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A month in and at 1200 rounds.... I really expect this to pick up as the weather gets better.

Unrelated to the above guns but.... "the things that happen sometimes if you'[re not careful":

A Springfield 9mm barrel that had a bullet stuck in it. The owner did not have a proper punch so used, well, an improper punch. It is all “metal gone” and little to nothing hanging into the bore—and still shoots reasonably well although I don’t know how well it shot before. Probably better. But, 2” or so at 25 yards with Lapua and RUAG ammo, not bloody awful.

A Kart barrel in .45. Owner advises accuracy went all to hell, I didn’t try it, just replaced it with another Kart. They are excellent barrels. Got one stuck in it, didn’t realize it, shot it out. Sometimes they bulge, sometimes they blow, but it always sucks!


An unfired Wilson barrel…. Very, very nice inside.


Inside the 9mm, Lyman bore scope:

18 months in on the old Colt's new top en, J says he's at 12K rounds which I suspect is low.

We talked about it at length the other day. It was more than two decades ago that I first worked on it and I have been maintaining it ever since, from time to time repairing, changing barrels, welding cracks. We think it really has in the 'hood of 250K through it although it's not an "official" claim. He certainly does not shoot less now than before, so a little extrapolation-- 12K in 18 months = 666 / month. 666 X at least 25 years X 12 months brings us to the doorstep of 200K.

The bulged Kart barrel two posts up, don't try this at home:

As part of an ongoing bit of 1911 testing.... testing some things that probably ought not be tested, I have squeezed most of that bulge out and am currently shooting it in a test pistol. The other day after class we were doing our usual informal competition, this time it was pistols at 50 yards. I was able to get 12 of 14 on a piece of legal-sized paper, using nothing-special handloads 225 cast w/ 4.something of Bullseye.

The barrel was bulged so that the back-bored part of a bushing would not fit over it... I got it squoze down to the point that it will, so the gun can cycle. The gun was generously donated by Mr. Anonymous; I had been looking for a rusty beater and this one is not that, it's a quite-decent Springfield.

This is in a pistol dedicated to testing, some of which may be somewhat destructive (HEY I think I'll leave that for last). But for the moment it's the bulged barrel and ammo reloaded using Wolf steel cases. Done this before, you usually get 2-max reloads and then they crack. I got lucky and this barrel dropped right in to "Testy" and miraculously it agreed perfectly with the sights. I don't believe I've ever had that happen before.

Does everyone know that in WWII the US loaded .45 in steel cases? With bullets that these days we call "bi-metal", meaning steel jackets, copper-plated? A Chrysler plant in Evansville, IN made them by the billions. I mean actually and truly, by the billions (like 3 1/4 bil). I ahd a bunch of it years ago and reloaded it.... there's still a box or two around here somewhere.

I've got a book n the shelves someplace, "bullets by the Billion". The plant in question had a train in the side-yard each Monday morning, with empty cars. By Friday they would have filled it, end to end, with .50 ammo. The next Monday morning, there'd be another train.

We made a lot of everything for the war, back in the 1940s.

think about it. Each heavy bomber had 10 .50 BMG machine guns on board. Each gun had (as I recall) 400 rounds. In a thousand-bomber raid (and we did more than a few of those) there would be 10,000 Browning mgs just on the bombers, with 4 million rounds of .50 BMG.

This long-term, daily-use Colt got a going-over yesterday at a Patrol Rifle class. Since the last barrel change, which included a slide change due to the slide being cracked, it has fired ~ 50K rounds. Looks like it to me. For years now we have felt certain the gun has ~ 250K on it. One wants to stay conservative in the absence of carefully-maintained data but in the last five-ten years, tracking has improved and the rate of consumption has gone up. To peg it at this point at 250K is safe and conservative.
Note the “topography” starting to show up on the breech face. After thousands of rounds you start to see an imprint of the case head. The ring around the primer where there is no contact on firing, that is, the area to include whatever chamfer / radius is in the case’s primer pocket and then whatever radius is on the rear face for the primer at the junction of that surface and the outer diameter of the primer, shows less wear. This area is becoming a raised ring that at some point can actually start to present a bump that the up-feeding case has to overcome. On this one it can be seen that the “ring” has a bit of a flat on the bottom of it—that is wear from up-feeding rounds. Eventually that flat becomes a little more radiused, matching the diameter of the case rim. No feeding issues yet on this one but it would get there ere long. It will get stoned flat. Total depth of the topography is probably only about .003-.004.
Also on the breech face we’re starting to see the pitting or cutting that I believe comes from occasional primer “leakage”, where some of the primer flash manages to get through to the breech face. If I’m right here it’s like a micro particle beam. Primer compounds as I understand it are actually “brisant”. I hear the word “detonate” used often to describe a cartridge going off. A primer may detonate but as reloaders know, or should I say as students of reloading are told, cartridges expel a bullet not be detonating, but by expanding gas from the powder burning progressively. Real explosions happen at 18-25,000 FPS. Gunpowders burn at various rates, we've all seen the burn rate comparison chart but compared to something like det cord, they are slow.
The frame is due for its third or fourth weld job; it was last welded in July of 2010 so it did last many tens of thousands of rounds.I have seen many of these that crack and get welded and then don’t crack again but of course that depends on the volume of useage. The usage meter on this one is pegged at 11. That last weld job might not have been the best ever. I never liked how the welded area went “grainy” after bluing.

Hi mileage indeed. what caught my eye on the welded portion photo was the ring around the slide stop pin hole.

With 250,000 rounds down the pipe, that translates to not less than 31,250 slide actuations. Add in the locking open for cleaning, disassembly, etc, it is probably up past 50,000.

And, interesting that the original slide cracked starting at the slide stop notch. The process for cutting this in has varied over time on Colts; some are sharp (as was the cracked one); some are radiused (more recently). The size of the radius has varied, I have not really tracked it but I suppose is has gone from smaller to larger and my guess is that the reason for that is, well, smaller radius means smaller cutters which means more broken cutters. Looks to me like for a time they even EDM'd them. A larger radius is OK as long as it doesn't get in the way of full slide stop engagement, which is has on some guns. I have gone in on these and milled the radius with a .046 cutter, making sure the locking face of the slide stop can go to its limit for full engagement. I've broached them too (as I believe Colt used to do). It's kinda dependent upon a few things but generally milling is preferable and I see that Jason also does this.

But bottom line here, the one that cracked was very sharp. Everyone knows that sharp, non-filleted features are like lightening rods, they attract something you don't want