Originally Posted by
405grain
I despise opening a barrel channel. It is my least favorite of gunsmithing tasks. It takes forever. Chiseling, sanding, scraping - so tedious and boring. But, it is a necessary evil of the smith, so do it we must. I have found a hack that has work pretty well for me. Instead of using bone black, prussian blue, lip stick, shoe polish, or other messy goo to detect high spots, I've found that a pack of black dry erase markers works really good. You just draw the marker on the object that your trying to fit (in this case the barrel) and press it into the barrel channel. It leaves marks on the high spots, but these don't soak into the wood, and the marker is easily wiped from the barrel with a dry rag. This works equally well for doing inletting too. A lot less messy and easy to clean up.