Effective life of a steel PCP barrel

[Bullfrog]

Can someone give me an idea as to how long, or how many pellets, a pcp barrel made of steel might last? I know there are lots of variables, but are there any general rules of thumb? 10,000 pellets? 20,000 pellets? Is there such a thing as wearing a barrel out?

[Motorhead]

IMO at our AG velocities and shooting LEAD pellets ..... doubtful you could wear one out.

[Brewerja]

Yeah, pretty much zero heat exchange. A long as your no coating your pellets in sand before you send em down range, theres a really good chance that your gun will outlast you man !

[gnef]

How much more abrasive are those coatings that some manufacturers have on their pellets (beeman in particular comes to mind)?

Or also the lead-free alloys?

[Motorhead]

How much more abrasive are those coatings that some manufacturers have on their pellets (beeman in particular comes to mind)?

Or also the lead-free alloys?

Alloy pellets ...ALL bets are off with likely NO ONE having any clue on long term damage caused shooting such pellets 

[SeanMP]

Good question but I dont know of any direct answers.

Anecdotal however, Anschutz gives a projected barrel life for their 22cal match barrels  of 100,000+rds. Upptagraft comes to mind as an example of someone shooting a rifle at Olympic levels that is far in excess of this number.

So the velocities and lead projectile composition are similar but PCP's don't suffer from throat erosion from burning gases.

On the other side of the coin PCP barrels may or may not be the same quality of alloy depending on the particular manufacturer. But if you add up the pluses and minuses I would bet on at least the same....and a great PCP barrel could last forever

At the shop here I dont consider a good quality barrel broken in until it's got 10,000 rds through it with an appropriate conditioning routine.

HTH some

[rsterne]

I'm guessing the "conditioning routine", after initial prep, means polishing with JB Bore Bright every time the accuracy starts to fall off, which might be as little as a couple hundred rounds initially increasing as the barrel become "conditioned" better.... If that is the case, the wear from the Bore Bright likely exceeds that from the pellets by a wide margin?....

I would hazard a guess as anywhere around 100,000 to several million pellets of barrel life.... so basically forever....

Bob

[Bullfrog]

Thanks everyone. I was having a major accuracy problem that cleaning wasn't appearing to fix. However, Motorhead advised me to give it a really major cleaning which I did.

I ended up cleaning it a lot harsher than most people recommend. I used lots of powerful solvents, a bronze brush, and JB Bore Paste. Between all of it, and especially the bore paste, it completely restored my accuracy and my faith in my barrel. My gun hasn't shot this good in a long time.

[GarthThomas]

Hopefully you won't need to ever have to clean that hard again now that you've polished it so well should be much easier to maintain.

[Motorhead]

Indeed .... like running CHALK against a chalk board verses a piece of glass .... self evident the result   

[Bamaal]

Thanks everyone. I was having a major accuracy problem that cleaning wasn't appearing to fix. However, Motorhead advised me to give it a really major cleaning which I did.

I ended up cleaning it a lot harsher than most people recommend. I used lots of powerful solvents, a bronze brush, and JB Bore Paste. Between all of it, and especially the bore paste, it completely restored my accuracy and my faith in my barrel. My gun hasn't shot this good in a long time.

Just out of curiosity....how many pellets had been down that barrel before you did this little power scrub?

[Bullfrog]

Thanks everyone. I was having a major accuracy problem that cleaning wasn't appearing to fix. However, Motorhead advised me to give it a really major cleaning which I did.

I ended up cleaning it a lot harsher than most people recommend. I used lots of powerful solvents, a bronze brush, and JB Bore Paste. Between all of it, and especially the bore paste, it completely restored my accuracy and my faith in my barrel. My gun hasn't shot this good in a long time.

Just out of curiosity....how many pellets had been down that barrel before you did this little power scrub?

I would guess 10,000 but could be more. I've had my .25 Mrod for over 2 years. I used to shoot 500 or more a month when I was new to PCPs and learning how to tune or mod the gun. I did not clean it from the factory and would only clean it once every 2-3 months. All I did was ran patches through and/or cleaning pellets with Gamo oil whenever my accuracy suffered. These wipe sessions would restore accuracy for weeks. A few months ago I started to get lots of fliers in my groups of 4 and 8 in excess of 2 inches at 25 yards from tins of pellets confirmed to be good. I gave the gun a good cleaning with patches and stronger solvents such as Otis. I even scrubbed a moderate amount with a brush and some accuracy would return for a short time but only to go away again and be worse than it was before. I suspected everything except the barrel. Only when I had changed the trigger, the shroud, the stock (from bullpup back to factory), my pellet speeds, pellet brands, ect., did I start to be convinced my barrel was the problem.

For much of the 2 year period I would run the gun with a 10# spring to produce velocities in the low 900s for JSB Kings. In March of 2013 I installed a custom valve and my velocities with kings jumped to 1,000 - 1,100fpe depending on the tune. I shoot a wide variety of pellets including JSB, H&N, and Eunjin.

I'm convinced my barrel was fouled up bad and it took major scrubbing to get it clean. I don't believe the simple patches I would run through did much. When I used the brush with the JB I could feel the rifling become unclogged (insofar as I could feel the brush stop meeting resistance after a few passes). Here's a link showing a group of 8 Kings being shot at 40 somewhere in the middle-high 900s or 1000s (I'm guessing concerning their velocity as I haven't tested this tune with Kings This tune is shooting 31 grain Kodiacs at 920fps so the kings shout be faster).

[Bamaal]

my barrel was fouled up bad and it took major scrubbing to get it clean. I don't believe the simple patches I would run through did much. When I used the brush with the JB I could feel the rifling become unclogged (insofar as I could feel the brush stop meeting resistance after a few passes). Here's a link showing a group of 8 Kings being shot at 40 somewhere in the middle-high 900s or 1000s (I'm guessing concerning their velocity as I haven't tested this tune with Kings This tune is shooting 31 grain Kodiacs at 920fps so the kings shout be faster).

Makes sense.  Even though the pellets aren't leaving as much lead in the barrel as they would in a powder rifle they still leave some lead from friction and over time it builds up in the rifling and hurts accuracy.  i have been curious how many pellets it takes to do that and haven't found anything.  It seems the same rule applies to air rifles as powder rifles.  Don't do a serious cleaning and remove all the buildup until accuracy suffers.  Until then just do a basic cleaning.