Why/how did it work?

[Ragnarok]

As a kid..we hunted quite a bit. One of the .22 rifles in the armory was a worn-out Remington Model 12A.

This particular Model 12 had but little rifling left in it's bore..and shot poorly as far as accuracy. However my father had this little 'trick' that would make the decrepit old rifle shoot ok for maybe 20 or 30 shots(enough my brother or I could hunt with it)

What father would do is pull a couple bullets from .22 cartridges...and then stuff them through the bore with a cleaning rod a few times.

Brother and I did this a few times ourselves to get the worn-out Rem shootable. Brother has the rifle now(rebarreled)

Later in life..I've pondered this procedure and why it worked. I really don't think we were knocking lead out of the bore..but that's about the only thing I can think we were doing by shoving a bullet manually through the bore.

Only other thing I can think of is that maybe pushing a bullet through the bore was 'cleaning' the remains of the rifling...that would still mean lead..either cleaning it out..or leaving some in the bad spots..

Anyone else ever heard of or seen this trick before??....Howzit work??

[barrabruce]

No but I'm listening.

[Maximumbob54]

First guess is it was filling the pitting with lead so the next few wouldn't scrape the bore and fly crazy.

[w5pv]

One question was that model 12 Remington a pump.If so that was a .22 like my father owned and I learned to shoot with. I could not remember if it was a model 12 or 21 but it had a octagon barrel on it that he later changed to round barrel.

[Ragnarok]

The little Remington rifle in question is/was a Model 12A pump..the plain barreled straight-grip stock version. My brother inherited it. I own a Remington Model 12C myself...an octagon barreled version with a pistol gripped stock and curved steel buttplate.

[Ehaver]

kinda sounds like laping the barrel, minus the laping compound. Probably smoothed out the sharp edges and such

[pietro]

.

Your Father was bumping the boolits up to the (worn) bore size.



.

[WinMike]

Don't know the answer, but your dad sounds like a great father to a couple of boys....

[DCM]

First guess is it was filling the pitting with lead so the next few wouldn't scrape the bore and fly crazy.

I would tend to agree, shot an OLD warhorse that wouldn't shoot well ti it was "dirty".
The barrel looked horrendous clean.

[country gent]

Have heard of target shooters treating a bore with rosin to improve accuracy as all the old target ammo was rosin coated. It may have been a form of this he was doing. Coating the bullets with a heavier coating or rosin might have the same effect but you would have to be carefull of "over" cleaning of the rifles bore or re seasoning it would be neccesary. We would do the same when shooting moly coated bullets. We would coat a tight fitting patch and work it thru the bore 10-15 times to pre coat the bore.

[Skunkworks]

Did you shoot LR ammo?
If not then it might be that he was removing a lead/crud ring in the chamber that "sized" the boolits before entering the remaning rifling.

[Ragnarok]

Did you shoot LR ammo?
If not then it might be that he was removing a lead/crud ring in the chamber that "sized" the boolits before entering the remaning rifling.

Yeh...22 shorts and Long rifles.

I asked my brother about it a couple days ago because he has the rifle now..and he says it leaded bad(he had it fitted with a replacement barrel). So I guess the answer is obvious..brother claims we were knocking lead from the bore-throat...

[jsizemore]

Pre-conditioning the bore with lube.