OK Phil, what causes alligatoring?
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All I laugh at is that somehow by you guys estimation, that surface does not help the brake get hot, but DOES help it to get cold. Damn interesting. More interesting is that inside the barrel, you have vastly less surface to heat with, yet, that gets hot in spite of having proportionately 2x or 3x the cooling area. .
Look, just read EXACTLY what it says above. No, the damn COPPER bullet does not cause significant wear. But grinding that Copper bullet along with the BURNT POWDER DOES. The FRICTION caused by the burnt powder is what causes the wear. .
Why do you think they say, "This situation is unlikely to change until some radical improvements are made in the chemical makeup of the powder." That is because it is the dirt left behind that is not offering lubricity. .
This whole thing make me laugh. Hell,there's people here who won't run a bronze brush down a stainless barrel for fear of wear, yet, a bullet grinding that powder in does virtually nothing. So wtf does a brush do? .
When a round burns clean, it has virtually no throat wear. I've demonstrated this a few times. .
Seal the damn chamber, create MORE pressure, and the throat won't wear out.
Sensible heat and kinetic energy.
I have no doubt that everything mentioned contributes to barrel erosion. I do however wonder why our cases last as well as
they do. Given a PPC case, with .008 thick necks and at the time of firing, sit within .030 of all this damage. I have cases that
have seen 70 firings, yet no erosion , gas cutting( leakage around bullet) or abrasion from all the crap that rushes out the
little funnel we call the neck. Its agreed that 70 or so firings is not the 1500-3000 that ends a barrels life. It should however show some signs , since brass melts way before steel. Were it not for the brass changing its properties, we could shoot them forever.
What I'm getting at, is that whatever occurs in the throat, also happens in the neck. Why do bolt faces pit, but leakage from
primers causes less damage to the brass.
Because brass is a better conductor.
If heat is the major source of wear; why is the bottom of the throats worn more? In all the match barrels i bore scoped the bottom seems always to have more wear.
I never noticed any such thing, and don't remember anyone else saying as much. In fact, I have only ever heard the opposite. But, since I read it here, it must be true.But when we take borescopes and look into the throat, we see wear 360 degrees around the throat in even pattern.
Wth do you guys think is going on. This is heat, you're talking abut, not electricity. (not that it would matter). So, a brass case conducts heat of 5000F through it in a matter of .01 milliseconds? Transfers that heat does it? Huh. I have annealed more than a few cases, and I can use a .850 length shellholder, heat the SHOULDER of the case to red hot, and still take it from the holder with my ungloved fingers. It didn't conduct that heat in FOUR - 4.5 seconds of time in the flame. But, OH, I forgot, pressure is magic and so under pressure, the heat will transfer won't it? Fascinating stuff here!Cases are a "Better conductor" so they don't wear.
Fun with numbers...
If 3% of the energy is spent on bore friction, and if you're using a 60,000 psi load, total pressure variation do to friction is a maximum of 1,800 psi.
OK, suppose your bullet bearing surface is 1/2 inch (long range bullets). Suppose too that the bearing surface varies by .030. That's six percent, right? .5 divided by .030, Now 6% of 1,800 is is 108 psi. Actually, we should be talking area, not just length. That would give a smaller number, right?
108 psi is enough variance to sort bullets by bearing length? And some guys sort not by 30 thousandths, but 2 thousandths! That's .4%, or a 7.2 psi variance. How much energy is there is in burning a kernel of powder?
OK Keith, my math was never the best, never mind the likely conceptual error thinking this way. Where have I gone wrong?
More like 300-350"For 1000 yd shooting, the bullet drops about 500", right?
If a kernel of powder weighs 0.02 grains and your load is 40 grains, that's 0.05%, so that's significant.
That 25% isn't all expended on friction. There is an air column to move, too. And the rate of acceleration is, for a while anyway, being increased.For bearing friction, the 25% of the pressure that ends up propelling the bullet would be 15 kpsi, so the 0.002" variance in bearing length would change that pressure by 7.2/15k = 0.05%. That's significant, too.