Wearing Out Firearms

[Demi-human]

So...

It looks like I'll never wear out my salt bath nitride treated, stainless nineteen eleven, in my lifetime.

GOOD!

 

[Jenrick]

Former full time LE firearms instructor, with a LT who said I could shoot all the ammo we had, he'd just order more. Challenge accepted.

From December 2012 till our transition in late 2016 I was issued a S&W M&P .40. It was my range gun/teaching gun. Prior to teaching a new class I would routinely put down 250-500 rounds a day for a month or so (yes I once shoot 10,000 rounds in a month, I checked my ammo check out logs to verify this) getting things sorted out as far as drill times, etc. On off weeks, I would still routinely shoot around 100 rounds a day, so I'd average about 500 rounds a week. Rough back of the envelope math, I shot between 100,000 and 200,000 (as a guess I'd say a bit above 150,000) rounds in the 4 years I had that pistol. It was still a serviceable pistol, but comparing to a NIB pistol you could definitely feel the wear and tear. Another year or so and I'd imagine I'd have seen the frame start to delaminate around the rails, or possibly crack in some of the higher stress areas. As far as parts replacements the only parts that were not replaced were the slide and frame. In that 4 year period all other internals including the barrel were replaced at least once (I think I went through 12 slide releases).

-Jenrick

 

[MedWheeler]

Like stchman wrote earlier (post 13), I have too many guns to shoot any one of them enough to wear it out.

Of course, internet lore dictates that some of mine that haven't been shot more than a hundred rounds or so each will wear out in the next couple of outings.

 

[Sovblocgunfan]

I haven’t worn out a firearm personally, but have purchased them in a close to worn out condition. They now look raggedy, but shoot well. I know there is a fella on SGW with an 1100 with a claimed 250k on it. At that point the receiver cracked. He replaced the receiver and returned the gun to service.

I do have a close friend with an Ed Brown with more than 30k on it. He changes the recoil spring but that’s about it. With the exception of a bit of holster wear on the muzzle, it is still brand new.

 

[tactikel]

.22-250 Mauser action with a Douglas barrel. Just over 2K rounds (I load hot) groups went from 0.3 to 1.3 MOA. Time for a barrel set back.

 

[Everready73]

Check out the Henderson defense threads at ar15.com they are a rental range in Vegas and the other posts on service life of various firearms. They go through a ridiculous skiing if ammo monthly.

 

[Slamfire]

One aspect that concerns me is the breakage of parts along the way. Not so much as the current production but for some older ones where the manufacturer does not exist. Like the Star Firestar M43 9mm I have. Broken extractors were known and now keeping the gun running for those small parts will be challenging. In that regard I don't shoot it much. These days having some parts duplicated is possible but at what relative expense to keep them going. (Like keeping an old car road worthy when the value is lowish.)

That is a real problem that affects everyone who has a rare, or oddball, vintage firearm, or vehicle. At some point in time, the things become logistically impossible to support. I have scoured junk yards for vintage vehicle parts, pulled worn out gear boxes that were only slightly better than the one in the vehicle, but in time, junkyards send old vehicles straight to the crusher as the thing will sit too long on the lot, and the scrap value of the vehicle brings a faster return. I have scoured gun shows looking for parts, such as extractors such as my GEW 98/40, a rifle only made by the Germans, in Hungary, during WW2. No one makes replacement extractors for those rifles.

It was at least thirty years before I figured out how to take about the bolt of my Stevens M416. I am glad I took that long, because I feared, rightly so, that I would break something, and not be able to replace the broken part. As it was, I puzzled over the thing, disassembled the front of the bolt, which was easy, but the back of the bolt had hidden fasteners . I was able to find a WW2 TM,because the M416 was used as a training rifle, but the pictures are so fuzzy that they were not of any help. But in time, it came to me, and I was able to dissemble the bolt mainspring assembly.



I was fortunate that I was able to get my M70 parts while old man Wisner was still making parts. His son took over the business, stopped making M70 bolts, firing pin assemblies, and just seems to be selling off the old man's inventory. http://www.wisnersinc.com/model/winchester-model-70-pre-64/

 

[jmorris]

Never have “worn out” one.

