Thankyou all for the support.
Indian Joe: good to see the new owner has got CBE up and running again.
yeah I have had a few off them the last couple years, reasonable price,(more than reasonable since our AU$ went in the toilet) good quality
I plan to order a mold off him but for different gun.
Here is what l’m trying to better.
First time out after initial "cleaning and blasting"
Attachment 308652
Mostly in 2 inches at 50 yrds.
I would call that a win for a first out
I spent a few hrs today with some autosol polish and steel wool.
I followed up with a lap and autosol and moved the lap around to different lands.
It is not as gratey as it first was.
Pic of the chamber/rifling area.
Attachment 308653
Muzzle end looks actually "salt and peppery".
Attachment 308654
The bore and lands measure about 0.3155" at this stage and being a 5 groover across the bore and one land 0.317-0.318.
So it gives me roughly a 0.322" my mould is 0.324" heeled 120grn.
Next time I’ll do a pluck test and see where the hangs up in/near chamber.
I will lube the bore well before shooting as I think it may help some.
Hopefully it may have improved it a little.
I for the life of me don’t know why the ‘ol timers believed in rough bores shot better.
Maybe it was a left over thing from black powder days and people were scared of shooting their barrels slick or something.
I reckon they didnt realise what they were up against, smokeless powder looked a good deal but they were shooting corrosive primers - blackpowder residue is easy to see and easy to clean out - the corrosive primer residue was invisible and much much harder to get out - lotta good barrels ruined in the early smokeless days .
This ol girl may be a candidate for black powder.
But I don’t know what grade I would have to buy for it.
its a little case you likely do better with FFFg (or even FFFFG would work)
It would save my precious smokeless pistol powder hopefully till we can get some more supply.
How far north are you ? I have shotgun powder here I will never use (Red Dot, WST, Winchester 452?) I'll be up in march/april as far as McKay - maybe as far as Bowen and Homehill. (just a thought)
Cheers
Bruce
Few weeks to next report.