Thread: Hornady Podcast Barrel life data

Hornady recently did a podcast where they talked about estimated barrel life and barrel cleaning frequency for different cartridges, and I've taken the data from their spreadsheet and made my own to make it public.
There are a lot of values that needed to be copied over, so there could be a couple typos, but I was pretty careful.

Podcast in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHmJRC8uYjc&t=2993s

Google sheet with the data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Some of those barrels are not lasting very long down the bottom.
Definitely shorter life than I would have expected.

At the Same time my pet 35cals are lasting a very long time, just as wellnas my 6mm will be gone by lunch time.
Just as well I shoot the 35 way more than the 6mm.
Z

Interesting thanks for posting

Nice work copying all that out.
What is the difference between the data in red and the data in yellow for each chambering?

What was the point at which they determined that a barrel was toast?

Greetings and thanks for the link.
Very interesting stuff. it was interesting to see how short the barrel life was on some of the cartridges. The video answered most of my initial questions including those raised above. In the approaching sixty years since I acquired my first rifle I have never managed to wear out a barrel and it looks unlikely that will change.
Regards Grandpamac.

Abuse is the deadly sin. Especially of chrome molly barrels. I had a 22.250 that burnt out. Less than diligent cleaning (I was told to clean it manually, I thought they said annually ), dampness and full house loads killed it. I thought at the time it had fired a lot of shots but looking back it would have been less than 1,500.

I see the 6.5 Creedmoor scores well...

Scoring works the same as golf, right?

Originally Posted by Tahr

Abuse is the deadly sin. Especially of chrome molly barrels. I had a 22.250 that burnt out. Less than diligent cleaning (I was told to clean it manually, I thought they said annually ), dampness and full house loads killed it. I thought at the time it had fired a lot of shots but looking back it would have been less than 1,500.

About what the chart predicts for full house loads.
GPM.

shit according to that I have 3 guns needing rebarreling......................................

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

Nice work copying all that out.
What is the difference between the data in red and the data in yellow for each chambering?

The red values represent loads that are operating at max operating pressure.
This could be SAAMI or other standards.
The yellow values represent loads that are at 90% pressure of the max.

Originally Posted by Ryan_Songhurst

What was the point at which they determined that a barrel was toast?

Velocity, pressure and dispersion were taken into consideration when determining when a barrel had supposedly reached the end of its barrel life, so they aren't necessarily toast at this point.

It's not perfect, this was just a way to quantify something that isn't normally easy to do so, as well as show the relationship between variables such as charge weight and bore diameter.

Originally Posted by Tahr

Abuse is the deadly sin. Especially of chrome molly barrels. I had a 22.250 that burnt out. Less than diligent cleaning (I was told to clean it manually, I thought they said annually ), dampness and full house loads killed it. I thought at the time it had fired a lot of shots but looking back it would have been less than 1,500.

I was expecting something else as soon as I read "I was told to clean it manually" - not safe for public forum though haha. Mistaking it for "annually" is far more publicly acceptable and understandable - I forgot to clean one after a particularly wet excursion once and found it after a break of a few months. Couldn't see down the barrel when I grabbed it and checked before heading out (lucky on that as well, would not have liked to see the outcome if I'd shot it without checking!). WTF? That's not right...

Shoved a bore brush through (manually and forcefully) and was bloody shocked when there was a large puff of red out the end of the thing as the brush flew out. I mean large, about a m2 on the wall facing the muzzle. World ending event, "well that's f**ked" was the first thing I thought. Proceeded to clean it, couldn't see any difference in shine or any visible changes in the barrel by anything I tried on it and it still looked like a pretty ugly factory barrel so I guess I got lucky. Still shoots the same so I dunno, but it was a good wakeup call.

I have experienced one barrel that was destroyed by not cleaning it - ended up with a bulge half way down it. .243 - and a .243 with a 12" barrel is f-all use to man or beast to be fair. Shot a two shot group touching, the next 16" away in a random direction followed by minute of barn (only if you were inside the barn mind).

I've never shot a barrel out (yet).

Interesting post though, thanks!

Thanks for taking time & effort @Tacitus to create the pdf chart.
Good to see Hornady putting together such a thorough & comprehensive data analysis based on their extensive in-house data set. No real supposed, in that over-bore calibres burning a heap of powder down a small bore at high pressures will not have a great barrel life. But it’s helpful to see how different calibres stack up in comparative terms.
Only thing that irks me with the podcast is Hornady bias that comes thru, even when their own data says otherwise
Eg it was stated that the 6.5x284 is we known as bbl burner ‘cos every one loads them hot. And that 6.5 PRC was much of a much.
Yeah, nah! Their data shows the 6.5x284 enjoys nearly double the bbl life at the 90% pressure figures & at max pressure bbl life is 57% better than 6.5PRC.
They made the same sort of comments comparing 7PRC to 7RM, but their data shows a 20-30% better bbl life in the old 7RM.
As their data shows…. There’s no free lunches

I would be interested to know the number of forum members who have actually shot out a barrel or barrels to the point velocity and accuracy drops.


I would wager the cost of ammo to get to that point far exceeds the cost of a barrel replacement even if you were fitting a Proof carbon barrel.
for example if we agree that a 6.5PRC barrel is toast at the high end of their estimate of 1314 shots (seems quite conservative) and average factory ammo is $6 a pop then that's $7,884

I would guess replacing the barrel would run about 1/3 or that cost of factory ammo or less depending on the barrel used.
For reloads the difference would be less of course but hard to quantify as reloading costs vary greatly depending how large bulk component purchases are.
Given the average hunting rifle might be lucky to fire 3-400 shots in its life (we are not all enthusiasts) as a lot of people would only fire a pkt a year if they are lucky even a barrel burner would last them many many many years

Thoughts