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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