Back bore to remove pits
 

1906 VH, Vulcan steel barrels, 2 5/8"chambers, very good barrel exterior condition, and a number of deep looking pits in the bores.

Took measurements tonight with a Dave Manson bore wall thickness gauge (not extremely precise) and came up with the readings in the pictures. Does it look like I have enough meat to ream the bores some and still be within safe ranges, or is this barrel scrap? I cannot afford to sleeve the barrels, and it wouldn't be worth the expense anyway if I could.

Thanks.

IMO it depends where those pits are. If they well towards the breech, perhaps. If they are half way or further down the barrels I'd say they are toast. That said, a bunch of smart folks will chime in who no doubt have more experience then I do for sure.

Pitting always looks worse than it is when you are looking down the bore. Because you are looking across the pit. Not at it dorectly the Surface.

If used properly, a manson gauge will provide you with accurate measurements for wall thickness. But the large ball end on it does not allow you to measure how deep the pitting actually is. A hosford gauge is much better for this.

The measurements you have listed on the barrels look to be perfectly normal for most barrel sets. I would not call the barrels junk too quickly. At least from a shooter standpoint.

I would not recommend any backboring. You would be throwing money at something that is just going to compromise the integrity of the barrels. Yes, pitting looks bad, bit it usually does not effect the shootabiltiy of a set of barrels.

Pitting does not usually effect the shootabiltiy. I learn something from the site all the time. But, does pitting effect the pattern the the gun?

lately- i think more and more about adding an endoscope to my inspection tool kit

just to get a better view into pitted areas- i used one to look down into a SxS muzzleloader's tubes since I could not look down the bores- made me feel much better about the purchase

and pits are so objective- i have bought guns that the seller says the bores are great and i see pits, and have looked at some i thought were junk and someone else says "these aren't that bad"

There are scopes that plug right into the usb port on your computor. Cheap. Stick a wite cloth in the end of the bore and then stock the scope in ghe other end. You can see everything. However, still cannot know how deep pitting is this way. But it may reveal it is not as bad as it looks.

Those scopes also work great for a do-it-yourself colonoscopy.

How would it with a shot cup?
And when i say that pitting does not effect shootability. I mean safe shootability... And pitting that is typical of these older guns. How many of us are shooting hammer guns with moderate or even heavy pitting?

Why thin the barrels to the overall wall thickness of the deepest pits ?

It will not adversely affect the pattern. Shoot it now and see if you have a ragged pattern with holes.

:shock:

is that one of those "don't ask me how I know" sort of things

:rotf:

I just acquired a GH that has pitting, but the minimum wall thickness I get with my Hosford gauge is right at 30 thousandths. These old Parker barrels can generally take a lot of abuse and still be sound. At least, in my experience

I have had two guns with serious looking pitting. After a few years of use and scrubbing, they are not pitted any more. Don't ask how this happened.

Yes, and it's driving me nuts! I'm hearing "shoot it, just keep it at 7/8, and slower than 1200fps", and then I hear "Don't risk life and limb".

I want to shoot the gun, a lot. It is my gun, and the only double right now that's mine. I could shoot my wife's Sterly, or my son's Stevens. Don't want to; they're not mine. There's no budget to buy a different one of my choosing in the foreseeable future, so I'm hoping to find some confidence in what I have so I can enjoy it. It will always get really light loads like RST's Falcon Lite's or similar.

That's all I care about; safe shootability. I shot it once, and it hit what I aimed at.

I'm fine as well with not back boring. It wouldn't cost me anything to have it done, but if I don't need to then I wouldn't want to. It would be nice however to lengthen the chambers to 2 3/4. I can easily buy Winchester WinLite shells right down the street, and they are a very mellow load.

if there is any operation where wall thickness is most affected- this is it

The worst two are:

4" from from breech, 12 o'clock, right barrel.
2" from muzzle, 10 o'clock, left barrel.

The right barrel is the worse of the two overall, and both are littered with small ones along the entire length. I'm guessing corrosive ammo, and years of sitting uncleaned.

Nevermind that idea then. I'll order short shells online. Thanks.

Time to strike, polish, and blacken. Will leave the rest well enough alone.

as far as ammo goes--
black powder gets a bad rap for pitting- but IMHO - the corrosive primers used in the early days ( up to around WWII in some ammo) is the primary culprit

Can you share your process and materials you like to use for scrubbing? General cleaning by another name, or do you have a method you like for going after the bores a little harder? Thank you.