I have fixed a bunch that wouldn’t work because of parts that had worn out though.

Even went through a few “what if” threads on NFA firearms that could be “worthless” too because of wear or catastrophic failure.

Never found one I couldn’t fix, yet and always up to a challenge.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

I know he's a guy on Youtube but Hickok45 says he has 80k rounds through his Smith M29. He says they are mostly .44 Specials.
Most of us won't approach that many rounds through a single firearm in our lifetime.

I'm still a youngster on the comfortable side of 40 so that's not many years to draw from, but I've had guns for 25+ years that still function as though they are new.

 

[Kaybee]

Recently talked to a guy at the range that was pretty close to wearing out his Browning 1911-22. The aluminum slide was getting damaged by the metal slide stop. It was still working but it looked pretty chewed up. I didn’t get a round count.

 

[Poper]

I can honestly tell you my younger brother completely wore out a Remington 11-87. It began to have failure to extract issues, then it wouldn't go fully into battery, and some other issues. He had it fixed once, but the second time it broke (the same season) the gunsmith told him it wasn't worth fixing. He got it sometime in the very early '90's and it gave up the ghost about 4 years ago. It looked like it had been through both world wars and then some. Brother Poper is really hard on his gear and uses it nearly every day during hunting season from late August grouse opener though last day of Pheasant, usually 12/31. He hunts ducks, geese, pheasants, grouse and Hungarian Partridge. Funny thing; he refused to hunt doves but would never say why. Lord only knows how many rounds went down the barrel of that old 11-87! Most of them heavy magnum waterfowl loads. My estimate is it will take 25 years of hard use and marginal care to wear out a Remington autoloader shotgun.

I couldn't begin to guess what it would take to wearout the typical rifle or hangun. Lots more shooting than I am likely to ever do, though!

 

[JohnKSa]

I have no idea of the fatigue life of a barrel, they are a pressure vessel, I expect at some point they will rupture.

From a liability standpoint, I don't think any firearm maker could stay in business if the expected failure mode of a barrel is to eventually rupture.

If that were what makers expected, at the very least, I would expect to see warnings in owner's manuals emphatically warning that barrels can rupture after X rounds have been shot through them. The idea of selling hundreds/thousands of items which will eventually fail by blowing up in someone's hand/in front of someone's face would cause a gunmaker's legal department to freak out.

 

[lysanderxiii]

...I have no idea of the fatigue life of a barrel, they are a pressure vessel, I expect at some point they will rupture....

I wouldn't worry about fatigue rupture. The thickness of a barrel is so large in relation to the loads, any fatigue would most like result in flaking off of the inner bore rendering the barrel hopelessly inaccurate long before you run the risk of rupture.

Unless you are the kind of guy that like to do mag-dumps, magazine after magazine until you over heat the barrel.

 

[Steve S.]

I would suspect that the average gun owner will slowly beat up the cosmetics of a gun thru carry use long before ever remotely approaching mechanical wear out. The gun will look old and used on the exterior but the interior tolerances will be pristine. It would take a huge amount of shooting to wear out an average gun; I cannot imagine that it happens all that much. I would guess that most guns die a cosmetic death long before a mechanical one.

 

[bannockburn]

Still working on wearing one of my guns out. Probably the highest round count would be my Hi-Power, in continuous use for over 30 years. No visible signs of even being close to wearing out or in need of any parts having to be replaced.

In terms of how's it looking on the outside with all the wear and tear over the years; well let's just say appearances never really mattered with this particular piece! I think the new Hogue grips do give it a touch of class. Thought it could use a bit of "dressing up" after all these years of wearing Pachmayrs!

 

[rbernie]

Dave McCracken used to talk about high mileage Rem 870's eventually wearing out - unrepairable receiver cracks around the ejection port at 250K rounds or thereabouts. It was also not uncommon for many low-end break-open shotguns of a prior generation to be eventually shot so much that they were too loose to shoot, and were not designed for rebuild and therefore had to be scrapped.

 

[sarge83]

My late father-in-law shot out the rifling in the barrel on a .22LR mossberg single shot rifle. His father had used it, he used it and his oldest son used it and they shot a lot! They sent it back to mossberg and had them replace the barrel. His oldest son still has it and uses it occasionally.

