Ruger revolver lifespan

Status
Not open for further replies.

Mr. Mosin

Member
Joined
Jun 26, 2019
Messages
2,090
*Theoretically* if one was to purchase a GP100 or SP101, and run only full house .357 Magnums through said gun, how many rounds would it take before the gun was just... worn out ?
 
Two different frame sizes there to consider. I think one may wear a SP frame out if they made a point of doing it. I don't think many people unless they are shooting competition and training daily would wear out a GP frame. If you're buying factory ammo at $300 per 1000 I think you would need 10,000 to wear out a GP (guessing) which is $3k along with a LOT of time as well as a LOT more than the handgun cost.

I have a goal to wear out a handgun and I haven't met that goal yet. Have broken parts with wear but don't have one yet that I can say is simple done.
 
They are not totally unbreakable. You could probably expect to break a transfer bar at some point although I never have. Maybe eventually some other issues might crop up. I have shot several thousand rounds of full power 125gr JHP loads through a GP100 with no ill effects on the action--that is pretty much all I have ever shot through it and for awhile it was the only firearm I had so it got a lot of use. I wish I had kept good records back then. There is flame cutting on the top strap, but not enough to worry about.

Eventually the barrel will wear out, and that will happen quicker with jacketed rounds than with lead.

The cost of ammo required to wear out a good quality gun is so much that a person who can afford to do so can also easily afford to replace the gun when it finally wears out.

Also, it's hard to wear out good quality guns unless you only have a few guns and keep them a long time. I have put a lot of rounds downrange over the years, but when I look at the number that any single gun has actually fired, it tends to be much lower than I expect.
 
I've put @3000 full house 357mag ( and several hundred 38+P) through each of my GP100s and one shows minor forcing cone wear and the other shows next to none. Both lockup tight and both have better triggers now than new. My experience shooting full house 357 mags with my SP101 tells me that your hands/wrists will wear out long before the gun does.
 
Last edited:
I talked with Bullseye shooters who shot hundreds of thousands of rounds through their K frame revolvers. They were shooting, 148 LHBWC's and 2.7 grs Bullseye.

Extractor stars wore out. Cylinder hands wore and cylinder timing got out of whack. Firing pins broke. I have had transfer bars break.

If you shoot low pressure lead bullets, your barrel will last forever. One shooter had 600,000 rounds through his PPC revolver and it still shot two inch groups at 50 yards. A Bullseye shooter told me jacketed bullets wear a 45 ACP barrel out in 30,000 rounds. Might have still be rifling, but this guy was a target shooter and wanted two inches at 50 yards.

I doubt you will ever burst the cylinder, but know, Magnum rounds are hard on a gun. You can expect severe throat erosion with magnum rounds. With magnum rounds I would not doubt the crane would need refitting.
 
It can be done,an SP101owner on another forum I frequent had to send his 357 mag to Ruger to get the barrel replaced. Shot the piece enough to cause cracks in the forcing cone. Ruger replaced the barrel no questions asked free of charge.
 
It can be done,an SP101owner on another forum I frequent had to send his 357 mag to Ruger to get the barrel replaced. Shot the piece enough to cause cracks in the forcing cone. Ruger replaced the barrel no questions asked free of charge.

A good point. The heat input into the structure from magnums is much greater than standard 38 Special loads. Even though SAAMI specs for the 357 is 35,000 psia, you can bet most of the mini nukes that reloaders create are in the 40 kpsia to 50 kspia range. You always read posts where some reloader wants to know if exceeding manual maximums will blow up their pistol or revolver, and you know, they are not asking because they are not doing it. Well one of the issues of high pressure loads is extreme heat along with the extreme pressure and that will cause not only erosion, but crack the end of the barrel.
 
No one here can accurately predict the life of any firearm. Just too many variables. But when one wants to think about how many rounds they might get from a firearm, they need to consider the cost of those rounds in comparison to the cost of the firearm. IOWs, one usually has many times over in the cost of ammo, than the original cost of the firearm, by the time the firearm is "shot out". If one has no problem spending the monies for the ammo, the cost of the gun is really negligible.
 
