RX for Frosted Lands?

Bought an Australian Number One Mark III, 1942 made today. Bore was a bit dark, but it looked strong. Took it out, shot four rounds through it, no problem. Brought it home and cleaned the bore out. It actually shines really nice, but I can see light pitting on the lands(raised part?) that some people call frosting. Is there a way to polish these down or is this just a permanent condition My other Enfields have mint bores. I'm just wondering how this will affect the performance. It performed well today.

If it performs well, I wouldn't worry about it.
It will get better with shooting and cleaning. Just watch out for metal fouling.
I have one to try, and the rifling is awful and also washed out, but I'm still going to try it. :-)

Had them before like that and they shot Very well!

Always remember this when it comes to rifle bores. Polishing, scouring, scrubbing etc etc...., whatever words you use..... are just other fancy words for eventually wearing it out. If it ain't broke, then don't fix it

Any time the good Captain speaks I listen and hesitate before contradicting.....so what follows is conclusions based on observation. I am more than willing to be told I am full of BS, but offer the following:

I have found that rifles with rough bores due to ill maintenance (i.e. bore rust) seem to benefit from a good bore polishing if done correctly. The done correctly part is important. Here are the advantages of same that I have observed:

1) polished neglected bores seem to show far less fouling tendency once the bore is polished
2) polished neglected bores are, in my experience (shooting on competitive targets) to be more accurate.
3) Correctly done it cleans up a wee bit of the roughness in a worn throat, though I have no idea if that really does much.

The only caveat to #2 above is in most cases the crown has been cleaned up as well, as typically when the bore is neglected the crown has some micro pits that need to be cleaned up. so # 2 might be due to that rather than the bore polishing, but I do not think this is entirely the case.

As far as what I mean about bore polishing. The correct way is to use a lead lap (either cast or a closely sized lead sling forced to shape) with a lapping compound like JB. This removes not only the rust, but also the removes fouling in the corners of the lands that polishing with a tightly fitting brass plunger and patch does not. I have also found that in-between stroked removing the lap and rotating it one land helps as well. This method will remove iron-oxide (rust) that a normal cleaning with a brass brush will not remove.

Ideally before you do this you remove all of the carbon/copper fouling with a carburetor cleaner. The other method I have not used, but have been told will remove rust quite well is white fruit vinegar. If I had an old rust pot I would try that but do not have any such project guns anymore.

On rifles that have had rust where the lands are rough I have found that lapping with the correctly sized brass plunger-patch and JB will clean the lands up and while it most definitely does leave the lands slightly rounded on the very edge, helps with accuracy. This is pure guessing but I think when the lands are rough you get odd fouling patterns that change shot to shot, as fouling builds up to be sheared off from following shots. In either type of polishing you are not over polishing, once the roughness is gone (you can feel it) you stop.


As to results: One of my Lee Enfield match rifles was an old Maltby 1945 gun which had a neglected bore I bought for 25 US from a friend. Horrible shooter. Did the entire bore polish, re-crown and set it up as a center-bedded rifle. Bore went from gray to pretty bight. Shot very well with old cordite loads when I could still get them. Best score I recall was a 468 out of 500 (dropped 10 in offhand), which with ball ammo out of a well worn service rifle.

Had an M14 match rifle (heavy Douglas 1-10, 6-groove , broach cut tube) which rusted up on a long drive back from a match (not bad, just slight bit). Cleaned it the normal way and did every thing I could to remove any crap. Did not shot well after on the 80/88 shot course, lots of fouling, so took off the flash-hider, did the lap and redid the crown. Back to normal accuracy and the tube lasted as long as I expected out of a Douglas tube (~4000 rounds) @ long range (they would shoot very well out to 5,500 rounds @ 300 yards or less).

