Heat is Hot.

[kflach]

Last Saturday I went to a match. I'd planned on sharing my rifle with someone but ended up loaning mine to him and borrowing one for me to use so we each had our own. The Heat Index was around 106 (even though the actual temp was in the 90's). I use holy black (Goex fffg) in my bullets.

The barrel got extremely hot.

It made me wonder how my rifle would have handled it if I'd been sharing it as I'd planned. Two people shooting 60 rounds each in a match in the heat.

I'm planning on bringing other visitors to matches in the future, but I'd like to know if sharing a rifle (or a steel-framed Remington NMA) under those kinds of hot conditions can result in some kind of heat damage to the guns. Any advice? Recommendations? Guidelines?

[Angel_Eyes]

Thats one of the problems with our sport, we subject our guns to many times the wear and tear that they were designed for.

Didn't the old timers used to pee down the barrel when fighting off the indians??

Or was that to loosen the fouling?

AE

[Jefro]

kflach, it shouldn't hurt a thing, I've done it a few times. Just make sure there are enough shooters between you in the shooting order so one of you doesn't have carry hot guns to the loading table.

Jefro

[Wills Point Pete]

 It would not be a big deal to rig a bottle with a tube of some sort to go into the chamber and pour a pint or two of water down the tube to cool things down some. Fewer burns than trying to pee down the barrel.

BTW, peeing down the barrel was not just for black powder. During WW2 they peed down the barrels of the Sringfields and Garands to do away with the Potassium Chlorate left from those old corrosive primers. Especially in some of the drier islands in the Pacific.

[Percussion Pete]

Didn't the old timers used to pee down the barrel when fighting off the indians??

Or was that to loosen the fouling?

AE

Maybe the Indians trying to kill them had something to do with it.

Better the barrel than your pants.

[Fairshake]

Kflach, You would help out yourself by loading FFg rather than FFFg. The 3F burns hotter with more pressure and velocity. Or you might try a blend of the two.

[hellgate]

As long as you have adequate amounts of lube so the fouling keeps soft you ought to be OK. I do happen to have a thin leather laced on  barrel shroud as a heat guard for my SXS so i don't burn my hands when shooting long shotgun strings.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

Even if you shoot the thing all day and it is too hot to hold, you are not going to raise the temperature enough to affect the temper of the steel. You would have to heat it up over 600 degrees C before you started affecting the temper. You ain't gonna get it anywhere near that hot, even shooting Black Powder all day.

[kflach]

Thanks ya'll! This is very reassuring.

[Forty Rod]

Especially in some of the drier islands in the Pacific.

"drier islands in the Pacific"? 

Every Pacific island I ever visited (and there were more than a few) made Seattle look like the sahara by comparison.