doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com hot barrels

Soft solder will melt (flow) around 375 to 450 DF. Wood will start to smolder at the upper end of those temps. 120 DF is uncomfortable to hold, 150 DF is painful. I have experienced problems with guns not opening easily when hot. I thought metal expansion was the cause as the gun opened normally when it cooled off.

Chief

In my early days afield I've often experienced dove shoots where the doves where so intent on using the field that it was impossible to keep a gun loaded; the action was best described as load and shoot, load and shoot. The barrels of my double gun would become blistering hot from shooting 700X reloads; they would be impossibly hot to touch, and I'd find myself carefully holding the barrels with two fingers on the splinter (didn't know what a shooting glove was in those days). And although I never experienced any heat related loose rib or barrel issues, I did have the stock on an old Stevens double splinter while dove shooting one Saturday afternoon. But the birds were flying too well to leave the field, so I kept shooting; and the splinters kept flying until the stock eventually fell off the gun. Wish I'd had some duct tape in my dove stool that day!

i would present the opinion that if shooting a gun into a hot barrel condition was going to cause failure at the rib -->

Our British friends would be giving us lots of examples from driven shoots,

that- like our southern warm weather dove shoots would seem to be the test cases

Maybe that is why our British friends often bought guns in pairs. Maybe that is why they start the football season during the dove season, so we can listen to the game, while waiting for the barrels to cool.
Mike