At what point does continued rapid fire begin to cause barrel damage?
How about sustained rapid fire as in some shooting competitions where 100 or more 5.56 or 7.62 rounds are fired in roughly 4 minutes?
The average barrel is good for 5,000 rounds or so, fire fast and heat it up and you lesson your barrel life.
Scott
Obviously, any firing causes wear to the barrel.
Rapid fire wears down a barrel faster because of the increase in heat. However, I wouldn't call 100 rds in 4 minutes rapid, because as stated, that only works out to 25 rds per minute.
Since Canada doesn't allow high capacity mags, it's hard to reach a damagingly high rate of fire.
So basically, don't worry about barrel wear. You should be able to pump thousands of rounds through your barrel before you notice a decrease in accuracy. If in doubt, buy a barrel-guage.
I agree, 5000 rds seems VERY low!
As a point of reference, I was issued a brand spankin' new C8 (16" chrome lined 1:7" barrel) and with a considerable amount of "rapid fire," (90 rpm +) including full auto, put well over 20,000 rds through it before it was shot-out & replaced.
It shot about 3 moa when I got it, and it shot about 5moa when I had the barrel replaced. Still good enough for my line of work.
I realize that not all civilian legal AR15s are mil-spec, but I don't think that there's anything magical about a Diemaco/Colt Canada C8 barrel. I would expect roughly the same performance out of any chrome-lined carbine barrel.




























