PC & Severely pitted 30-30 barrel ?

[GregLaROCHE]

Fire Lapping!

[Petander]

I’d start with a few fire lapping and then go to the JB compound.

Are you in Finland? Will you be lapping in Lapland?

Haha,yes,Firelapland!

Does this buttplate look original?

[725]

Ha ! . Oh my, two hours of cleaning for 5 rounds shot. Lookin' like a re-line or re-bore is in order. Wish you were on this side of the pond. There is a guy in Gettysburg, Pa. that does this type of work and he is amazing. Hope you can find a machinist to help you out. That rifle is too beautiful to let go.

[GregLaROCHE]

One of the benefits of shooting cast is that, if you lap the bore with fire lapping or other methods and increase the bore size, you can compensate by casting larger boolits. Even if some of the rifling gets worn down, it should still shoot reasonably well. It doesn’t take a lot of rifling especially with lower lower velocities normally shot with cast. You should definitely try some lapping before reboring. What do you have to loose?

[Petander]

What do you have to loose?

Sanity?

[charlie b]

sanity?

roflmao

[Petander]

These gas checks were fired through the barrel with primers only.

They came out hexagonal shape. Is all that dirt from a primer only or did the check remove something from a supposedly clean barrel?



I was hitting clays ok today. Two shots @ 25 m here. 140 MP NLG.



75 m bullet trap was also clinging pretty much all the time. I missed one low of 25 shots. Low was because the trigger is still heavy,crisp and heavy but need some getting used to

[longbow]

I'd say that's just primer residue.

That's a nice looking boolit! I'd kinda like one in 0.316" for my .303's. I'm thinking it would feed better than my 316410. The 316410mshoots great but won't feed from the magazine because it is too short and the HP gets collapsed by battering during feeding. No such issue in a lever gun!

is the gun yours now or still in testing?

Longbow

[stubshaft]

I had a very similar bore to your in my model 64 and sent it to JES Rebore to have it rechambered to 35-30/30.

[Petander]

The story goes, I got the 30 cal gas check maker as a by-product with another gc maker, a custom one.

So I thought, a 30 cal dedicated CAST rifle is needed now.

A friend said he has an old Winchester. I jumped on it right away, bought a mold, dies,a new press (broke one with the check maker) . maybe 200 factory ammo just to try...

Then I noticed the crazy fouling. Only then I inspected the barrel, even though I had the Borecam all the time.

After all that with the gun in my hand my friend says "I never fired that nice gun".


Too late , all I could do was to do the trade as agreed.


But changing the caliber gets me so far from the 30 cal hobby cast gun, oh no... I have two 30 cal rifles that break claybirds @ 320 meters all day. J-bullets

Here I'm struggling 32 meters.

[Petander]

Well oh well... man's gotta do.

I got five diamond paste tubes, from 40 micron down to 3.5.

Started all over once already, I went too fine too fast. Nothing happened.

But this is one crazy job. Just clean,clean and clean night and day. I've been doing this for about ten days now.

[longbow]

Yikes! looks like it is smoothing up some anyway.

Are you firelapping with jacketed bullets? I see what looks like some NLG boolits in that first pic. I think you'd get faster results using lead boolits rather than jacketed.

Is the accuracy improvement with cast or jacketed?

That does look like one pitted bore alright!

You've got your work cut out for you! Your cleaning rod arm will look like Popeye's arm by the time you are done!

Longbow

[Petander]

Longbow,

I may try lead bullets with the finer grits. Using lead now would completely foul the barrel with one shot. Jacketed fouls less and is easier to clean with Bore Tech copper remover.

No accuracy tests now while lapping. But I keep hitting my 75 m bullet trap with these 900 fps bullets all the time. I just hope I know when to stop lapping...

[longbow]

Well, this is confusing! I was going to say that my understanding of the process is that when rolled between steel plates with grit on them that the grit embeds in the lead so gets carried along and cuts as it goes. Because it was! I am pretty sure I have seen firelapping kits that come with lead lapping bullets and I had read this:

http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/Cla...%20Lapping.pdf

Then while doing a search I found this:

https://www.btibrands.com/wp-content...structions.pdf

which shows copper jacketed bullets being used. The Nico kit also shows copper jacketed bullets being used.

Personally I would mix grit with grease or boolit lube and fill lube grooves of cast boolits for firelapping. With low pressure/low velocity loads it shouldn't foul badly... but that's me and this is your barrel. I hand lapped my barrels using pre-engraved cast boolits with lapping compound loaded into lube grooves. That worked well on both an old Lee Enfield and my Marlin 1894 with microgroove rifling with tight spots in the bore.

Whatever you do I hope you are successful! That is a nice gun... except for the bore!

Longbow

[Petander]

Thank you Longbow.

Yes,there are different methods. Some recommend lead for fire lapping handguns and copper for rifles. Anyway, copper fouls enough for me, I must have 1000 blue VFG wads by now...

Could it be that my pastes are not easily embedded,too? These are for knifemakers.

It got better looking today,I got in the grooves with 1200 grit. I will test shoot with some coated tomorrow.

I know I should have slugged but I decided to watch the Borecam and phone pics. If it is oversize I can adjust. Throat has been only slightly polished by now, I left compounds in the barrel after cleaning. But not in the throat.

[longbow]

That is looking better!

[rockrat]

Maaybe use boolits and slow them down a bit more, to around 750 fps to possibly prevent leading. You should be able to get more of your compound in the lube grooves

[Petander]

Maaybe use boolits and slow them down a bit more, to around 750 fps to possibly prevent leading. You should be able to get more of your compound in the lube grooves

Most instructions tell to impregnate the paste into the surface, not in the grooves.

There may be a reason?

[longbow]

My suspicion is that for fire lapping embedding the abrasive in the bullet/boolit is more effective... plus for copper jacket bullets there are no lube grooves.

For hand lapping... in my limited experience, I found loading the lube grooves to be more effective. Likely because multiple strokes are being made so abrasive is replenished as it is dragged out of the lube grooves. Suffice it to say it gets EVERYWHERE! I cleaned up after every lapping slug change. I am sure fire lapping is a lot less messy that way.

Again, just my opinion.

Longbow

[Petander]

I fired two boxes of Federal factory ammo today, to check what's going on.

Very little fouling, accurate enough to break claybirds @ 50 meters. Even with these funny original sights.

Velocity is a little higher than before fire lapping. It was 620 m/s, now it is 635 m/s. The same factory box.



I have a feeling that I did good.