Contender barrels and squareness issues

[fixit]

I have a 14 inch 30-30 barrel for my contender, and while it shoots ok, I have read about out of square crowns and chambers on these. I am aware that my factory crown is not pretty, as it is cockeyed, and I have no idea what the chamber is like. All of this is to asking.....what is everyone's experience with this issue, and what has been done for correction of the issue?

[PopcornSutton]

You're not going to do much about a crooked chamber. Crowns can but re-cut.

[TomAM]

With a good light, you can see into the chamber and examine the rifling leade. If the rifling starts on one side of the bore closer than on the other side, you've got that crooked Thompson chamber.

[TurnipEaterDown]

Cerrosafe - cast the throat, knock it out and look at it. It will tell you. Cerrosafe is cheap.

[Nobade]

Mike Bellm used to have a really good writeup on the subject on his web site. What to look for and how to tell what you are looking at. Crowns are easy to fix, chambers need to be made bigger with a boring bar to start after indicating on the bore. That's where his line of wildcats mostly came from, to fix crooked Contender chambers.

Another thing is sometimes if you spin a TC barrel in the lathe the bore looks like a jump rope. Many of those things were very crooked. The thing is, most of them still shoot really well despite their shortcomings. There's something to be said for a short stiff barrel.