With enough shooting, the lockwork will loosen up and eventually need rebuilding. The forcing cone will erode and eventually the barrel will need to be set back a thread or two and the forcing cone recut. Do that two or three times and you 'may' need a new barrel. But you'd be hard pressed to actually wear one out beyond sensible repair.
 
In the gun mags of many years ago they asked the same question. So I remember a couple of articles where they shot 5,000 rounds of full power 357 ammo in a gun, I don't remember which brand but at the end of 5,000 rounds there was no frame stretch and just a tiny bit of forcing cone erosion and maybe a little flame cutting but the gun still had a lot of life left in it.

So I looked on Midway and about the cheapest 357 ammo I could find was Federal American Eagle at .50 a round. Five thousand rounds works out to $2,400 in ammo cost. About four times the cost of the gun. And if you can bring yourself to shoot something besides full bore rounds your gun should last way past the 5,000 round mark. I don't think wearing the gun out will be an issue. But if you can afford the ammo to wear it out you can afford a new gun too.
 
@Ratshooter
If that's the test I remember, it was a SP101. They were shooting so quickly with it they were using a bucket of water to dunk in and cool it off with no noticeable wear.

With 110gr bullets and stupid amounts of H110/W296 or Lil' Gun you could eat away the forcing cone on a GP100 in pretty short order. Short being a couple thousand. With 158gr bullets, maybe 10k+

With regular pressure loads, it's effectively immortal as far as I'm concerned. Even "fragile" K-Frame magnums will last with reasonable magnum loads of 158gr ~1200fps.
 
@Ratshooter
If that's the test I remember, it was a SP101. They were shooting so quickly with it they were using a bucket of water to dunk in and cool it off with no noticeable wear.

With 110gr bullets and stupid amounts of H110/W296 or Lil' Gun you could eat away the forcing cone on a GP100 in pretty short order. Short being a couple thousand. With 158gr bullets, maybe 10k+

With regular pressure loads, it's effectively immortal as far as I'm concerned. Even "fragile" K-Frame magnums will last with reasonable magnum loads of 158gr ~1200fps.

No I don't think it was an SP-101. This was before the SP was out. I am thinking early GP-100 but who knows? I have slept many times since then but I do believe it was in the mid to late 1980s.

I started my center fire shooting and reloading career with a S&W model 19. Way back in 1982. I had a Speer #10 manual and several powders and many boxes of Speer bullets. I loaded every hot load I had bullets and powder for and shot them. A lot. I never had any problems with that gun being "Fragile" or cracking forcing cones or anything like that. And no timing issues either. And I shot that gun at least once a week and sometimes 3 times a week for a couple of years before the new wore off. I was poor and couldn't afford many guns yet. In the late 1989 period I used that same gun to shoot falling plate matches. Then I decided I needed something newer and sold it. I wish I hadn't done that.
 
You are eventually going to wear out anything. Along the way you may have some reasonably serious repair/replace to keep it running. Have a friend who worked in the NM desert in the middle of no where. He had some steel silhouettes made and placed on the other side of an arroyo. He had a Dillion 650, and a Ruger Redhawk in .44 mag thru which he shot several hundred rounds of .44 mags a day after work at the sihls. Did this off and on for several years. His load was 22.0gr 2400 and 240gr commercial cast SWCBBs. At the end of this time the forcing cone was eroded severely and the cylinder face was spider webbed from gas cutting. He sent it back to Ruger -- they replaced the barrel and cylinder and charged him for the work. Gun still worked fine after repairs/replacement.

If it were my gun, I wouldn't complain and be thankful for having the opportunity to shoot that much. In fact if the gun was totally useless after that kind of use, I would still be a happy camper.

It would be interesting to know how many folks have shot enough to actually wear out a revolver? By wear out, I mean shot to the point the frame/internals had to be replaced, not just required some repair or part replacement.

I'll start -- Smith & Wesson Model 329 Ti/Sc .44 mag. (most would agree this is a "carry a lot, shoot a little" gun.

I don't think that there is any question that the Ruger revolvers and very strong and capable of longevity exceeding most others on the market. I also think that for the majority (90% +) of shooters will never take advantage of that extra longevity. So, shoot what you like and hope that you are lucky enough to wear one out.

FWIW,

Paul
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top