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Al is correct, the whole ‘cook off’ is almost always a fallacy. Even with full auto military guns, there are only a few that could have a ‘run off’. that has to do with the difference between the open or closed bolt design, not going into it here.

PS: No matter how much you want to, when the barrel is really hot, don’t put your tongue on it.

You will probably never experience this problem. For sympathetic detonation to occur, your gun would have to be hot enough to ignite the powder within the cartridge, which will be about 180 degrees F for conventional smokeless powder; you’ll probably want to lay the gun down before it even gets that hot from the heat radiating on your hands.

A hot barrel is nothing. Todd Jarrett fired 1000 rounds out of a pistol in 10 minutes, never once did it self detonate a round. He certainly did want to lay the gun down and shake his hands around for a bit afterwords. Unless you have magazines already set and ready to go, I doubt that you’ll fire that many rounds in 10 minutes, so you will be alright.

I have personally fired so many rounds out of a Mini-14 that the high-quality Choate flash hider cracked and peeled away from the barrel. That was after several high-capacity magazines back-to-back in testing some ammunition (and the gun’s ability to do so). The barrel was unbelievably hot. I left the last round in the chamber and the rifle pointed in a safe direction. No cook-off. This was a standard Mini-14 before the newer heavier barrels.

However, cooking off is not a sympathetic detonation. Sympathetic detonation is a high explosive detonating because of the shock wave from a nearby explosion.

i put over at the most 1000 rounds through my mini 14 every time i shoot. in my 15 years of owning it, a round has never cooked off.

I have never heard of a handgun or rifle ‘cooking off’. I have seen 105mm howitzers fire without pulling the lanyard. I think is the only gun that you can handle the rounds and shoot fast enough to get it hot enough to cook off the rounds. The larger 155 rounds are too heavy(they are loaded by hand) and cannot be loaded fast enough to generate the heat necessary. I have had the wood smoking on my M1 and not had a round cook off, I don’t know if you could even get your Mini 14 hot enough that you couldn’t handle the metal with a five round box, but you might with a 30 round.

i doubt that could ever happen,i’m surprised that the heavy barrel gets that hot after 5 rounds.

I would never worry about, “cooking off a round”. I would however be concerned about what some of these people have said about about shooting it so much you don’t want to get near it on account of the hot barrel. If you get the barrel that hot your gonna severely shorten the useful life of your barrel.Your accuracy will erode just as the throat of your chamber will.