I have recently acquired a rifle which has some pitting on the outside of the barrel. The blueing is excellent around the pits (which are rougly 1/8" across).

Is there any way to remove the pits (or minimize their appearance) without affecting the surrounding finish?

Thanks.

No. A pit is a hole. To remove a pit you have to either fill it or lower the surrounding material until it is level with the bottom of the pit. An alternative is to pit the whole barrel as in bead blasting. To fill the pit you would have to weld it up. Not a desireable
method at all. Any way you do it, the surrounding metal's finish will be affected. You do need to stop the action that caused the pit. If it is rust, it is oxidation. The only practical way to stop continued oxidation with steel is to remove the oxidized metal and refinish the remaining metal. Anyway you do it the barrel's finish will be affected. Sorry.

As a matter of fact I was having this very discussion on the phone today with another AR member.

I have read that you can clean up the pit with a very sharp pointed burr on a dremel tool and then tap a small pointed piece of 3 ½% nickel steel welding rod into the pit and then peen it flat and polish it out smooth with the surrounding surface. Sort of like a dentist filling a cavity in a tooth.

I’ve never tried it, but am about to do so on a 1903 that has some small pits under the stock line.

or you could undercut the pit and inlay wrought iron. just a little something Jack Belk told me once.

If there is rust in the hole you need to bead blast the area. What bead blasting does is it blows all the rust out of the hole and peens the jagged steel which the rust ate away down and seals the pores in the metal. Think of it as a million ball peen hammers pounding the area closed.

I then use the red (80 grit) polishing wheel and put some light scratches accross the grain so as to bleand the pit in to the human eye. Do not buff it out to a super high gloss because no matter what you do, the bottom of the pit will remain matte.
Be satisfied with a not so super shiny finish.

It is a common misconception that you can completely repair a pit, especially on barrels.
The 3% nickle rod method sounds OK, if not super labor intensive, but the problem with adding material such as welding rod to another piece of metal is that many times the molecules don't really get along that well and the outcome in the bluing is that it will look like a different colored splotch, much like if you had a smear of oil on the gun when you dropped it in the tanks.

-Spencer

I tried to fill a pit once using the method Rick mentions, couldn't get proper adhesion of the "plug" in the hole, wound up stoning it down.

Let's see some pics. Depending on the severity you have a wide range of options from doing nothing to replacing the barrel.

Best of luck,

Dan

I've had barrel pits welded up and then resurfaced them myself. Not a big deal really. The hard part is getting something that will take your bluing the same way as original barrel material.

I've also had poorly aligned or wrongly spaced or just flat out unnecessary scope bolt holes welded up this way. Not a big deal, though close inspection will often show a very slight difference in color with the rest of the barrel.

Brent

Hey sjmci, Are you really sure it is a pit?

The only reason I ask is that I have mentioned in the past that I like Stainless, because I've had a lot of firearms that were blue and they did in fact rust when taken outdoors and hunted with in all kinds of weather. People with VAST firearms KNOWLEDGE have taken the effort to tell me they've NEVER had a blue steel firearm rust and therefore I must be totally WRONG for saying blue steel does in fact rust.

Surely those "gurus" weren't (how can I say this without offending them) - totally wrong AGAIN!!!
---

Looks like you are getting some excellent suggestions above. Here is what I'd do (and have done):

If the "pit" is inside the barrel, shoot the rifle and see how well it does. For some unknown reason, some rifles still shoot fine with a few pits in the Bore. If it does OK, keep it clean and enjoy it.

If the "pit" is on the outside(and the rifle shoots well), you might want to have it Bead Blasted and refinished in one of the "Waterproof" finishes. I've had two Teflon coated about 15-18 years ago. I still have one of them which sees a lot of field time and it is doing great. And having one Parkerized works great too. The Phosphate allows "grease" to "Soak In" and makes water run off like a Duck's back.

If the "pit" is on the outside(and the rifle won't shoot) grind out the pit, dab some form of commercial Rust Stop on it, use the rifle to hunt with if it is accurate enough and save for a new barrel.

