Gouged chamber

[fatelk]

I just bought a new (old) gun, a Remington rolling block in .43 Spanish. The bore is in nice condition for it's age. I haven't got set up to load for it yet; I need to get some dies and molds, and most of all brass. I had one modern round that I picked up somewhere, that I fired today. On looking at the empty, I noticed a couple "bubbles" on the neck, and realized that at some point in the past the neck of the chamber has been gouged.

I assume that there's really not much that can be done, other than just shoot it. Anyone else deal with something like this?

[Der Gebirgsjager]

That's not too bad to still be of use. You're right....there isn't much to be done if the chamber is gouged that doesn't involve major surgery, such as reaming the chamber to a different caliber; which will probably also lead to re-barreling. Practically speaking, it is what it is.

I've got an 1896 Broomhandle Mauser with a badly gouged chamber, and the way I worked around it was to use Chinese steel 7.62x25mm cases appropriately reloaded. The steel doesn't extrude into the gouge. You're unlikely to find any steel .45 Spanish cases, but if the one shown extracted easily and the rifle is in otherwise good condition, I'd continue to use it.

DG

[Bent Ramrod]

I have a .38RF Remington #2 with a gouge in the chamber. The burr was still adjacent to the gouge so I turned a piece of drill rod to a close running fit in the chamber, hardened it, ground a flat sufficient to clear the burr, polished it up, inserted it in the chamber and turned it in the direction that would iron the burr back into the gouge. It can still be seen, but doesn’t interfere with extraction any more.

I have a Winchester barrel in .40-90 with a pitted chamber. Shells wouldn’t come out with the extractor, but could be tapped out with a rod and looked rough on the outside. I set the barrel up in a lathe with the muzzle in the chuck, a steady rest holding the barrel halfway out the other end and the tailstock removed. I smeared flux in the chamber as the lathe turned the barrel, introduced a small piece of solder and heated the chamber end with a propane torch till the solder melted. I smeared the solder into the pits with a popsicle stick until all the pits looked full, with no excess, cooled the barrel, wiped it out, replaced the tailstock and lapped the chamber with a sacrificial case and Clover compound till the case inserted fully.

I can see the little silver dots in the chamber where the pits used to be, and shells now extract normally. This wouldn’t do with deep pitting that weakens the chamber, but seems to work OK for minor (but sticky) pitting and black powder pressures.

John Campbell wrote an article somewhere where he had the neck portion of the stock chamber of a .43 Spanish rifle reamed out slightly so cases could take boolits of sufficient diameter to fit the barrel and shoot accurately. I would imagine that sizing and loading dies had to be modified as well. You could conceivably clean up that gouge this way and not have to deal with the notoriously undersized boolit-to-barrel-diameter combination that exasperates so many .43 Spanish owners. I don’t know whether the same situation exists with the .43 Mauser, but this modification might be a possibility.

[fatelk]

My bad, this one is actually 43 Spanish. I mistyped when I said Mauser.

[John Taylor]

Sometime the chamber can be lined if the bore is good. Chamber is bored out and a shot piece of barrel stock is inserted and a new chamber cut. I usually thread the insert and install with Loctite.