barrel cooling options?

C

crowpopper

New member
i am going out to the range today to sight in my stevens and was wondering if anyone has tried this
some large ice packs(jell) they are 15x15
would using them as my "sandbag" work to keep bbl cool? they are very stiff almost like sand
anyone ever try ice packs? or anyother tricks?
thanks
josh
 
Might work but you don't want your barrel to be touching anything when you are shooting. You can set your barrel on them after you shoot but make sure to clean and oil it down when you get home because the ice pack get condensation on them.
 
Our next shooting session at the 1K range will include a 5 gallon bucket of ice to just shove the barrels down into. We tend to get carried away and shoot until the barrel is giving off to much heat to see through the scope. And when it's very hot out, the rifles never really even cool down.
 
I saw a video of some folks shooting PD's and they had water jackets on their barrels much like the early water jackets on the browning machine guns of world war one vintage only smaller in diameter. These let them shoot a bunch at a time.

I don't know about sticking a barrel into a bucket of ice though. What I usually do is take several rifles and switch off shooting them. I've got one of the magnetic gun racks that sticks to the side of the vehicle and I just leave the bolt open and set the rifle in the rack. We always take a 22 rifle or pistol to plink with so the centerfires have time to cool.

Nice thing is if your shooting a Savage changing out a barrel takes 15 minutes with nothing more than a barrel nut wrench, barrel vice and a go headspace gauge. If your not shooting a Savage then do take the time to let your barrel cool for optimum barrel life.
 
Well you could do like the old buffalo hunters and pee down the barrel. Not too sure thats real good for the bore metal.

I've seen folks at the range use 20# propane bottles filled with compressed air to cool guns. Food for thought.

When I go after Gophers or prairie dogs I usually take at least 5 rifles, one of them being a rimfire, so I don't run into a heating problem.

One thing nice about bull barrels is it takes them a while to heat up, unfortunately the reverse is also true.

Best wishes, Bill
 
I and the guys that go with me used water down the bore for many, many years. It only takes about 6 oz of water to completely cool the barrel, even when it is very hot.

We carry quart bottles with a hose attached to the lid. The hose is the perfect dia to fit in our bore guides.

The whole affair of cooling the barrel takes 3 minutes tops.

After running the water down the barrel, run 4 dry tight patches on a Punch type of jag, dry the chamber, then start shooting.

We learned in a hurry that when the temps get 90*, that barrels never cool off, even when we carried 6 guns, especially when you are in a target rich enviroment.

This is one of those ideas that is so simple, it is just stupid....kinda like moving the toilet from outdoors to indoors.
 
A E-Cylinder of Compressed Air or Co2 works great . Just a couple of blast down the barrel and it will cool it quick.
 
It seems that if you cool down the barrel too fast, you might stress the barrel more than it should be.
Water is not only is hard to get totally off the metal, especially inside a barrel, but it could start metal rust or swell the wood of a stock.
There was a guy awhile back that used rubbing alcohol to cool the barrel. Still might be hard on some stock finishes but would evaporate quickly, smells a bit.
If you had a special double-lined gun case in which you could put medical ice packets around the gun, that might work, but probably too slow.
Compressed air doesn't stay in the barrel long enough to cool the whole barrel down, and it's cooling effect brings moisture again.
For most of us the answer is to take multiple guns along and rotate between them.
At one time I tried to put together a small battery powered cooling fan to blow down the barrel but your still fighting the "heat sink" nature of a metal barrel that holds heat. And very few of us have carbon fiber barrels, which might be another answer.
 
I tried 50 water/50% alcohol mixture over a wet rag at the last match, in between 10 shot strings. It really didn't seem help too much, that I could tell. But, I didn't have too much time between strings.

I seen this really cool way of cooling barrels last year at an F-Class match. It was 100 degrees and we were firing anywhere from 17-25 shots including sighters per stage. Barrels got HOT.

This guy had a cooling contraption that he slipped over his .308 barrel, It was copper tubing coiled to fit the contour of his barrel. It slipped down till it almost touched the fore-arm. Rubber tubes attached to each end of the coil, each end ran into an ice-chest filled with ice cold water. To pump the water, he used a windsheild spray motor powered off a motocycle battery. Cold water went through one end, then as the water warmed it came out the other end back into the ice-chest. It worked very well.
 
I was the guy using rubbing alcohol also, it is no where near as effective as water down the barrel. Not to worry, we fired 100K+ rounds over the years cooling with water. The main thing is to use a tight punch type jag with 4 dry patches down the tube after the water and dry the chamber.

We shot unturned blanks and set back the barrels at least once and sometimes three times. If water had ever hurt the barrels, they would have never continued to shoot the very tiny groups that they did.

I also shot the barrels out of a lot of chrome moly barrels and cooled them the same way. Common sense always would dictate to use a light oil after cleaning when using water down the barrel, but we never did have rust on our patches.
I have always had the practice of putting a patch down the barrel with a light oil on it so that the first shot is not going down a "bone dry" tube.

Good luck!
 
Quote:
It seems that if you cool down the barrel too fast, you might stress the barrel more than it should be.
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There was a guy awhile back that used rubbing alcohol to cool the barrel. Still might be hard on some stock finishes but would evaporate quickly, smells a bit.




Stress the barrel? Where do you come up with this stuff? Just like ackleyman says, water down the bore works so fast and so well you wouldn't even believe it. It couldn't be simpler.
 
Quote:
Well you could do like the old buffalo hunters and pee down the barrel. Not too sure thats real good for the bore metal.





I'm sure glad I don't know any of those old buffalo hunters! It may be effective, but how sanitary or corrosive could that be??
 
Quote:
Quote:
Well you could do like the old buffalo hunters and pee down the barrel. Not too sure thats real good for the bore metal.





I'm sure glad I don't know any of those old buffalo hunters! It may be effective, but how sanitary or corrosive could that be??



Not only that but you could burn your barrel.......urrrr, equipment...... nevermind /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-006.gif
 
Quote:
Quote:
Well you could do like the old buffalo hunters and pee down the barrel. Not too sure thats real good for the bore metal.





Peeing down the barrel worked great for Black Powder Round because the ammonia work great for cleaning the black powder corrosion out of the barrel.



Another poster commented about the Carbon Barrels which I'm not totally sold on. The Steel Barrel Insert that is wrapped
in the Carbon gets just as hot and it look to me like the Carbon is a insulator and would hold the heat in and barrel would be just as hot as the regular barrel, but you just couldn't feel it with your hands and it would stay hot longer, unless the carbon wicked the heat away .
 


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