Feelin’ Hot Hot Hot
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s a bit warm outside. I know it’s hard to believe we’re having hot weather in the summer but temperatures keep climbing and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any breaks for a while.
I should note that this article pertains to those of you who shoot at outdoor ranges or outside in general. If you shoot in one of those air conditioned indoor ranges, you probably don’t have to worry as much. However, I didn’t open up my browser to type up a discussion about weather alone. I’m typing this as a warning: this heat is dangerous.
I don’t mean in terms of heat exhaustion and such, but that is something else to keep in mind if, like me, you shoot at an outdoor range. I’m talking more about your ammo and the guns that shoot it. Here’s an experiment: go look at your gun collection. Chances are most, if not all of them are black.
Now, as Mr. Wizard (or Bill Nye for those of you under 30) told us long ago, darker colors absorb more light and therefore get hotter than lighter colors. This means that your dark colored guns and magazines, if left in the sun, will get hot fast.
This heating will cook the bullets inside the magazines. According to the Mythbusters, you’d have to cook the bullets to between 400-500 degrees before they’d go off on their own so I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that. What you WILL have to worry about is that when bullets get hot, the explosion of the powder is more energetic and that can lead to a damaged gun. Depending on what kind of rounds and their loads, the results could be a catastrophic failure of your weapon.
At the same time, many guns have tight tolerances. I’m going to talk in depth about just what that means in a future article. The short of it for now, however, is that there is a bit of give in the moving parts of a gun to allow for movement and expansion from shooting and other things. If something goes outside of those tolerances, the gun usually stops working. If it’s too far out of tolerances…that’s right: catastrophic failure.
So when your dark colored gun is sitting in the light energy generated by a ball of fire with an outer surface temperature of 9,940 degrees fahrenheit, it’s going to warm up. Again referring to Mr. Wizard: when things get hot they expand. So as your gun heats up those tolerances are going to get thrown off. If the gun heats up too much and you try to fire it, you get a broken gun.
So what can you do to minimize the heating of your gun? First off, keep them out of the sun. If there isn’t much shade, get a couple of light colored towels (white, preferably) and use them to cover your gun and magazines between use. The thick towels will insulate from the outer air and the light color will reflect the sunlight instead of absorbing it.
If you really want to go all out, get one of those soft side coolers and a cold pack and store your ammo or loaded magazines in there. Don’t go crazy with the cold packs and I wouldn’t store my gun in there, however, because you don’t want condensation forming on your stuff as that can lead to rusting. Cooling the cold pack in the refrigerator before going out instead of the freezer is a great way to cut down on potential moisture.
Other than that, drink a lot of water and put on some sunscreen. It’s an oven out there. Be safe!
Images used under Creative Commons License from SashaW and kcdsTM respectively.
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