Best of luck to you.

Hot core, of course, blued barrels will rust if you don't take care of them. But it is not hard to do so, having been successful for many many years over just about every sort of country, weather, etc etc. (excepting salt-marine).

Stainless is a solution for a problem that just doesn't exist for people that are willing to take care of their tools properly.

Brent

quote:

Originally posted by Brent:
Hot core, of course, blued barrels will rust if you don't take care of them. But it is not hard to do so, having been successful for many many years over just about every sort of country, weather, etc etc. (excepting salt-marine).

Stainless is a solution for a problem that just doesn't exist for people that are willing to take care of their tools properly. ...

Hey Brent, Then you are saying when I saw actual rust on my firearms in the 1950s-1970s that I just didn't know how to take care of them? As friendly as I can be, I just don't agree with that put-down of my ability.

Even tried 26 coats of car wax on one since the Gun Writers said it would take care of ANY weather related problem. Must admit it did right well in the rain until the DEET dripped on it and cut right through all the wax and let the rust begin.

Have tried various forms of oil and grease from those eras which made carrying the firearm a sticky mess. That was one great thing about the Parkerizing Phosphate, you could slap the grease on, set it out in the sun and it would soak right in. Wipe it down and it was not a mess to carry at all.

Birchwood-Casey "Sheath" workes as well as anything I've tried on rusting blue steel, but if you hunt in a wet woods or swamp where you must "handle" the barrel as you work your way through to say - pick up a Deer, that good old Southeastern sweat will cut right through it on "my" older rusting blue rifles. Which would be similar to the salt-marine environment you mention.

Without putting you down at all, what do you think is "different" about where we hunt or how we hunt so that you do not experience rust and I do?

Hot core, I dunno. You must hunt salt water or something. I hunt in snow and rain, in back country and wilderness areas, in high and low elevations, in mountains and in prairies, for a week at a time. But I don't have the problem you do. All my guns are blue steel and wood. Many are older than me and w/o rust. One is roughly 180 yrs old and w/o rust. So, damn, I just don't know what the difference is, but I seem to do it, and the previous owners of most (not all) of my firearms seem to have done it, so I guess it can be done.

I don't know why you can't.

Brent

PS.. I should add that all my hunting and all my firearms (cartridge or otherwise) are bp guns used with real bp, not the fake stuff.

Hey Brent, Do you ever "sweat" during your hunting Seasons? Maybe it is as simple as that?

I'm aware of the effort it take sto keep BP Rifles from rusting. Speaks well of your cleaning that you have no problems at all with them.

Best of luck to you.

Here is a picture:

http://roihost.net/misc/win_100_pits.jpg

sjmci,

After seeing it, I would recommend bead blasting like others have mentioned. Those don’t appear to be deep at all, and should polish out fine.

If your’re looking to weather proof it afterward you might want to look at Robar’s Ro-Guard finish. I have it on several rifles and it’s really tough stuff. You can have the whole rifle done with Ro-Guard on the outside and NP-3 coating on all the innards for a pretty reasonable price.

quote:

Originally posted by Hot Core:
Hey Brent, Do you ever "sweat" during your hunting Seasons? Maybe it is as simple as that?
Best of luck to you.

All the time. Though mostly it's cold when I hunt, so I often wear gloves, but not always.

Brent

I didn't read all the post sso forgive me if this idea was already mentioned. Anybody watch those auto customizing shows on TV? I love them and watch all the time. They have a thing for pulling dents that instead of drilling and using a puller this special gun welds little shafts to the steel, then those are pulled to get the dent out. Then the little shaft cutoff and the surface ground. I wonder if that would work for the pits. Use this gun which is only on the surface a very very short time and I would think wouldn't afffect temper, then just grind the surface smooth again.

Of course it is probably just as easy to pull the barrel and turn it down right?

Red

The only problem with welding...or even using my first suggestion of the nickel silver plug...is matching the finish if you have it reblued. You may end up with spots all over your barrel after bluing.

