This is a picture of the muzzle of a 22-250 (Not a new rifle) I just got last Friday. I tried to get the rifling to show as best as possible. It does not show in the photo as well as I wanted it to, but it looks to me as if approx 3/8 inch back from the crown there is a noticeable mark which could be a tooling mark?



The mark goes in a perfect circle around the inside of the barrel, I can't see anything deeper than that mark & the crown appears to be OK.

So far the 2 trips to the range I have made have not been spectacular, but not terrible either. Here are a couple targets.







I am sure the groups can tighten up with some more work as I haven't played that much yet.

The barrel seems to clean nice & is not fouling all that bad.

Basically I am wondering opinions on this ring vs accuracy being it is so close to the muzzle?

My though is chopping it & recrowning it, it is 24" right now & a 1/2 would still leave me at 23.5"?

What would cause a mark like that?

It is a hammer forged Sako rifled barrel.

Thanks.

The ring probably isn't causing a big accuracy problem, but it really isn't that visible in the photo. But, if it is troubling you, have the muzzle cut off and recrowned just behing the ring.

This type ring is common when an inexperienced gunsmith uses the Brownell's hand-crowning tools. The tendency is clamp the barrel vertically in the bench vise while turning the hand tool in the muzzle, and this WILL cause chips to enter the muzzle and get caught & rotated by the tool's cutting edges. All it takes is one UH-OH and there's your ring.

The proper procedure for hand-crowning is to clamp the barrel vertically as before, but place the muzzle DOWN and the chips will then fall free instead of falling back down into the rifling.

To remove doubt I suggest that you have it cut & recrowned but by a different smith this time.(G)
Regards, Joe

As the ring is in the grooves and not just on the lands, and there are other rings visable in the pic that are also in teh grooves and on the lands....
I'd say it a reamer mark that was ironed in by the rifling button.

I second Rusty's opinion. There are other, fainter, circular marks that traverse both land and groove. This is typical of a button displacing bore reamer marks.

Dave Manson

I'm going to try & get a better photo. On closer inspection the ring only goes about 1/2 way around the bore & not all the way, so I am not sure if that changes anyone's opinion?

Also I found I needed about 6 shots at the range for the groups to really start to tighten up at the range?
__________________

It doesn't matter. It is in the groove and on the land and is a snag point for copper, and if it were mine I would have cut it back and recrowned it already.

I would recrown it. Without the ring I would recrown it. There is a reason bench shooters want a 11 deg. crown, not a 45 deg. I don't know why people take a perfectly good crown and chamfer it. The crown should be a uniform cutting edge with the feather edge removed. 11 deg. is the largest angle still considered a cutting edge. The uniformity of the gases escaping around the bullet as it leaves the muzzle is what is really important. The escaping gas travels at many times the speed of the bullet. This is why boat tail bullets are effected more by a bad crown than flat base. Muzzle brakes can improve accuracy as they disperse the escaping gases.......Tom

As I just posted in another topis if you want to visually inspect the muzzle of a rifle the easy way to make things far more visible (instead of staring down a black hole)

Is to insert a clean dry WHITE patch on a jag from the breech but stop a bit more than an inch short of the crown.

It makes the inside of the bore FAR more visible

AD

I would bore scope the entire barrel and inspect it for other such rings. If so is is as Rusty stated. If it was a chip or cutter pilot it would not scored the valley between the lands.

When inspecting well cleaned hammer forged there will be highspots that glitter when the bore scope light passes them. If a hammer forged barrel has had several hundred rounds fired through them or have been properly lapped these spots tend to fade away.

I too am not a fan of a 45 or 60 degree crown. I prefer a 11 degree crown either a dish or a counter bored crown for protection.

Longshot

Well after a trip to the gunsmith today, we put a new crown on the barrel. Upon his inspection he figures they are marks from when the barrel was forged. After he cut the crown we could see that there were more marks just like it down the barrel farther.

The crown was rough anyways, & he said this may help. A trip to the range tomorrow will tell the tale.

Like I said the barrel doesn't foul bad, so if this smartens it up, I think we are set.

Here are a couple photos of the new crown.

Nice looking crown.

quote:

Also I found I needed about 6 shots at the range for the groups to really start to tighten up at the range?

A clean barrel requires a few foulers run down it to get the groups to tighten up. Six looks like your magic number...

Get some J&B Bore Paste and some Prolix.

Clean the barrel with the J&B, then finish with the Prolix.

Prolix has not caused my first round out to be in a different place.

Give it a try.

You can get it at Heritage Arms.

Well after this mornings range trip it seems to not be throwing as many fliers now that the crown has been re-done.

It even shot the 60gr Nosler Partitions under an inch. Took a couple rounds to settle it down, the cluster is the last 3 shots.



The 50gr Nosler BT need a bit of work yet but show promise.



I think we are getting in the ballpark now.

Once you get a load worked up I think you'll be very happy, that rifle is showing some promise