Match barrel Vs Fluted barrels

Hi,

I have a fluted barrel on my .338 Lapua Mag and was wondering if shooting 4-5 shots in a min will get the barrel too hot to be erratic?

I don't mean shooting 4-5 shots every min continuously but say if you did rapid fire trying to take out 10 targets as quick as possible, will that make the barrel hot enough for the rounds to go wild?

Will having a match barrel make any difference here?

Thanks

[ 12-10-2003: Message edited by: ScREWtop ]

I don't know how big the barrel is now, but, I wouldn't think that 10 shots should be a problem. That is part of the trouble of shooting 1K like we do in a match is the barrel temp going high enough to make the groups open up. The 338LM is a BIG gun and if this is a lightweight barrel, it's gonna get pretty hot because it has no mass. You said it's a fluted barrel so it must be a heavy bbl gun, and again, you are the best person to decide if it's opening up or not. I don't have a cartridge that big on any of my guns, but, none of them seem to get wild after 10 shots either.

As for "Match" barrels. I have had all my match barrels fluted until the most recent one and I would have done it if the company would have tapered it and done it. I've had people say that fluted barrels have no place in match shooting, yet, the annual aggs have been won with them so who knows. I cannot find a difference in performance between the fluted and straight barrels. I like the way they look and they're easier to hang onto. They are stiffer for barrels of equal weight and length, but arguements go both ways on that too. I will say this, if your gun opens up and gets wild after only a few shots, it's not the flutes in the barrel.

Thanks 4mesh063 thats what I wanted to hear. Great to know that 10 shots shouldn't overheat barrels.

Sometimes it's hard to say, i.e., I melted my silencer after shooting only 50 rounds on the H&K SL8-4 .223 using 80gr match loads.

What brand of silencer did you have? That shouldn't have happened. Look at AWC I have their CQB and it has been smoking hot many time without any problems, I am planning on buying a thundertrap in the near future, hopefully put it on my 338 Lapua. Now that would be a tight combination!

It was a local made over-the-barrel silencer I put on my SL8-4. I had some 80gr SMK hot rounds thru it and poof. It was so freaking hot and was like melting we decided not to shoot it for safety reasons.