Quoted:
shot out is a poor choice of terms- most of the guns that most people call shot out it is actually more wear from a GI cleaning rod than shooting wear
Heres a summery of Part 1 of a article in the Garand Collectors Association:
The object of this test was to clean a barrel by stroking a conventional , segmented GI cleaning rod in and out of the muzzle end being as abusive as we could. Remember the purpose of this test was to ERODE the muzzle. We started with a barrel that gauged exactly a 2 and wondered how many strokes it would require to deteriorate the muzzle to a reading of 3 on the gauge.
One stroke consisted of running the rod, with a patch on it, thru to the chamber and then pulling it out again. We were very careful during this test sequence to bear FIRMLY on the wall of the muzzle for the entire stroke. Strokes were done in lots of 50 , and care was given during each lot of 50 to go "all around the clock" so that wear would be as uniform as possible.
In our opinion the useful life of a M1 barrel is approximatly 6,000 rds. Our experience has shown that after 6,000 rds a reasonable marksman will detect poorer scores on his target. The "cone of dispersion'
opens up noticeably beyond 6,000 rds. due to muzzle wear and throat erosion.
Now lets look at some data. So far we have aggressivly stroked this barrel 35,000 times and are approxamatly 71.5 % of the distance from 2.0 to 3.0 on our gauge. If we project this out it will take approx. 50,000 strokes to degrade the muzzle by one graduation, and this is being as abusive as we can with a segmented steel rod.
If we assume that a rifle is cleaned every 50rds (average of practice and match shootings) then 6000 rds would equal 1,440 cleaning strokes under my cleaning procedure. This is just 3% of the distance from the 2.0 to 3.0 on our gauge!
It seems reasonable to us that if we used a one piece , coate dcleaning rod as oppsoed to a segmented, steelone, that we could "conservatively" double the number of strokes required to degrade the muzzle by 1 graduation on the gauge. If that is true we could clean a rifle after every rd fired and not come close to degrading the muzzle by one graduation over the useful life of the barrel.
We believe that the reasonable conclusion drawn from this test is that cleaning an M1 rifle from the muzzle with a 1 piece coated rod and using a small amount of care will have minimal effect on the muzzle erosion as measured with a conventional gauge
A guy over on Battlerifles forum did a experiment.
He had a Garand with Throat Weat and Muzzle Wear of bath around 1.5 Over the course of the year he fired 3000rds rounds of M2 Ball through it. Cleaning every 250 rounds with an Otis pull-thru Cleaning system and using a bore-guide to center the pull-thru so it doesn't touch the bore. Firing wasboth rapid and slow-fire.
After 3000rds this is the results:
Op-rod spring- New when started, length was 20". Length after 3K rounds- 19-1/4".
Op-rod- tab showing wear, right at .317, started out at .319. Piston shows no wear, still mikes at .526.
Internals show no real appreciable wear.
Gas-Cylinder- still mikes at .530
Throat Wear- Final measure is 3.75
Muzzle Wear- Final measure is 3.5!
Muzzle Wear went up 2 full increments on the gauge!
I'm not trying to start any arguements guys but just giving some real interesting facts to think about. While I'm sure improper cleaning can add some to MW . But these real world results sure seem to point to something else. Seems that actual use and number of rds plays a bigger facter .