Bore condition on an old lever action

I picked up an old Spanish El Tigre carbine in 44-40 a while back. It was carried a lot in its lifetime but very tight mechanically and a clean bore with almost no pitting. However, the lands are worn from the muzzle to a point about 4 inches into the barrel - I expect this came from careless use of cleaning rods over the years - especially since it had a brass 3 pc rod under the spring tab in the butt plate. The grooves are pretty consistent but I can slide sequential gage pins inside the barrel and observe a "bell-mouth" condition of about .003 max. at the muzzle opening that tapers gradually until reaching a consistent diameter back to the chamber.

I am using John Kort's 43-215C bullet design from Accurate Mold, with different hardness lead and smokeless powder combinations. To date, everything I have tried is running consistently about 3-4" groups at 25 yards from a rest. I have owned several 44-40 rifles since buying my first one in the 1970's and I know the cartridge is capable of much better accuracy. My last '92 Winchester would throw 2" groups at 100 yards if I did my part.

I'm concerned this amount of wear is contributing to the larger than normal groups and that I'll have to switch over to jacketed slugs (don't want to go there). I also thought about fire-lapping but that may cause more harm.

Any constructive suggestions are appreciated...HW

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Originally Posted by HWooldridge

I'm concerned this amount of wear is contributing to the larger than normal groups

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As 'retentive' as serious target shooters are about their bores & crowns, and the condition of yours---
I'd say your concerns are more than justified.

At this stage, I'd think fire lapping (being an abrasive process) would fall on a line somewhere between-
not making a difference to making it worse.

As I see it there are three remedies. First, put a liner in it to retain barrel length and original caliber. Second, cut the worn section of barrel if there's enough length to do so. Third, re-barrel it. If it were me, I'd go with the liner, thereby saving original appearance and length.

Anyone on this forum who you can recommend for relining?

Why not bore the barrel back to good rifling, leave an even"crown" and keep the barrel as is?

I would try counterboring first.

Try powder coated boolits and see if things improve

A good first step would be to get the crown recut and see if it makes a difference.

JES Reboring, call and ask his advice.

I second counter boring your barrel, it worked like a charm on one of my 308s. Went from
6-7” at 50 to 2-3” at 50 and my gunsmith charged me 30$

Last night, I found some Remington jacketed 200 gr SP pills that were at least 30 years old and loaded four rounds with 8.0 grs WW231. This is the result at 25 yards (ignore the one flyer, the Outers patch fell off the paper from a previous test). The 4-shot hole is about 5/8” edge to edge.

Now that I know the barrel is fine, I need to figure out how to get cast boolits to group. I wonder if gas checks would help?

FWIW, I have an Astra 900 semi-auto pistol that's outwardly a clone of a Mauser C96 Broomhandle. It has a bore condition at the muzzle that is similar to that of your El Tigre. Cast boolits at .308-.310 sorta group at less than 25 yds, if 6-8" is a group.

I tried 85 gr Hornady jacketed and the groups tightened to half or smaller. I tried some 32-20 cast that were .312 and groups opened a bit from that of the jacketed.

Then I was at a semi-local fun shop that was selling a bunch of cast bullets like from an estate, among them about 1400 95 gr boolits that miked .314". The price was right, so I bought them. The groups tightened back up to around 3+". So it's worth a try with going oversize in your El Tigre, IMO.

Noah

Thanks for the suggestion. I slugged the barrel last night and found it miked .427 so it’s probably close to original groove size.

HW: Forgot to mention that none of the cast were copper GC, but I put dental wax GCs on them.

Back in the late 70s and since, the CF Ventures wax sheets worked for me, and before I ran out I bought dental wax sheets off Amazon that seem to work just as well to reduce leading. Not claiming the wax helped the group size; IMO it was pure oversize that tightened the group size in my Spanish Broomhandle.

Noah