Pitted bore??!!

[choctaw]

   I received a SMLE No1 MIII today that has a slightly pitted bore.  I've never had an SMLE nor a rifle with pits.  I don't really know what to expect.  Can anyone with a similiar experience fill me in on whether this rifle will be worth shooting or not?  Except for the pitting it is in very good condition.



Jon

[R.W.Dale]

 You'll just have to shoot it and see.

 I have a moisin sporter that has an unbelievably pitted, eroded , rusty black sewer pipe bore.... and yet it still shoots GREAT (see pic). I've come to suspect that as long as the barrel crown is square and there is something resembling rifling in the bore it'll shoot good.

 Think about it. The only part of the barrel that can upset a bullets flight is the crown.



 100yds with S&B ammo and a trashed out bore.

[Mikey]

choctaw:  pits in the bore aren't necessarily an accuracy killer and lots of rifles with pitted bores shoot great - good enough for hunting work out to a couple of hundred yards.  If your pits are really bad, bore lapping may help improve the accuracy.  If not, there are lots of extra 303 barrels out there, very inexpensively, for that Brit.  HTH.  Mikey.

[choctaw]

Thanks for the help guys.  That's pretty much what I thought too, but I wanted some experienced opinions.

[lostsniper308]

I have a M91-30 that's never been cleaned to a shiny bore but it shoots. I run patch afte patch but the fouling just keeps on coming.

[choctaw]

Yeah, that's what is happening with the Enfield.  Its one dirty puppy.

[lostsniper308]

My Enfield gets clean real easy. Foaming bore solvent then a half dozen or so of solvent and it's shiny.

[choctaw]

My Enfield gets clean real easy. Foaming bore solvent then a half dozen or so of solvent and it's shiny.

Looks like a trip to Gander Mountain for me!

[lostsniper308]

i can't recall the brand right now but it's a mostly red can. What kind of ammo you shoot? I got the 200rnd pack from sportsmansguide.

I just cleaned it out, for me it took the foaming cleaner and 18-19 patches of GunSlick Nitro Solvent, not exactly a half dozen or dozen i said but it was a heavy shooting session 40-50rnds expended.

[choctaw]

Thanks for the info.  I'm heading out to buy some solvent in a few minutes.

I hadn't even fired this rifle yet.  A friend gave it to me.  He cleaned the cosmoline off and never did much else with it.

[savageT]

choctaw,
Sounds to me like you should look into building an inexpensive electronic bore cleaner.  Just some household ammonia, a length of steel rod, a couple "C" batteries, w/some wire and clips, some 3m elect. tape and you are ready to pump out the grime.  If you do a search on Google you'll find out how to build one.
I finished cleaning my filthy Mauser bore with some J-B Bore Cleaning Compound and Kroil.
Jim

[choctaw]

Thank you sir.  I sure appreciate that idea.

[His lordship.]

I have had several rifles with pitted bores, that was the way it was with many surplus rifles 25 years ago, not like now with all these arsenal rebuild guns so common, were getting spoiled with em'. 

My Italian Carcano in 6.5 had pitting, Japanase Arisaka in 6.5, pitted, my Spanish Mauser in 8 MM, pitted, my British Enfield, #4, pitted, in fact all these mentioned rifles were some of the most accurate I ever had.

I bought a 1943 Tula MN 91/30 last year that had deep pits in the groves, but boy it could shoot.  Traded it off as my other 2 Mosins have minty bores and also shoot well.

[unclenick]

Do not use an electronic bore cleaner on a bore with rust in it.  Iron from rust goes into the solution and allows it to etch the bore.  Even the commercial Outers FoulOut warns to check the color of their solution after the cleaner has run a bit to be sure it isn't picking up iron.  Also, the FoulOut has a low voltage regulated output (0.3 V) so it wont attack plain steel.  A version of the electrolytic ammonia cleaner running on 3V or so was put in an article in The Fouling Shot back around 1990, and they reported that a week or two after using it they had rust-colored patches coming out of their carbon steel bores because it had etched and activated the surface inside.  As far as I know, only stainless barrels seem to be fairly immune to the process.  Details and instruction for both a 0.3V regulated and a two-battery unregulated electrolytic bore cleaner can be found on Father Frog's web site, here.

You can make up a solution of baking soda and water (2T per gallon) and reverse the polarity of an ammonia type cleaner (barrel negative) and do electrolytic rust neutralizing.  That may be a good first step.  For those for whom the crud just never seems to stop coming out, on Commercial Row at Camp Perry this year a fellow had a new vegetable based, water-free gun cleaning product called Gunzilla.  I talked to the business owner for a bit.  He claims it was formulated by a chemist who is a competative shooter and that this fellow designed it to break down carbon and metal and rust bonds.  I haven't tried it on jacket fouling or lead yet, but I have gone back and cleaned guns with it that had patches of Butch's Bore shine go through and come out absolutely clean.  The stuff isn't instantaneous, but after leaving a bore wet with it for a couple of hours, carbon traces began showing up on the patches that hadn't come out with the regular bore cleaner.  My borescope showed this was the carbon that builds up and packs up in a little ring against the step from the chamber neck to the freebore.  The stuff really works.  I applied it to surface rust on a couple of lathe tools, and after sitting a bit the surface rust rubbed right off.  I don't know about deep rust, but this is definitely something else to try in a pitted bore.

Nick

Nick