I just brought home my new Venture with it's "match grade 5-R" barrel and this is what I found. I thought it might be fouling so I used foaming copper and carbon cleaner. then brushed 20 times, then swabed, then foamed, then brushed, then swabbed, then brushed, then swabbed and it still looks like this. There is no copper steaks and to mme it's looking like the most pitted barrel I've ever seen.

What do you think?

I feel your pain. However I've scoped several TC barrels that looked pretty rough and rebarreled a few too. Imho, TC wouldn't know a match grade barrel if it jumped up and bit them in the @$$.

how does it shoot?

I haven't shot it yet. My main concern is accuracy, but I'm also concerned about how bad it will foul, how hard it will be to clean, and if that galling will make the barrel ware out faster. It's not just a few marks. These run the entire length of the barrel.

Generally, most guys who think they have bad barrels, really don't, but in this case; send it back to TC.
How does it shoot is also a good question. But still, I think this one is flawed; doesn't mean it won't shoot well.

Good luck with getting TC to do anything about it, unless their CS has vastly
improved from a few years ago when they would do nothing about a horrible Encore
barrel (chamber not true to the bore).

This year I got a RA Predator which I later found a real bad chamber job. It
looked as though the reamer had a chip in it, and left marks on cases remindful
of near case head separation. Ruger had me send it back and replaced the barrel
within 2 weeks. TC's may be a bit better quality overall, but guess who gets my
business between the two?

I would try to get TC to make it good, but......prior experience!

Good luck.

No one should pay full price for flawed product. Doesn't matter if it shoots or not, I'd send it back.

Most of the gunmakers don't warranty that sort of stuff or internal cosmetics. What they warranty is function. If it does not meet their accuracy expectations they will likely do something about it. If it does, they won't.

I have seen countless physically perfect barrels that wouldn't shoot a group if their life depended on it. I have also seen guns with barrels that looked like they were cut by a madman with a brace and bit and rifled with a meat hook that shot better than some really hot varmint rifles. Shoot it and see what it does. If it shoots well ignore the cosmetics. The next one you get with a perfect barrel might only preform marginally and you WILL have to live with that.

Bore scopes are for sissy's and wieners.

Well, I went back to the gun shop I bought it from and He said he would send it into TC for me. He's use to seeing chatter marks from manufacturing, but this one looked pretty bad and wasn't the normal chatter marks in most barrels. I let him Know I was going to go hunting and was planning on sighting in the rifle and taking it if it shot ok and he let me know that would be fine and to just bring it in after this weekend and that TC would warranty it. I know some rough barrels can shoot well, but this barrel obviously has defects/ gouges, not normal tooling marks.

Don't throw out the old lady just because she's cross eyed and has a few grey hairs. Looks don't make cupcakes or keep you warm at night.

H47 said it exactly correct, TC has no idea what a "match grade" barrel is and they have a long history of new buyers trying to get their firearms to produce even decent groups.

Their quality control has definitely gone out the window.

A friend brought me his muzzleloader 3 weeks ago. Brand new Encore Pro Hunter. His issue was that he ran out of vertical adjustment in his scope and it still shot 8" low at 50 yards. He sent the scope back, and Nikon sent a new one, no questions asked.

I mounted the new scope and checked to see if the mount was square. It is a DNZ integral mount, and it is machined spot on.

I shot it. Yep, low by 8".

The crown looked good, so...Stripped the barrel down and put it in my lathe between centers to check straightness. Crooked as a politician. It has a bend 10" from the muzzle with 0.032" of runout. Surprisingly, hard to see with the ramrod ferrules and forearm on, but easy to see when the barrel is stripped.

The TC reps reaction was that "we don't have bent barrels". They asked for it back to evaluate. We'll see. It has been two weeks, no word yet.

I hope you get this sorted out. They were such a solid company.

Jeremy

I got a response back from TC. They let me know that that barrel should have never left the factory like that and they will take care of it. I'm going to send it in after hunting this weekend.

I got it sighted in and it shot pretty decent groups for a gouged up barrel. 1.5 MOA.
Shooting prone, the recoil was nice and mild with Federal high energy 250gn welcores. It was like shooting a 30-06.

Can't wait to see what I can do with a properly cut barrel.