Was cleaning the barrel on my M700 barrel yesterday and noticed what looks like a bunch of cracks inside the barrel near the muzzle. Some of them go through the rifleing. The barrel is also badly copper fouled past these cracks. Rifle is chambered in .300 Ultra Mag. I planed on rebarreling it sometime in the future, but it barely has 100 rounds through it. Any ideas or sugestions or ideas as far as what to do with it ?

Send it back to the manufacturer, and see what they say.

Don't shoot it.

Which direction are the cracks oriented? Parallel to the bore, or "around" it? How far back from the muzzle? How long is a "typical" crack?

They start about .375 from the muzzle, and go back to approx. 1 inch. the cracks run around the inside of the bore with some of them going almost half way around. I don't plan on shooting it until I find out what is going on.

Tracer-

Sounds like it would be going back to Remington. Did you buy it new? Recently? Have you got a receipt or bill of sale as verification?

I had a 223 VLS last year that apparently caught a chip on the reamer. It grooved the chamber slightly & left a ring on the brass when fired. Remington got it back, replaced it, and covered shipping both ways.

The factories (*all* of them lately), seem to take a bad rap on customer service. I've found though that if you have a legitimate claim they'll take care of you. Contact Remington & get it back to them.

These " cracks" are either due to tool chatter during the boring of the barrel. I believe Remington uses the forged mandrel approach to rifling, thus it is unlikely that it was caused during the rifling process. I've seen this a number of times and it always seems to cause excessive coppper fouling in the bore. If it's a new gun send it back to Remington. If it's an older one, I'd get a borescope and see if it's only present in the muzzel area. If so you could have a gubnsmith remove an inch or so of barrel and re-crown it. If it's all the way through, it's new barrel time.-Rob

I had a Remington .223 that had these "cracks" running the length of the barrel. It was like a washboard of annular rings in the barrel. They must have stuck a chip when boring the hole and pushed the button through anyway. It was a junk barrel from the day it was made. I never sent it back. Just bought a Pac-Nor and tossed the old one. Later made a nice classic stock. The rifle now shoots, same one I wrote about in the Pac-Nor post above. The barrel was junk, the stock was god-awful ugly. I never should have bought that rifle. I basically got an action. My fault though for not checking it more closely. I figured a new rifle shold be OK, I was wrong.

I have seen similar marks in two Winchester hammer forged ( I believe) barrels, one in .22lr (New 52) and one 7mm (new M70). The .22 was replaced by Winchester and the new one is about as bad as the old one. Both bbls. shoot like crap. I don't have a scope but the marks appear to go down from the muzzle as far as I can see with a good glass. Doesn't Remington button rifle their bbls.?
I plan on replacing them both when I can get to it.
C.G.B.