I have inheritied an older rifle which had poor care given to exterior and interior. I am perplexed as what to do with the bore. It is corroded fairly bad. Lots of pitting and distortion of the rifling. Is there a practical remedy? Thanks

If you don't want to replace the barrel, then you can either have the barrel either re-lined or re-bored.
Re-lining can leave the gun it's original caliber, or you can change to any other caliber. The gunsmith drills out the barrel, then fits it with a rifled liner and machines a new chamber.
Re-boring means boring out the barrel, usually a two calibre jump (i.e. 308 goes past 338 to 358, 224 goes past 243 to 257 or 264) to make sure all the pits are machined out before the new bore is re-rifled. You can then have the barrel re-chambered to a larger case if you want.

Thanks. Sounds like a gunsmith is my only alternative.

quote:

Originally posted by BeMan:
I have inheritied an older rifle which had poor care given to exterior and interior. I am perplexed as what to do with the bore. It is corroded fairly bad. Lots of pitting and distortion of the rifling. Is there a practical remedy? Thanks

I would clean the hell out of it and see how it shoots before I made any decisions!

I agree with tsturm. Clean it with a bronze brush to get out the rust, then shoot it. Give it a few shots to settle in before you expect much. I have a 1903 Springfield that looks like the surface of the moon. 165 grain bullets go in, 160 grain bullets come out! It shoots 1.5" at 100 yards. That is good enough for me. I have several MilSurps with pitted bores, they all shoot well enough.

After the wire brush give it an intensive BON-AMI Kroil mixture treatment. If you were to leave a little of the mixture in and shoot it out with a reduced load you will tend to lapp it even a little more. roger

I've even soaked the bore in Liquid Wrench overnight before trying to brush it out. Kroil would also be good.

Do you plan on shooting this older rifle? What kind is it and what caliber? Value can be taken away from it,depending on its make ect if you rebore it. I have an old win. made back in 1897,and its rifleing looks like a plumber nitemare,but it still shoots straight and true. I us it now and them when deer hunting just for old time sake. vangunsmith

Van,
This is a 1886 Win in 40/82. I bought 2 new bronze brushes this morning. I used Kroil in the bore already with patches to let it soak. All the suggestions sound reasonable and practical. I will give it a try and let you all know. I hope to test it next week.
Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:
After the wire brush give it an intensive BON-AMI Kroil mixture treatment. If you were to leave a little of the mixture in and shoot it out with a reduced load you will tend to lapp it even a little more. roger

This is dangerous advise!

quote:

Originally posted by Pegleg:

quote:

Originally posted by bartsche:
After the wire brush give it an intensive BON-AMI Kroil mixture treatment. If you were to leave a little of the mixture in and shoot it out with a reduced load you will tend to lapp it even a little more. roger

This is dangerous advise!

Well if it is it is a lot less dangerous than using some on the market fire lapping kits which my buddies and I have also done. Granted, however, when I say a little, and reduced, I don't mean a plugged bore and a 1 1/2% powder reduction. If you deside to do this send me a PM and we'll chit chat to eliminate THE DANGER! roger

quote:

Originally posted by bja105:
I agree with tsturm. Clean it with a bronze brush to get out the rust, then shoot it. Give it a few shots to settle in before you expect much. I have a 1903 Springfield that looks like the surface of the moon. 165 grain bullets go in, 160 grain bullets come out! It shoots 1.5" at 100 yards. That is good enough for me. I have several MilSurps with pitted bores, they all shoot well enough.

thats funny. i have seen $900 kimbers that cant shoot as well. maybe people should put them up dirty before working up loads.

Beman,if you want a top accuracy rifle then rebarrel.If you want to go deer hunting once a year and are not concerned about long range accuracy then there is nothing wrong with the rifle.