 

[ATLDave]

I wouldn't worry about fatigue rupture. The thickness of a barrel is so large in relation to the loads, any fatigue would most like result in flaking off of the inner bore rendering the barrel hopelessly inaccurate long before you run the risk of rupture.

Unless you are the kind of guy that like to do mag-dumps, magazine after magazine until you over heat the barrel.

And even then, I would expect the most likely failure mode to be total erosion of the rifling and eventual stretching of the barrel and chamber to the point where pressures were diminished... I think it would likely turn into a noisy pop-gun before it burst under pressure.

 

[Gridley]

Former full time LE firearms instructor, with a LT who said I could shoot all the ammo we had, he'd just order more. Challenge accepted.

From December 2012 till our transition in late 2016 I was issued a S&W M&P .40. It was my range gun/teaching gun. Prior to teaching a new class I would routinely put down 250-500 rounds a day for a month or so (yes I once shoot 10,000 rounds in a month, I checked my ammo check out logs to verify this) getting things sorted out as far as drill times, etc. On off weeks, I would still routinely shoot around 100 rounds a day, so I'd average about 500 rounds a week. Rough back of the envelope math, I shot between 100,000 and 200,000 (as a guess I'd say a bit above 150,000) rounds in the 4 years I had that pistol. It was still a serviceable pistol, but comparing to a NIB pistol you could definitely feel the wear and tear. Another year or so and I'd imagine I'd have seen the frame start to delaminate around the rails, or possibly crack in some of the higher stress areas. As far as parts replacements the only parts that were not replaced were the slide and frame. In that 4 year period all other internals including the barrel were replaced at least once (I think I went through 12 slide releases).

-Jenrick

Particularly appreciate this one as my CC is a S&W M&P 40. I've only replaced the magazine catch so far - do you remember whether you did that, and how many times? Internet lore says some of the early production had the metal insert improperly hardened (the one I replaced did appear worn). I'm a little worried about seeing 12 slide releases in 150,000 rounds; would you please describe the failure that was having you replace those? Apparently I need to keep an eye out for that. :-(

 

[Elkins45]

I have seen Remington 742s that were worn out due to the poor design of the bolt and barrel engagement surfaces. It didn’t take all that many rounds either, but this is an exception rather than the rule. They would need a new barrel and bolt to be returned to service.

The replacement 7400 doesn’t have this problem because they redesigned the bolt.

 

[theotherwaldo]

I have a number of well-worn firearms but only one that is truly worn out.
It's an R/G 38 that I found in a hollowed-out book that was donated to my library. The zamak frame was so stretched out that the barrel wobbles and the cylinder slides back and forth on the crane.
I still use it to fire noise-maker blanks on holidays.

 

[hdwhit]

I've never shot any gun enough to "wear it out".

Of course, for our present conversation, the ATF has resolved the "ship of Theseus" / "grandfather's axe" paradox by defining the part bearing the serial number as the firearm. As long as it is still present, it is the same gun.

 

[Deltaboy1984]

No I Never wore one out!

 

[jmorris]

I know he's a guy on Youtube but Hickok45 says he has 80k rounds through his Smith M29. He says they are mostly .44 Specials.
Most of us won't approach that many rounds through a single firearm in our lifetime.

80k was under 3 years when I was “heavy” into competitive pistol shooting. Lots more than that through a few pistols. One of my SVI’s has over 250,000 through it as it was built in more than one caliber so served in several divisions.

The stainless is kind of beat up where it rides in the holster as is the mag well but the TIN on the barrels are still completely intact.



Enough rounds I actually shot the Bomar off but a little TIG weld fixed that problem.

 

[MosinT53Hunter]

Wore one out? No, never, but I was given an old High Standard 999 22.lr that might as well have been worn out. It fired...half the time, was out of time, and in the past someone drilled holes on the top of the frame for a type of primitive scope mount. I took it to a gunsmith, and told me the bad news, which was, the frame was cracked in several places (aluminum) and the "custom" scope holes contributed to some of the cracking. Its been taken out of commission...sad thing was, it was one of the first ones made of that series.