All Depends...
Hello Everyone,
I am getting ready to get my new rifle built and really like the ballistics of the 6.5x284 but everything I read says the barrel life is terrible I have seen people saying as few as 700 rounds and throat starting to erode. Most of the post about the barrel life are pretty old now that the cartridge has been out there are people really seeing these very short barrel lives? Also any recommendations for a 600-1000 yard cartridge? The new 30 cal bullets are making the 308 look good again. Just want to see what your thoughts are on the topic.
Thank you,
Jason
Like many high pressure cartridges 6.5x284 has a short barrel life as compared to lets say 308 Win. There are several factors to this and you can get well over 1000 rounds with great accuracy (assuming the barrel was chambered properly in the first place, your optics are good and secure, etc.).
Some of the factors that lead to short barrel life in the 6.5x284 are:
1) Loading to max pressure or above, surprising how many guys are well over the manual max charges for this round. It is safe in a good strong action, but barrel and brass life suffer.
2) Rapid fire. I shoot my 6.5x284 in NBRSA 1,000 yard competition. When the winds are switchy it makes sense to fire as quickly as you can get back on target so as to capture the present condition. 10 rounds (Heavy Rifle Class) in 60 seconds is easily done with good rests, but the chamber temperature soars which accelerates throat erosion bigtime. If you were casually varmint hunting and shot 10 rounds in 20 minutes the chamber would cool between rounds for example.
My practice is to find a bullet with good high B.C., load up a series ammo in incremental powder charge steps (42.0 grains, 42.5 gr., 43.0 gr., 43.5 gr., 44.0 gr., etc (make 8 0r 10 of each to get statistically significant data. Shoot all of this over a chronograph to find which charge gives lowest SD.
In my case 44.5 gr. of H4350 gave a SD of 3.1 which is great and velocity average of 2890 fps with Berger 140 grain bullets.
I get 800 to 1,200 rounds out of a barrel before I cannot win trophies any longer. Then it is time to cut back the barrel a couple inches, re-thread and re-chamber. Sometimes the shorter "used" barrel shoots better than it did first chambering! I am on barrel number 2, chamber #4 right now. I get about a year on a chamber. If you are going to re-chamber an existing barrel don't wait until it is really horrible as you may need to cut off as much as 5 inches to get into good sharp rifling. I start with a 30" barrel, but have had winning results with 25" barrel.
I am now building a 300WSM rifle for Heavy Rifle Class and then will use my 6.5x284 just for Light Rifle which should make it last much longer per barrel. (I shoot both classes with the 6.5 for 5 years now).
