Unless 10's upon 10's of thousands of shots are being run through a barrel, a casual muzzleloading enthusiast certainly won't wear out a barrel from typical shooting volumes...as a reference, I have a fairly new TC .54cal RB barrel, have shot about 1500 patched balls through it in the past 3 years, and the bore's hardly broken in, still looks like it just came off the production line, still has bluing inside the muzzle, etc