Those pictures don’t show what I would consider “deep†pitting and I think you would be far better off going with a good blasting job to blend them in. The pit I am going to try my little experiment on is DEEP and would never respond to just polishing or blasting.

One thing about rust, red oxide, is that it is uncontroable until it is totally removed on the microscopic level. You have to, in some way, remove it all to virgin metal, otherwise it will keep the corrosion process going. Corrosion can be caused by many things. Moist enviroment, moisture trapped between the metal and the stock, sweaty finger prints, and probably the worst are blood spots that weren't properly cleaned. Here in the PNW I get many reblues where the owner was out in the rain and put the firearm in a case and didn't take it out to clean it.

The best way to remove rust, that's what caused the pitting, is to bead blast. This will remove the corrosion. Also, pitting is like an iceburg, You only see about a 1/3 to a 1/4 of what's really there. So, don't be surprised to see what looks like a small, .002 to .003 pit open up to a crater.

After the corrosion is removed then you and the refinisher can figure out what to do about the firearms finish. It will need to be done because you can't selectivly remove corrosion and spot refinish. I mean, you can try but it will look like shite and probably need to be redone anyway.
On the refinish, you can leave it bead blasted and reblue. This is the most effective and probably the best way IMHO. If done right, the firearm will have a very pleasing black satin finish abd the finish will reflect light less for hunting arms. Also the finish will be more durable. It has more surface area holding oils better than a polished surface. The satin finish will hide the pit better also, making it not stand out so much. And, just a basic B/B blue is the least expensive way to fix the problem and have a nice looking firearm again.

As Old Elk Hunter said, if you want to remove the pitting, then the metal will have to be removed evenly to just below the level of the deepest pit. On a barrel, this means evenly from muzzle crown to breach, all the way around. If you try to remove the pits locally you'll have a mess and the piece will look like a washboard.
Depending on the condition of the firearm, this can get costly. More hand labor=more cost.
Personally, I have gotten away from using wheels and do the vast majority of work by hand, using abrasive cloth strips in varing grits to get the finish I am looking for without rounding or burning off stampings. They may be less deep, but they will be even and sharp. Something you can't guarantee with a wheel.

As far as filling the pits. Unless you are prepaired to spend a truckload of money on this project, forget it. First, to do it right you need to match the rod with the base metal you are trying to fill. It can be done and you can find rod in the tiny diameters necessary, but it ain't cheep. You also need a sturdy drill press capable of holding the necessary wire guage bits.
I've done this, but only on full blown restorations, and you don't even want to know how much it cost.

Welding. Yes, it can be done, but, you need to find an artisan with a TIG welder. Can be done with other methods but you can keep the heat more localized and lesson the the potential damage to the area with a TIG. Also, the right rod is important. You'll need to fill and build up the pit, and then take it all back down to the proper level, refinish and reblue.

So, no, there really no easy solutions in repairing corrosion on a firearm. You just have to figure out how important it is to you and go from there.

Personally, all my firearms are bead blasted after truing up by hand, and left that way, or satin brush finished with a very fine wire wheel, or blushed with Scotchbrite after truing and beadblasting.

Good Luck,

Don

well there's always bondo

quote:

Originally posted by sjmci:
Is there any way to remove the pits (or minimize their appearance) without affecting the surrounding finish?Thanks.

No. You will have to draw-file the barrel to remove the pits, which can be done IF they aren't too deep. Then polish the barrel by hand with emery cloth so as not to cause rounding off of corners, blurring of stampings, and low spots, then have it reblued.

The finish on your rifle is not all that shiny.

Those machining marks will actually be far less noticable if you just bead blast the wholse thing.
stdon echoes my original post in that bead blasting is the only way to get rid of all the rust.

Get it bead balsted and blued and it will look like a brand new gun.

The end.

-Spencer

Looks like a good opportunity to teach yourself rust blueing! Need was what drove me to try it and it was far eaqsier than I thought it would be.