Barrel fouling versus pitting

[Jack Cronkhite]

Not to be confused with "fowling and pitting" which would be posted as a migratory bird hunting thread.

I'm still playing, when time permits, with "second chance gun". I did have the barrels re-blued after eliminating a lot of external rust. I did not have them honed and have been working them with Hoppes and a brass brush on a rod attached to a hand drill. Whenever I find myself in the basement and get distracted from whatever the reason was that I found myself there, I run the brush through a few times and then a patch and a light swab of oil. So far, the patches continue to come out black. Some of the bore glistens but there are many areas that do not. I have taken a small wooden dowel, trimmed the end to a thin flat chisel like edge and run it over some of the non-shiny surfaces. I cannot detect any noticeable "feel" of a drop into pitting nor a rise over some lead fouling. The dowel seems to glide effortlessly along the bore surfaces, be it a shiny area or the not so shiny areas. I then tried steel wool wrapped over a brush for a bit more aggressive approach. No noticeable difference.

I have never dealt with bores like these, as my own guns have never been allowed to deteriorate. I'm thinking they have to be as clean as they can get after all the Hoppes and brushing with the drill. This makes me think it is a lot of areas with slight surface pitting. Not unreasonable, given what a rust bucket this gun was when I took it on. But.......... why do I still get blackened cloth patches?? Thoughts??

Cheers,
Jack

[Dean Romig]

Jack, do a search on corrosion x or big 45 or look up the thread "what to do about a Parker gun?" and you'll find the products I use to remove lead fouling from the bores. Even dry with no solvent the Big45 removes all lead fouling and will not affect the steel. I used it on my 28 ga. VHE and got a combined almost 1/4 teaspoonful of lead from the bores of this gun. I was so shocked at the amount I got that I put a magnet to it to see if I had removed steel in the process... it was all lead. :shock:

Same method you use incidentally, wrap it around a copper brush and use your electric drill.





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[Pete Lester]

Jack, I have been working/playing with a similiar project. A tired but solid NH 10ga. The barrels had light to moderate pitting from just ahead of the chambers to the start of the chokes. It shoots very well, nice tight patterns but not pretty to look down the bores. I have thought about having the barrels honed which would satisfy my desire for "pretty" but would also remove material and thus weaken the barrels to some extent. I also realize the gun will not produce much of a return on investment. I did a lot of searching on Google and found both good and so-so reviews of the Flex-Hone tool. I thought it was cheap enough and easy enough (ie. idiot proof) to try. Since my barrels are pitted I used the 180 grit brush and then burnished after with 000 steel wool spun by a drill. It did not produce a miracle nor was I expecting one. It did a tremendous job of "cleaning" up/out the bores and I would say that visually there has been a 33 to 50% improvement in how the bores look. The testimonials/reports I read about the Flex-Hone in our old forum, the Fox Collectors forum and Doublegun BBS noted almost no material was removed from a bore from their use, maybe 1/10000. That led me to believe I would not damage my barrels and worst case is would be no improvement. I tried it and glad I did as there has been a noticable improvement. Good luck.

http://www.brownells.com/userdocs/learn/Inst-156%20Flex%20Hone.pdf

http://www.brushresearch.com/brush-types.php?c1=4

http://http://www.shootingtimes.com/gunsmithing/0406/ (http://www.shootingtimes.com/gunsmithing/0406/)

[Pete Lester]

I just thought I would report that the 180 grit flex hone cleaned up the bores to a great extent visually but did not change the measurements. Scott K and I measured the bore and chokes yesterday, still .780 which is where I started and .028 and .029 for constriction. Scott test fired one of his pet turkey loads of 1 1/2 ounces of number 6 and got an 82% pattern from my right barrel at 40 yards. The flex-hone tool might be a good thing to try before going to the next step of removing metal.

[Dave Miles]

I just thought I would report that the 180 grit flex hone cleaned up the bores to a great extent visually but did not change the measurements. Scott K and I measured the bore and chokes yesterday, still .780 which is where I started and .028 and .029 for constriction. Scott test fired one of his pet turkey loads of 1 1/2 ounces of number 6 and got an 82% pattern from my right barrel at 40 yards. The flex-hone tool might be a good thing to try before going to the next step of removing metal.


Not trying to be a wise guy, but how can you hone the bores and clean up the pitting, without removing metal? Thus increasing bore dimension.

[Pete Lester]

Not trying to be a wise guy, but how can you hone the bores and clean up the pitting, without removing metal? Thus increasing bore dimension.

The only thing I can tell you Dave is the bores look noticeably better and if any metal was removed it is in the order of .0005 or less and the performance of the gun was not adversely affected. I also shot a 1 3/8 of chilled lead 2's from each barrel at a 30 inch steel plate at 40 yards. I achieved a 77 and 76% pattern.

[E Robert Fabian]

I don't believe that style of hone will remove any detectable amount of metal, I think it is just cleaning the barrels and the bottom of the pits so they are harder to see, I love mine once every so often I use it after I clean the gun and it really cleans the bores and they clean up allot easier for some time after wards.