Hello Harry Eales,
Be that your opinion, is OK. But in most cases people just believe what they have read, and their opinions are not based on personal shooting experience or controlled testing. There is much "folk-lore" in the shooting game, and just because something is repeated over-and-over-and-over, doesn't make it so.
I'm an R&D Engineer and my experiences are based on testing and actual "shooting" of over a hundred antique arms, and I will continue to shoot smokeless powder and jacketed bullets, with little concern.
My "experience" is based on 50 years of actual shooting, and thus my "opinions" are backed up by this.
I have documented shooting over 9000 rounds loaded with smokeless powder through my Antique Stevens Schuetzen rifle, and these is no appreciable wear to either the throat or the rifling.
Similarly I have shot hundreds of "full house loads" with jacketed bullets and smokeless powder through my 1883 45-70 cal. Bullard lever action for years, and it still shoots minute of angle with its crisp rifling.
I could go on and on, but I won't bore the readers with a list of all the different antique guns that I shoot. The list list is extensive, and the shooting is documented in my many journals.
In reality, I have yet to have someone tell me "first hand" that they have conducted any barrel wear tests, and found that after "X" number of smokless powder shots, or after firing "X" number jacketed bullets, that the rifling was measured to show that it has worn "X" thousands of an inch. It just ain't so.
And in reference to steel jackets bullets being fired, I know they weren't around in the black powder era, but they were plentiful in the 1920's through the 1970's, and perhaps it was "then" - during that time, that they were used which destroyed the riflng. Even today, many, many, military bullets are found to look like ordinary jacketed bullets, until testing with a magnet reveals them to have copper plated steel jsckets.
