Something I've been wondering about

As posted elsewhere I got a 5 groove barrel for my rifle from Numrich.It was identified in a reply to that post as possibly being off of a Fazakerley rifle from 1944.
Now to the reason for my curiosity. When I cleaned this barrel it came out spotless inside with only a couple wet patches of shooters Choice. It looked amazingly good to me for a barrel that was 66 years old. It looked better in fact than the barrel on my Remington 700 that is almost brand new. I would venture to guess that this barrel is unfired. There was zero copper in the barrel and what came out looked like cosmoline only. No carbon that I could see. Is it possible that this could be from an unfired rifle and if so would this be normal? I'm curious mainly because I don't usualy get lucky like that. I'm just waiting to find out that the barrel installs upside down os something.

I'd say finding a truly unfired barrel from a war time manufactured rifle would be unusual. Many of the No.4's available on the market have been through one or more post-war rebuilds before going into storage, so sweet bores are not at all uncommon.

The serial number on the barrel is hand engraved. A barrel installed during a refit makes sense.