Thread: Keeping the 7mm ahead of the 30 cal?

Don,
That may have been the case with the thin jacketed VLD's in some barrels, but it depends more on how hard pressure and velocity wise you are driving them. I have had the old thin moly coated 180 VLD's shoot in a Kreiger barrel for well over 1000 rounds before it started to destroy them. This was at 64,000 psi and 3200 fps. Kirby ran a lot of rounds through that barrel doing testing for his customers, at some pretty serious pressures and velocities. You can get away with this due to the high quality brass they're based on. Someone else on this forum has a habit of doing the same thing occasionally, eh Kiwi Greg?

I have run many more rounds through one of our 7mm SF's than Kirby has through his own personal 7mmAM you're talking about, without any deterioration in accuracy, but we run the Lapua brass at 65,000psi, not the 70,000 plus some others run.
Anyway, this certainly isn't the case with the Hybrids and other similar ogive and jacket thickness bullets. That's the advantage of them, they are very throat tolerant. If used as a lightweight hunting rifle/load combination, the barrel life even with the biggest 7mm's or any other overbore cartridge will last for years. If you want to bust lots of rounds at gongs etc, then don't pick a big 7mm or any other largest case in any calibre, whether it be 22 cal on up. Build a 338 Edge and bang away to your hearts content, but do realise there are other cartridges that are better in the wind if a high round count is not important to you.
Horses for courses!
Greg