RX for Frosted Lands?

[mike16]

there are ways to remove rust/corrosion from a barrel using electrolosis or electrolitic action or what ever the vendors call it. its essentially hooking a stainless steel rod up to a batery charger and sliding it down the barrel center and hooking the battery charger up to the rifle. essentially you are plating the stainless steel rod with rust from the rusted barrel. Called lots of things by many vendors. very effective too and well docummented process on you tube.

advantages are

it removes the rust/corrosion and not the good metal.

it leaves a nice etched kind of surface that you can fill up with moly grease and if you heat up the barrel carefully the moly will penetrate the opened pores of the metal and to a limited extent prevent additional corrosion but will provide a lubed surface to help the bullet travel down the barrel with less resistance and less wear on the barrel. you can then experiment with using less powder which will itself reduce errosion at the chamber end as well. it will not return "metford" rifling to grooved rifleing" if you know what i mean.

Polishing the barrel to remove corrosion is a limited proposition in and of itself. I know I mentioned using a lubed based valve grinding compound but it and polishing remove metal as well as corrosion. they work to smooth the surface but they remove the good with the bad. etching process''s work very well too. Brownells and others sell kits to etch barels,look at thier website but also check out you tube to get an idea of the theory and practice in action. its an amazingly simple process.

[Richard Hare]

FWIW;

I have been trying to get a sows ear to shoot. Very rough bore and eroded throat. It's a MLE Mk 1 or I would not have bothered.
For a start, it showed promise, as with the rust the bore was 'furred up" to some degree, but as it was fired and cleaned, and the bore got smoother, it also got larger as the rust got flushed out, and now it is about hopeless.

I have tried different weights, and styles, and home-loads and it will put a couple in a small group, then the others off paper!
Tried a 3-shot group with Imperial 215 gr @ 110 yards, put them all in an inch, but two were badly keyholing. Fired two more and not even on paper.
The loads that showed promise for a start ( now the bore is smoother) just won't group.

My point being, if a barrel is a bit rough and groups, Don't wear it out more trying to get it polished up!

[mike16]

can you go with a larger diameter bullet?

what about chrome plating the barrels as done by our favorite soviet socialist comrads. chrome and recut comraden or is it comradski

[Richard Hare]

Mike,

Larger bullets I think would mean cast, and I don't know if cast would work in a rough bore.
I should find a few to try before I invest in a mould. Thanks for the suggestion!

Chrome I know nothing about.

Cheers,

Richard.

[browningautorifle]

fill up with moly grease and if you heat up the barrel carefully the moly will penetrate the opened pores of the metal and to a limited extent prevent additional corrosion but will provide a lubed surface to help the bullet travel down the barrel with less resistance and less wear on the barrel.

Any grease in a barrel or chamber will raise the pressures when fired. The heat of a cartridge being fired will evaporate any grease in the barrel. After a couple there will be none, let alone hiding in the pores of the metal. That's why we fired a pair of warming rounds before commencing practice...this isn't like an engine.

[mike16]

I'm not suggesting leaving the grease in the barrel and shooting the rifle. that is very dagerous and would not work. even if it did it would only work for the one each shot and then the barrel would have to be regreased.... where would you put the zerk fitting. no.... grease in the barrel is very dangerous. good point for those of us who dont know that. grease in the barrel...very bad. remove the grease from the barrel befor shooting the rifle.

grease in barrel...very very bad.

we are not talking about lead bullets with grease grooves either. I have no experience with that in .303 or the many mixtures involved in the grease used in the grooves. although I know moly has been used as a component of the mixture used in the grease grooves of those leaded bullets.


I'm suggesting putting moly in the barrel and letting it soak into the open pours of the rifle while it is brought up to a high temperature perhaps in an oven for some period of time then allowed to cool and then the barrel is cleaned in some way to remove the grease but not to remove the moly coating the bore and in the pores of the metal. sorry, I skipped that very important step, of removing any and all grease from the barrel befor shooting it. mea culpa.

shooting the rifle will possibly remove additional moly from the surface of the barrel bore but only a little more after which the remaining moly will remain. occasionally the process will will have to be repeated to restore the moly and its benifits. the process is repeated. dont forget to remove any and all grease from your barrel before shooting it.

I hope I dont have to mention that when you heat op the barrel you ought to remove the wood.

another point about polishing. Polishing may have a tendency to smear metal over rust /corrosion. so while your marveling at the beauty of shiny and more worn metal. it continues to rust/corrode under where the metal has smeared over it. making it harder to actually see and harder to stop. thats why the etching process has advantages.

chroming over a polished barrel may be problamatic for the same reason. chroming over rust and corrosion will cause the same problem as smearing metal over rust corrosion. etching metal prior to chroming over it does two things.it removes rust and corrosion that is deep down in the pores of the metal and between the grains of the metal and it provides a nice textured surface for the chrome to grip on so then at some later point when it is machined or cut for new rifling and later still when shot the chrome has a better ability to grip and stay put in the barrel.

etching also provides a nice surface for moly to attach itself to.

I dont know if you want to try moly then go with chroming the barrel. try one or the other but maybe not moly the barrel then try chroming it because moly can also penetrate deep into the barrel surface and is a pita to remove . chroming over moly. i dont know if that has been done but it would make no sense.

I know that once a barrel has been done with moly it is hard if not almost impossible to remove completely. very difficult to clean out the moly. not impossible but very difficult. keep that in mind if you experiment with moly then go on to experiment with other process's.

when you clean a barrel that has been moly'd. the ordinary cleaning process used after each shooting, that process can/may differ depending on who you talk to. there are vendors who sell moly for bullet coating too and barrel coating. they might be the ones to advise you on rifle barrel cleaning process after shooting and if you choose at some point to remove moly coating from your barrel.

chrome moly barrels not the same thing.

dont shoot a barrel with grease in it. very bad.

any nearby university that has an engineering program will probably have a set of books published by ASM, about 20-30 very large heavy volumes on all types of materials and process's. one will include a chapter on various types of chrome plating. its not the chrome plating process used on automotive bumpers. its industrial chrome plating.