Pitted barrel blues

[acasto]

My new next door neighbor found out I shoot ml's and brought his over for my opinion. Now, I have no problem giving my opinion, just ask my wife. However, I need to defer to those on the site with a little more knowledge than I.

He has an older TC Contender rifle with a 209x50 barrel. At some point, he did'nt clean it well enough and it appears to have some minor rusting just past the breechplug. Within one inch of where the rifling begins. the rest of the barrel is pristine.
I thought it was just some carbon buidup, but after usung every cleaner I have for rifle barrels, it just wont come out. Even used a small metal pick to try to break it up, but could actually feel it was pitting at that point.
What he wanted to know was this.

Will it have any effect on the accuracy of the barrel?
Is it going to keep eating away at the barrel?
Can it be stopped or slowed down?

I shoved a sabot and bullet slowly down the barrel to see if I could feel any resistance when it got to the rust spots, and could'nt actually feel any difference throughout the lenghth of the barrel.

I did show him my bottle of BH209.

Thanks for any help you have. And please don't tell my wife I was struggling with an opinion.

 

[cayuga]

Whether it can effect accuracy will only be discovered on a range session. I would guess the rifle since the rest of the barrel is fine, would shoot good.

To stop the rusting process, you have to remove all the rust. First try a bore brush with a strong solvent, and scrub that area. Then some solvent patches. See if you can after all of there get some clean patches to come out of that area of the barrel. Sometimes they will be a little gray, but at least the rust is gone.

If it is heavily pitted, then you might need to take some jewelers rouge and a tight fitting patch and polish that area free of rust. You can also use valve grinding compound but be careful with that as it does remove metal from the rifle.

After you have worked that area over and are getting clean patches, then you need to saturate that area with a very high quality gun oil. For this I like REM Oil with Teflon. It seems to soak into all the pores of the metal and really hold. Then before you shoot next, take some isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) and swab that bore of the rifle well. Then some dry patches.

When ever your friend cleans the rifle, have him pay special attention to that area and be sure to get a good coat of oil in that area...

 

[Lee 9]

Whether it can effect accuracy will only be discovered on a range session. I would guess the rifle since the rest of the barrel is fine, would shoot good.

To stop the rusting process, you have to remove all the rust. First try a bore brush with a strong solvent, and scrub that area. Then some solvent patches. See if you can after all of there get some clean patches to come out of that area of the barrel. Sometimes they will be a little gray, but at least the rust is gone.

If it is heavily pitted, then you might need to take some jewelers rouge and a tight fitting patch and polish that area free of rust. You can also use valve grinding compound but be careful with that as it does remove metal from the rifle.
If there is still rust in the bottom of the rifling. Flatten a round ball till it is a little bigger than the rifling use a half inch wood doll to drive it in to the bore mark so you can tell which rifling the mark lines up with push it back out drill a hole in the center to fit a 20-32 screw use a 10-32 screw to fasten to the end of the ram rod and some JBBore paste to lapp out the rust thats left. Lee

This is all correct I can only add that if there is still rust in the bottom of the rifling and a good brushing with a stainless brush wont remove it then flatten a round ball untill it fills the bottom of the rifling and scrub it out with JBbore paste or valve grinding compound. Lee
After you have worked that area over and are getting clean patches, then you need to saturate that area with a very high quality gun oil. For this I like REM Oil with Teflon. It seems to soak into all the pores of the metal and really hold. Then before you shoot next, take some isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) and swab that bore of the rifle well. Then some dry patches.

When ever your friend cleans the rifle, have him pay special attention to that area and be sure to get a good coat of oil in that area...

 

[Anonymous]

Whether it can effect accuracy will only be discovered on a range session. I would guess the rifle since the rest of the barrel is fine, would shoot good.

To stop the rusting process, you have to remove all the rust. First try a bore brush with a strong solvent, and scrub that area. Then some solvent patches. See if you can after all of there get some clean patches to come out of that area of the barrel. Sometimes they will be a little gray, but at least the rust is gone.

If it is heavily pitted, then you might need to take some jewelers rouge and a tight fitting patch and polish that area free of rust. You can also use valve grinding compound but be careful with that as it does remove metal from the rifle.

After you have worked that area over and are getting clean patches, then you need to saturate that area with a very high quality gun oil. For this I like REM Oil with Teflon. It seems to soak into all the pores of the metal and really hold. Then before you shoot next, take some isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) and swab that bore of the rifle well. Then some dry patches.

When ever your friend cleans the rifle, have him pay special attention to that area and be sure to get a good coat of oil in that area...

X3

 

[AJ]

Like the others said, test it and find out. For shooting deer out to 100 yards, I seriously doubt you will see any difference in the field. The groups may open up a little, but I'll bet they are still minute-of-deer.

 

[Doohan]

I would bet that it will shoot just fine. Since the pitting and rusting is in the area usually reserved for powder, I assume accuracy will hardly suffer... but it could

But like everyone else has said... shoot the sucker and see for certain.




If it were my gun, I would clean the H*ll out of it with US Bore paste to be certain all that corrosive stuff was out of the lands and grooves. Then it would eat a steady diet of BH 209..

 

[smong2000]

I have one just like that!!! It still shoots great!

I have had mine for sale on this forum but it's fast becoming my favorite hunting rifle and I'd have a hard time parting with it. You can see the photos of the breech area in the ad. I did exactly what Cayuga recommended and have been shooting it a lot. I don't know what it did for groups prior to the negligence, but I'm getting MOA or very close to it now just using a 1-5X scope. Shoot it, sounds just like mine and the pitting is contained in the chamber and probably won't hurt it a bit. If you don't care for the guy get on his case about wrecking a good gun and offer to take it off his hands. :lol:

 

[acasto]

Thanks everyone. I cleaned that sucker pretty well when it came over. Patches were coming out clean. I will invite him to the range along with a fresh container of BH209.
Although I did run one bottle of 777 through my rifle when I bought it, it now has a steady diet of the BH.
I have some Remoil, but not sure if it has teflon. Does it have to say teflon on the bottle?

As for buying it, I would rather help him get it back into shooting form so I will have a shooting partner. Not too many ML shooters in my area. (that I know of)

 

[cayuga]

the Rem Oil you have should be just fine.... its good stuff.