Wrap some Frontier Pad around a copper or brass bore brush attached to a cleaning rod clamped into the chuck of an electric drill that has reverse. Squirt or spray a solvent into the bore and go to town with the drill running it all the way in and out for thirty or forty passes in both forward and reverse. Then run a clean swab through the bore and see how it looks.






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Thanks. I did get it a little cleaner with a similar process, but with strips of green Scotchbrite pads. I've ordered a Frontier pad, but haven't gotten it yet.

Oil soaked emery cloth works as well.

Scotch rite will mark or scratch the steel while Frontier will not.






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I used the emery cloth method on an old LC 10 gauge I picked up really cheap starting with 220 grit and working to finer grit finishing with 600 grit and took out pits that looked like craters. I wasn't worried about exceeding safe barrel wall thickness because these barrels are built like a light artillery piece. Surprising that what appear to be ruined barrels can be brought back with relatively light polishing. Advantage over back boring is that yo can stop as soon as the pits are gone without worrying about taking out any more materiel than is absolulty necessary.

Do my measurements look stout enough to allow for the 220 - 600 step process?

After two rounds of sporting clays and two good cleanings, the pits in my new GH are already disappearing

i agree with mills i too have several guns with deep pitting in the barrels and they all shoot fine and i donot think it hurts the pattern...charlie

Since there is no way to accurately measure the depth of the pits and pitting almost always looks worse than it actually I can't advise for or against it on your gun but you will not be removing very much metal with the emery cloth and you can stop if you feel that your barrel walls are reaching what you consider to be the minimum safe thickness. The 600 grit cloth is primarily to polish the bores and doesn't remove hardly any metal.

And Frontier pads removes no metal at all.





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then I might expect that what you saw in the bores was not true pitting - but some spots of discoloration

I have had dirty bores that looked worse but when cleaned well showed minimal pitting -

but I also have guns with mild pitting that have been shot and cleaned for years- the pitting will not get worse- but is not going away



unless I glue emery paper to the wads :rotf: :rotf: :rotf:

Might be. It looked like pitting.

i am reminded of a Dennis the Menace cartoon I had on the fridge when my kids were little-

Dennis was coming through the door covered in mud up to his chin - he looked at his mom and said

"you can't tell how deep a mud puddle is from the top"

Thank you all for your counsel.

It's my Parker and not going anywhere. It's a neglected, but seemingly serviceable VH. The barrel will be my 7th rust blue project (getting better each time), and the stock will be repaired, refinished, and Mr. Dudley's sending a new butt plate for it. I'll keep my eyes open for a new barrel down the road.

Other than this, I don't care too much about how it looks. I care about it being safe, learning more about double guns in general, and Parker specifically, through long-term ownership of this one. Until my kids cease with their fleecing of my income, this is it. Thankfully it didn't really cost me anything thus far but some time and materials, and hopefully it's not a money pit.

Thanks again, I do appreciate greatly your willingness to teach.

Little bit of an update:

I ran a bunch of oiled emory cloth through the bores today, and a little polishing with some Mother's Mag Polish (had it handy), and to me it's looking like those pits are getting smaller. If they are, that would be VERY nice indeed.

The Frontier Pad should be here shortly, and I'll give that a go too, but is it possible that I'm not really dealing with pits as much as 100 years of neglected lead and crud build up?

absolutely

like i said earlier - cleaning does not remove pits

you only know what you have after the bores are clean

I've been cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning. I've not encountered a bore this fouled before. Looking forward to the Frontier Pad, and some more solvent.

The Frontier Pad as certainly helped. Unfortunately the rod I had chucked to the drill snapped. Time for a new one.

I know this isn't a picture of the bores, but since I thought it was all a basket case a picture of progress seems appropriate. So .....

Gentle light striking to address some little pits. Polished up to 400, six cycles with Pinkerton's and a PVC steam chamber set up in my garage. Happy.

Questions: was the lug in the white, and were VH barrels striped from the factory?

Striped?

The locking lug sides and bottoms should be polished off. The barrels flats should be left blued.
The breech face and sides of dolls head should be polished and the breech faces were broached originally when new.

Pretty good looking results for steaming. I am going to be trying some steaming instead of boiling coming up here real soon.

Please explain "striped".

Vulcan barrels are fluid steel and when properly rust blued show no evidence of 'black & white' contrast.... so, no they were not 'striped' such as we see in Twist Steel or Laminated Steel - they were solid black from the factory... no striping at all.






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By striping I mean the process of polishing the extractor and around the chamber cuts in one direction, and polishing thin stripes in the opposite direction. You can see an example of it on Bryan's site.

I'm pretty sure the accepted terminology for that effect is "cross hatching"... someone please correct me if I'm wrong.





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