Service Life Of 1917 Barrel

[Daan Kemp]

Few people ever shoot that much, except serious shooting competition. In the military usually only machine guns.

So, depending on the ammunition you're using, you might find that your rifle is fine with one combination of bullet and propellent but atrocious with others. Those rifles were intended for military issue ammunition but even then some would be very accurate and others not.

Experiment until you find the right ammunition combination and keep to it, then keep shooting until the groups open up too much, then start experimenting again.

Short answer, there are too many factors influencing barrel life in a military firearm to say for sure, because nobody keeps track of the number of rounds fired through them. Read the books about the P14/M1917, somewhere it may mention what they found when testing the rifles before final acceptance,, that might be for the P14 only. Although I doubt the USA worried too much about that when they decided to change the P14 to 30-06 as it was 'available' and 'tested'.

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