The only downside is that is it is done incorrectly you could get some asymmetrically wear on the lands in the throat region. In my experience that kind of wear is an accuracy killer. So polishing a bore is something that requires some care to ensure the lap is pushed though the bore without any side to side pressure. As such I have found pulling directly with a bore guide to keep the undersized rod from making contact with the bore, the only contacting part being the lap.

Back in the early days of M16A2 match shooting, the loads were very hot and had a tendency to foul quite heavily, especially on hot summer days. It was a regular technique to polish every 300 rounds (with brass plunger and patch) or so with JB to keep the fouling from becoming excessive. Oddly enough those barrels seemed to give very long life, on the order of 5000 to 5,500 rounds of full distance accuracy (Krieger heavy barrel, 1-8 4 groove , cut rifling.) so the use of polishing does not seem to have affected life.

One shooters observations.

Frosting equals rust. If you don't actually remove the pits and rust then it stays. If you remove metal then you have a bigger bore. You'll have to choose...

any time I agree with Freddy 3 oh 3 I feel certain I am wrong. but in this case I agree with him on two counts.

1. Being full of BS.

2. Polishing the barrel to clean it up.

Clean it and be sure that what you are looking at is actually the result of corrosion and not lead, copper, or powder fouling. I use an oil based valve grinding compound and polish it up with very few strokes. As peter is correct, your wearing out the barrel by other means. Then I use a finer rouge to polish it further. This method wont hurt a bad barrel but will keep the pitting from gouging the copper cladding as the bullet wends its way down the barrel. Cant guarrentee it will save a barrel but it may delay the onset of sudden death syndrome.

I had a 37 commercial BSA III that was bad. I think I imagined the rifleing was there. I cleaned it up this way and out to 300 yards it shot much better. It really did nothing more than extend the life of the barrel, by how much I cannot say. but the serial numbers matched so replacing the barrel was not really an option.

Washing and polishing the painted bodywork of your shining MGB GT is one thing.
Getting a scuff mark out of the paint with an abrasive compound is taking the paint down
Taking that corrosion out is taking the steel down. You can call i whatever you like. You can use all the solvents, water, oil and finest crocus or 1200 rubbing paper you want. But guess what.........

Perhaps shoot is more, giving it a clean with decent bore/copper solvent end of each days run and see how it shoots - if it groups acceptably all good, then carry on enjoying it (the old - if it a'int broke don't fix it )
I've always cleaned all my .303's (No4's and P14) same way, with same stuff as i clean my Fullbore target rifles, although admittedly the target rifles have stainless barrels - seems to work, for me.
Never liked the idea of the paste type "polishing" products, it all sounds to "abrasive" to me - and you'd want to be 110% sure you got all of it out before you fired more rounds after cleaning i would think.

Got no dog in this fight, I just know these exist.

Tubb Final Finish Bore Lapping System 303 Cal

As stated in post 2 here, I have a MLE Mk 1 with a very bad bore. Very worn at the breech end, (Cordite) the rifling looks more Metford at this end!
Also, a loose bullet drops in about an inch further than the end of the chamber so it's pretty worn.
Used a bit of oil and wire wool to clean some of the rust out and fired it. About a 4" group at 110 yards.

Did the crown, as it had had maybe 3/8" hacksawed off muzzle and the saw marks still showed, then someone had chamfered the muzzle with a drill bit, and it had grabbed at one side, making a one-sided chamfer!
Tidied up the crown and tried two 3-round groups. (was getting late in the day and not best light)
First 3-shot group turned out I had one cartridge of a different make. The 2 Winchester 180 gr P-soft point went into 1-1/4" off a rest (110 yards) and the "Imperial" went I have no clue where!

Second 3-shots, (WW "Silvertip" I wanted to use up, 180 gr)
two rounds went 5/8" C-C, and the third opened up the group to 4"!

Part due to my eyes maybe. can't tell where front sight ends and black of the bull starts. also a heavy trigger pull.
Point being, that I think it wants to shoot still, even with a bad bore.
Shooting and cleaning will be what it gets from now on.

R.