How many times has my rifle been fired?

[ecgate]

Is there anything that I can look at on my bolt or my barrel to tell me how many times my rifle has been fired? I'm asking because a buddy of mine allways looks at the bolt(firing pin side of it) and it seems if it isn't super clean he will tell me it has been fired a ton of times. And this stuff is good to know if your wanting to buy a used rifle. Any info will help. Thanks

[mjbgalt]

if it looks new, it could be.

but someone could clean a used one up very well and have it look new, too.

you can sort of tell by how much wear they have.

then again, could be that it's a safe queen that never get shot but gets played with or hunted with a lot.

guess what i am saying is, you never can tell.

[ecgate]

Thats what I try to tell him but he refuses to think that way. I think when you buy a used gun you don't know where it has been and never will.  It could have been fired thousands or hundreds.

[Empty Quiver]

I do know that you can see wear on an AR bolt face. You can make an educated guess as to the round count with some assumptions about cleaning and maintenance thrown in. I suppose every model would have a different look to learn though. A 700 shooting 300 ultra mags ought to wear much faster than a 30-06. Round count in one sense isn't as important. Like the old saying it ain't the years it's the mileage, !000 abusive rounds vs 3000 plinker loads for instance.

[Coyote Hunter]

The closest I've been able to tell is with my Ruger M77 (slide safety) in .257 Roberts and my Marlin 1985 in .45-70.

The Ruger was made in 1989 and I acquired it in January of 2004.  There were no marks in the bluing under the slide safety, something I "fixed" in the first couple trips to the range.  I was told by the seller it had maybe a box of ammo through it and the count couldn't have been far off.

When I first saw the Marlin the serial number told me immediately it was made in the year 2000.  I picked it up in November 2002.  The Marlin was still in great condition and I figured someone got it, shot it enought to figure out it wasn't for them, and got rid of it.  I picked it up at a gun shop for $249.95.  The condition of the rifle, it's relative newness and the type of cartridge all combined suggested a low round count.  Could be wrong but I doubt it.

Mostly I look for signs of neglect or abuse when buying used firearms.  So far the "worst" used firearm I've purchased was a Ruger .357 Mag stainless Blackhawk.  It looked great but the fires cases would hang up as they rotated around.  Sent the pistol to Ruger, got a fix for free (new basepin) and its good as new. 

The other used frearms all shoot great. 

[Graybeard]

Sure just look at the round count meter. What you mean it ain't got one, dang then I reckon you're out of luck.

Bottom line no there is no way. Your friend needs to wise up he has no clue. Dirty means lack of cleaning. Clean means either someone cleaned it regularly or didn't fire it much. Which there is really no way to tell.

If you had a bore scope you could examine the bore and get a better feel for how many round or at least the amount of wear the barrel has. Other than that nope and even that ain't gonna tell you if it was fired 500 or 1500 or even 2500 times.

[ecgate]

Thanks for the replies and the info.