.223 AI velocity Expectations

[260AckImp]

Gday everyone

Have really enjoyed reading all these posts, has been great. Im looking into a 223AI myself to go onto a Tikka t3x action. Im just curious what sort of barrel life are you experiencing? I know theres the Target Barrel life and Hunting Barrel life but just a ballpark figure.

Cheers

 

[RegionRat]

@Fullbore , one of the biggest detractors to bbl life of a 223AI is rapid strings. All other things being equal, those rapid strings that get the bbl really hot take more than their share of life out of a bbl.

Using a good quality Service Rifle bbl (typically 20" heavy bbl AR) with normal use, will run in the neighborhood of 2500 rounds of match accuracy. That same bbl without rapids would be roughly double the life. There is lots of dispersion in the life stats, but that is one general observation in rough terms.

A typical SR Club Match is run with 88 total rounds, but 22 are rapid sitting and 22 are rapid prone. The other 44 rounds are fired one at a time with 22 standing offhand at 200 and 22 slow prone at 600. Occasionally, there have been folks who take a separate but identical rifle and dedicate it to MR Matches where all 60 rounds plus sighters are slow fire. This is done to hone their skills for the SR 600 yard line by jumping into MR club matches on different weekends. However, the point to mention is that these rigs have about double the life.

Stats for things like friction, wear, and fatigue are generally noisy, meaning there can be a huge deviation from the early failures to the average to the longest lives. Most metal wear processes that involve things like bbls have factors and exponents, and for a given task with all other things being equal, the wear exponents on velocity and temperature are large penalties for the same pressure. Cool things off or slow them down, and life goes up disproportionately.