Mauser Barrels?

[lreed]

I buy stuff that I can put to use in projects, hopefully at later times. Two old Turkish 8mm 29 inchers with good bores that I was cleaning seem to both have a tightness for about six inches in front of the chamber,clean as I might it still remains,all the cleaners, brushes, copper wool, turpentine, all the usual stuff. Given the origin of these barrels what am I dealing with,metal,carbon or something else? lreed

[Wayne Smith]

Have you soaked them in Sweets? Copper deposits are most likely.

[Gtek]

Does six inches land about where the rear sight base is? Gtek

[Dutchman]

Does six inches land about where the rear sight base is? Gtek

Bingo!

The [excessive] heat used to solder rear sight bases to barrels can/does shrink the bore dimensionally. The Turks were not the greatest of ordnance men. (nor are some hammer mechanics named Bubba in the US)

I've seen this personally with the 1895 Chilean that were re-bored and sleeved to 7.62 Nato. The rear sight bases were re-installed and too much heat used in the soldering operation. I split one of the barrels on the mill and noticed excessive copper fouling on the rifling confined to that area corresponding to where the rear sight base was located.

You should only ever use propane for this kind of soldering operation. Never oxy-acetylene.

Dutch

[Hip's Ax]

An additional possibility IMHO is I remember when these rifles were plentiful as well as the Turkish 8mm ammo. I remember it being "hot" ammo and many were pulling the bullet and removing 10% of the powder and reseating the bullet. I also remember the bullets being silver in color and that tells me they are cupro nickle jackets. You might have a metal fouled barrel there.

[SciFiJim]

Since the barrels are already unmounted, it would be easy to clean them with a homemade electronic bore cleaner. This would take out any carbon or metal plating in the barrel.

Link from Surplusrifles.com
http://www.surplusrifle.com/reviews/copperout/index.asp (http://www.surplusrifle.com/reviews/copperout/index.asp)

The comments have better directions than the article.

[lreed]

Yes,as a matter of fact the tightness does seem to start and end with the sight location. Wow! They must have applied some serious heat to shrunk the barrel in that area. I had considered there might be something else rather than fouling to be in play as cleaning with copper remover and such didn't show any copper and both barrels showed identical restrictions, I sometimes enjoy pursuit of worthless effort,so I might pour a lap an try to lap the tight away.Yes,I know those old Mauser barrels are slow to show progress with a lead lap! lreed