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What's the barrel life of the 6.5x47?

Nobody has worn a 6.5x47L out yet.

FYI: A 243 set up for LR shooting has about 50% less life than the same set up in 260. 2000-2500 rnds in a 260 vs 1200-1500 in a 243. Basically, more powder thru a smaller hole = less barrel life.
 
What SFdriver said. I'm sure there have been some barrels worn out by now, but so few that it would be foolish to draw any conclusions as yet. Only time will tell.

ray
 
I expect to see a long life,8 to 10 thousand, in my Scalpel. I am shooting 6.5x47 Lapua brass, 9 gram,139grain) Lapua scenar moly coated bullets, RL 15 powder 37 grains and CCI small rifle magnum primers. The barrel is Krieger and the rifle made by Mr Pritchett at Surgeon.
I am running 2837 fps at the muzzle on a 90° day. Accuracy is 1/2 MOA,and less) to 600 and sub MOA to 1000,about 7/10).
 
Hey Doc,

Keep a good round count on that for reference and shoot the crap out of it! I'm interested to see someone shoot out a barrel. That is a warm load...moly is helping you there...

Cheers,
JB
 
Interesting thread.

I can officially declare the throat of my 6X47 Lapua shot-out at 1675 rounds. My load has been 39 grains of VVN560 and Berger 105 VLD's at 3075fps.

For the last 700 rounds, I have been chasing the lands about every 100 rounds, although I changed bullet batches in there too.

My summary is that it was a difficult cartridge to keep accurate and it was extremely picky about powder. Too bad RL-17 isn't available up here in Canada yet. When I got it working, it worked very well indeed, but I have fists full of hair in my range box...

Not sure I will chamber in it again, but if I do I would not go with the .275 neck that the Whitley,6mmhot.com) designed reamer specified. Too sloppy for the the amount of turning the Lapua cases needed to uniform their wall thickness.
 
You got that right about the lapua brass..... I was very dissappointed. I have used better Winchester brass at 1/4 the price.
 
Brass may be Better Now
AT my club, two guys have recently had 6.5x47s chambered for a no-turn neck. Both are using brass purchased in the last 4-8 weeks. So far the necks on this brass appear to be more consistent than the first couple of batches that reached the country. Both rifles are also delivering outstanding accuracy with Reloder 15 and 123 Scenars and 130gr Bergers respectively. The 123 scenars in the 6.5x47 produced a 1.5" group which, to my knowledge, was the 2d smallest 600-yard group shot in competition at my club this year.

barnardx550c.jpg
 
About better 6.5 x 47 brass being shipped. I concur because I bought the next batch of brass after Obtunded did from the same dealer and it has been very good and consistent brass requiring very little brass removal to cleanup the necks.
 
My Rock Creek 5R barrel has 1500 rounds of 123 Scenars at 3000fps. The throat has moved .020 and it still shoots 1/2 MOA or better.
 
Guess it depends on your accuracy requirements.

I shoot F class and work with a 2MPH rule.

About the best I can judge wind is to 2MPH so I want the bullet to not drift out of the X ring if I screw up a wind call. Certainly, no worse then the 10 ring.

The X ring is 1/2 min so my rifle has to shoot no more then 1/3 min,calm air mechanical accuracy). Gives me some wiggle room to screw up.

At that level of accuracy, I will consider barrels worn much sooner then those who can live with a 'fat' 1/2 min.

I would suggest that 1500rds is going to start pushing my limits for accuracy.

Jerry
 

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