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Posted: 4/16/2003 10:58:48 PM EDT
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Has anyone ever tried building/using a water jacket on a semi other than a full auto? Given the barrel heat generated by rapid fire of, say .308, I would think that a water jacket would be a wonderful thing. Obviously, given waters weight it can't be too terribly much. Water weighs 8lbs a gallon. On the down side, once water heats up it might be acting more as a heat retention device, similiar to coffee in a glass pot? I'm certainly no engineer & clearly have too many random thoughts. 
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| Hey Bob, I actually saw a few bolt action rifles that had a water cooled barrel. The barrels were a little larger than bull barrels and the water circulated through them. They were used out west hunting prarie dogs. They say shooting those little varmints all day can really heat up a barrel so this guy came up with the water cooled barrel. Its been a couple of years ago when I saw this but maybe you can find something about it on the web. |
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Shooting Times magazine had an article about 3 or 4 years ago on a fellow who built a water cooled varmint rifle.He used a giant Colman cooler filled with water and ice, and a pump powered by car batteries to circulate the water through the water jacket he machined for his barrel.The set up had enough capacity to cool two varmint rigs all day long.One draw back, not too portable.Look for a good spot and set up for the day.I think the cooler held something like 25 gallons of water. SKBY. |
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Actually retaining some heat is not bad. You can circulate the water through a radiator, so no matter how you cut it, it will cool faster than the steel of the barrel alone. Any device that increases the surface area (like fins, or other radiator) will imporve cooling. The advantage to this is that the liquid cools more uniformly than a barrel would, and you also get the cooling away from the barrel (in a condenser/radiator). That maintains even heating on the barrel itself. In the prarie dog example above, the liquid maintains a uniform and constant temp on the barrel. If you don't use one, you can get barrel droop because of the uneven heating of the sun on the top, and the uneven cooling caused by the forearm, etc. Not a big deal in normal shooting, but in stuff like that, it could make a difference. There's a thermal shield on the main gun of many tanks (like the Brit Callenger) to even out the heating of the barrel for similar reasons. The weight is the biggest factor. It won't take much figuring to see it's an unwieldly system. Ross |
| I think the weight would, *ahem*, outweigh the benefits. You'd have to be doing a LOT of trigger pulling in semi-auto to heat the barrel to the point that the water jacket would be useful. On a MG, I can understand it, but it is mostly out of use anymore. How many water cooled guns are in service right now? I can't think of a single one. |
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Several unlimited class 1000 yard shooters are experimenting with water cooled barrels; when there is a time limit for getting all the shots fired, the range is long, and the bullet speeds very high, it is important to keep every detailed variable constant for each shot. Not too practical for field guns that must be humped. |
This sort of shooting was what I had in mind as well as varmint. However, what about handgun? The weight of the barrel lug on a S&W 686 can't be much more than what a water jacket would weigh on a skinny barrel, is it? |
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