do not want to baby this rifle, but I don’t want to just send it without caring about the thing either.
Recently bought myself a Tikka T3X CTR in 6.5CM. I’m getting into long range shooting, and learning the ropes as a first time firearm owner. I’ve been shooting for a long time, but never owned my own rifle until this year, so firearm maintenance and stuff like that is fairly new to me.
Regarding barrel heat, and how rapid fire on my bolt action can degrade the barrel quicker, and cause problems with ammunition if the chamber becomes too hot/ammo sits in the chamber for too long… my question is, how much shooting is “too much”?
I haven’t and don’t plan on firing this thing as fast as I can - I just want to adopt some good practices now to prolong my barrel life.
My next range trip I plan on gathering data on 4 different types of ammo, shooting a minimum of 20 rounds of each. A tall target test, and probably another box or two shooting at 200 yards.
Would shooting 10 rounds (~30 seconds between each shot), waiting 5 minutes, and then repeating be sufficient to keep the barrel warm but not hot enough to cause problems? There will probably be a longer cool off period between boxes of ammo, so that wouldn’t be a sustained rate all day long. The barrel is considered “medium/heavy contour” at just under .780” I believe.
Any advice/wisdom in this area would be greatly appreciated. I do not want to baby this rifle, but I don’t want to just send it without caring about the thing either.