Barrel wear and swaged bullets made from fired cases

[Vander Donckt]

Shooting 15000 .40 s&w swaged bullets from 9mm cases and a totally worn out barrel now.
First 1/2 inch is a smooth bore now.
What are your experiences, is there greater wear noticeable with your swaged bullets on the barrel?
Test give a hardness of 45 HB.

[reed1911]

No more so than regular jacketed would do. 15K rounds is pretty well past the life of a .40. I'm sure you were running them at normal velocity, which is fairly hot for a SA Pistol. Lots of guys don't shoot that in a lifetime.

While cartridge brass is harder than jackets, not by much. At least not when compared to barrel steel.

[Vander Donckt]

The gun is a SVI Infinity .40 for ipsc and has already fired +75000 normally reload ammo also.
As ipsc shooter I use between 200 and 400 bullets every week for training and competition.
My friend hase a glock 17 gen1 that shot more then 220000 reload ammo.

I was going to make .223 from .22 cases for my STI sporting rifle, are 22 cases softer dan 9mm brass or the same?

[Hickory]

I was going to make .223 from .22 cases for my STI sporting rifle, are 22 cases softer dan 9mm brass or the same?

When annealing 22 lr brass, take care to not over do it. If you burn too much of the zinc out of them it can cause a lot of copper fouling. Zinc helps reduce the friction of the bullet.

I've shot a lot of these bullets and can't complain about their performance on varmints.

[reed1911]

.22 LR brass is both softer as well as much thinner.

[Vander Donckt]

Thanks for the info.
15000 bullets for a gun really isn't much.
A good gun would still have to be able to cope with a minimum 100000 shots as a ipsc gun.
for people who have it as a defense weapon shooting 15000 rounds could take a life time.
at dynamic sports shooting we consume a lot of ammunition a gun would not last long if 15000 is over live time for a .40

[aaronraad]

If you have the opportunity to pick and choose which brass cartridges you are having swaged into projectiles, look for something with a high copper content closer to the standard gilding metal (Cu95/Zn5) used commercially or the (Cu90/Zn10) also allowable for mil-spec jackets.

Here is some comparisons done on some rifle cases:

www.accurateshooter.com- technical-articles - x-ray-spectrometry-of-cartridge-brass (http://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/x-ray-spectrometry-of-cartridge-brass/)

What was the projectile(s) used in the '+75,000 normally reload ammo'?

'First 1/2 inch is a smooth bore now' - what is the typical measure for IPSC pistol barrel wear?

I understand Schuemann (http://www.schuemann.com/) set-up the SVI production, do you know what the final specifications SVI are running with? Schuemann indicate 0.001" to 0.002" increase in bore diameter before accuracy is notably affected in their 416R barrels (http://www.schuemann.com/Portals/0/Documentation/Webfile_Barrel%20Steel.pdf)

I can understand an extended service life from the Glock 17 Gen 1 if is was fitted with a polygonal rifled barrel.

[Prospector Howard]

Good question, aaronraad. What type of bullets were the other projectiles in the 75000+ rounds of normally reloaded ammo? The intro was a little deceiving. 15000 swaged bullets, oh and by the way there was another 75000 other rounds shot in it before too. Also what type of bullets were shot in your friends Glock 17 that has 220,000 reloaded ammo through it? If they were lead boolits then it would make sense. I have 10's of thousands of rounds of swaged brass jacketed bullets through my .223's and haven't noticed any "extra" barrel wear.

[Zymurgy50]

Zinc reduces the coefficient of friction in a copper alloy, cartridge brass (usually 70cu/30zn) has a lower coefficient of friction than gliding metal jackets (95cu/5zn).

[fredj338]

The gun is a SVI Infinity .40 for ipsc and has already fired +75000 normally reload ammo also.
As ipsc shooter I use between 200 and 400 bullets every week for training and competition.
My friend hase a glock 17 gen1 that shot more then 220000 reload ammo.

I was going to make .223 from .22 cases for my STI sporting rifle, are 22 cases softer dan 9mm brass or the same?
If the bbl already had that many rds, what makes you think it was softened brass jackets? Annealed 22lr cases are a lot softer than gilding metal, I doubt that is causing the bbl wear.

[Gunnut 45/454]

Fred
Agreed that barrel was well used ! OP thats is the price of shooting as you do ! Retire the barrel and get a new one.

[fredj338]

Fred
Agreed that barrel was well used ! OP thats is the price of shooting as you do ! Retire the barrel and get a new one.
Yep, unless you are shooting lead bullets, 90K rds is pretty much going to wear the throat of any bbl, even a low pressure 45acp. One reason all I shoot anymore is lead, pistol or rev, but mostly rev. Pistol bbls are cheap, new revolvers are not.

[Vander Donckt]

I agree that The barrel already hat a lot of shooting done.mostly mpf and los bullets en a view douzend lead bullets.
I mostly shot the swaged bullets at The end of its life.
Precision went from good to very bad in between two competition.
I used mixed 9 mm cases.
Gun hase a new barrel new from Jurgen flass.
The 220000 in the glock are mpf 123 grains cast copperplated(electrolise) and stil shooting training with it.