Barrel warp

[n102788 6]

Hi all, I'm out in the middle of no where in mn and brought the saiga. My friends ak was acting up and he shot 150 rounds 5 30rd mags rapid fore only to stop to change mags to check how many problems he would have. I got jealous seeing him shoot all those rounds off so I loaded up 5 mags and did it myself. My wood handguard started smoking (they are a little shorter now because my lhg retainer burned some of the wood off the ends) and the barrel paint grayed (back to original color now). My question is how many rounds have you guys cooked off rapid fire without stop other than to change mags, and how many rapid fire rounds do you think it would take to warp the saiga barrel? Thanks all.

[yakdung 2,926]

Hi all, I'm out in the middle of no where in mn and brought the saiga. My friends ak was acting up and he shot 150 rounds 5 30rd mags rapid fore only to stop to change mags to check how many problems he would have. I got jealous seeing him shoot all those rounds off so I loaded up 5 mags and did it myself. My wood handguard started smoking (they are a little shorter now because my lhg retainer burned some of the wood off the ends) and the barrel paint grayed (back to original color now). My question is how many rounds have you guys cooked off rapid fire without stop other than to change mags, and how many rapid fire rounds do you think it would take to warp the saiga barrel? Thanks all.

 

I wouldn't worry about it:

 

Yakdung

[echoside190 127]

You'd have to do some ungodly amount of bump firing to screw a barrel up. The most I've done at once was a little over 200 rounds as quick as I could unload and besides making the front part of my barrel a funny grayish color for a while and forgetting the 74 brake gets HOT and I leaned it against the wood table I was using and made the table char some everything checked out. Unless you use some kind of voodoo magic and shoot an untold amount of lead down range the only potential damage to a Saiga barrel I've seen or can think of is getting that one in a blue moon squib that will cycle the action and sending another round down the spout and rupturing the barrel.

[physicsnerd 139]

You'd probably have to do in order of >500 rounds to warp the barrel. And that would be from continuous firing. There are videos of M4 tests where one of the barrels finally melts off but it was a lot of rounds.

[t3mac21 1]

The barrel didn't melt on the M4, the gas tube did.

 

 

But, seriously, you're not going to warp the barrel. It would take a shit ton of rounds. I've charred my wood grips on the inside but, no mechanical or barrel damage.

Edited June 22, 2011 by t3mac21

[fauxknight 30]

The barrel didn't melt on the M4, the gas tube did.

 

The barrel was pretty much slagged on the M4, on the heavier barreled M4A1 the barrel held up just fine and the gas system gave out. This was posted in the general section a couple of days ago. The M4 lasted 535 rounds before the barrel gave out and the M4A1 lasted 911 before the gas system gave out. On the M4A1 the polymer handguard even catches fire much like the wooden handguard in that AK video.

 

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/m4-and-m4a1-guns/

 

That was full auto testing though with stacks of magazines sitting around. I don't imagine that you would ever have that kind of issue on a semi-auto AK. Figure you can get at least several hundred rounds off before even thinking about having an issue, even in one of the poorer made AKs, theres a lot of variance in AKs out there though so there is no hard number.

[t3mac21 1]

I posted the m4a1 video in that thread, FWIW

 

You'd never encounter that situation in real life either, you're not even carrying that much ammo, and you'll never dump mags like that. It's strictly a lab test, or something you might find someone on youtube doing to their own rifle, to "test" it.

 

 

You can ruin anything if you set your mind to it, but, with a semi-auto AK type rifle, you're not gonna break anything, aside from smoking or melting handguards.