After spending the better part of yesterday afternoon working on the bore, the results were not promising. I soaked it in Kroil for an hour. I scrubbed with bronze brush and patched it till patches had little discoloration. I then used some Birchwood-Casey rust/blue remover, scrubbed again and repeated step number one. I then used 400 grit lapping compound and scrubbed aprrox 100 strokes. Repeat steps #1. I then used Sweets 7.62 and repeated steps #1 till patches came out white. I can barely distinguish the lands and grooves of the rifling, now. Bore is extremely rough and pitted. I trashed 2 new bronze brushes and feel as if I have a chemical pneumonia from all the cleaner fumes. There's little hope for good results at the range, but I will give it a try. I give all a report after my shooting session.

BeMan when you say "there is little hope for good results at the range" you may very well surprise yourself. I have a 6.5x55 swede with a very dark bore and never had any hopes let alone high hopes of good accuracy and this gun shoots handloaded rem Cor lokt bullets at 1" sometimes under and one time turned in a .264" group in 3 shots, not bad for a dark bored ex- mil rifle.
What you have is a valuable rifle a piece of history and if it even shoots 2" at 50 yards, so be it for a deer "knocker" it will do fine within the limits of its sights. If you can shoot paper plates at 100 yards with it then it is a capable deer rifle. If you re- bored this rifle its value would be significantly diminished, before you do something damaging and permanent sell it to someone who will be happy with it for what it is, I would be pleased to own it.
Good luck and I'm anxious to hear the range report.

I didn't pay attention to what kind of rifle you were refering to. What Snellstrom says.

quote:

Originally posted by van:
Do you plan on shooting this older rifle? What kind is it and what caliber? Value can be taken away from it,depending on its make ect if you rebore it. I have an old win. made back in 1897,and its rifleing looks like a plumber nitemare,but it still shoots straight and true. I us it now and them when deer hunting just for old time sake. vangunsmith

I had 3 1886 win. One 40-82-3000 thats what they were called as well,and one 45090 and one 45-70. Only shot the 45-70. Hope yours shoots for you.

Managed to take a decent pic of the bore today. I can email to anyone that wants to take a look and give your opinion. Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by Snellstrom:
...What you have is a valuable rifle a piece of history and if it even shoots 2" at 50 yards, so be it for a deer "knocker" it will do fine within the limits of its sights. ... I'm anxious to hear the range report.

Excellent input.

So, how does it shoot???

Trapperjohn,

I tried to respond to your request but had no email address. I will post my shooting results on Wed afternoon.

Tony

Let's hear some range results with that 40/82!

I'm probably going to be boiled in oil and hung in effagy BUT, if money were not a real issue, I would send that to the best person I knew to have it re-lined and then sent to Doug Turnbull (http://turnbullrestoration.com/showcase.htm) to have it restored. If there is no particular information available to say that it was used by an historic figure, it would me more valuable to me to have it restored and Doug is the best.

After shooting the rifle, some of the residual gunk loosened. I spent another 90 minutes on the bore and it is a bit better. I haven't checked the twist rate as yet, but it looks pretty slow. The muzzle of the bore is tighter than breach end, which along with slow twist leads me to believe it was designed to shoot paper patched bullets. I will slug the bore to get the most accurate land/groove diameter and measure the twist rate. I am corresponding with a bullet maker who offers paper patched bullets. The suggestion to have some sort of restoration appeals to me,but only if it is practical. Promising results with paper patched bullets may inspire me to do more, but I kind of like the character of the rifle as it is. I posted the range results on another post. I managed a 14 inch group at 50 yds. Ugh!

Hey BeMan, Best of luck with the Paper Patch Bullets. They are a lot of fun to fool with. I've not been able to do so in a very long time, but they are nice to experiment with when a person has the time.

The more you shoot them, the slicker the Bore gets, though they won't remove the Pits. But since they are not filling the Pits with Copper, the accuracy "might" be significantly improved. They do not leave anything behind except Powder Residue which is easily removed.

Let us know how they do for you.