Smoothing a new barrel

[mossyhorn]

I have a new bored barrel with vey sharp lands with very fine whiskers of steel on the lands that will slightly damage a patch when run through the bore. The rifle has not been shot.
How can I smooth up the inside of the barrel without shooting a hundred shots through it before use? 40 Cal.

[Scota4570]

Maroon scotchbrite.   Work is back an forth.  Concentrate on the breech end.  Do less to the muzzle end.  Taper is good.  Flair is bad.  You may want to use an undersized bore brush to hold the scotchbrite.  You may want to polish it up with patches and Semicrome or Flitz

The as made crown may benefit from smoothing.  You can do that with your thumb and very fine sand paper. 

[mossyhorn]

Thanks for the info! I'll try this.

[ramiroelliot]

Maroon scotchbrite.   Work is back an forth.  Concentrate on the breech end.  Do less to the muzzle end.  Taper is good.  Flair is bad.  You may want to use an undersized bore brush to hold the scotchbrite.  You may want to polish it up with patches and Semicrome or Flitz

The as made crown may benefit from smoothing.  You can do that with your thumb and very fine sand paper.

I had the same problem before and this worked great!

[stubshaft]

I used an old bore brush wrapped with OOOO steel wool to clean up the lands.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Maroon scotchbrite.   Work is back an forth.  Concentrate on the breech end.  Do less to the muzzle end.  Taper is good.  Flair is bad.  You may want to use an undersized bore brush to hold the scotchbrite.  You may want to polish it up with patches and Semicrome or Flitz

The as made crown may benefit from smoothing.  You can do that with your thumb and very fine sand paper.

Excellent advice, I'd do the same thing but I'd mount it in a vice and push the muzzle against a wall or a board for the majority of the work so you can't run the rod out actually through the muzzle.  At the end when you feel you've slicked it up to satisfaction, then just run a couple of passes actually through the muzzle followed by checking for sharpness at the crown after that.

[Pukka Bundook]

All very good advice,
I use 4/0 steel wool and Autosol metal polish.

The muzzle touching something is very important advice!

[recurve]

yup I use 4/0 steel wool and oil the way Mr Chuck Dixon told me to. 50 strokes clean repeat as needed.



before and after steel wool on a cut barrel

[smylee grouch]

Years ago I was in the same situation and was considering shooting it smooth by mixing some kind of polishing compound in with my Bear grease patch lube and shooting a bunch of shots. I don't know if this works or not but it might be an interesting experement. 

[Hungry Horse]

 Way back when the first Great Plains rifles first hit the market a couple of friends bought themselves a couple of them. They were great rifles, but some had rough spots at the breech. About twenty shots with a good tight patch took care of it.

Hungry Horse

[MuskratMike]

I am also a proponent of the maroon scotchbrite pads. Cut them about 1 inch squares, I use an undersized jag (for a .45 I would use a .40 or .36). Once you get it started I work it 10-5 times up and down the barrel focusing more on the the breech end mostly. After 10-15 strokes I replace the maroon pad with another and repeat this 3 -5 times. What surprised me is that I was starting with a barrel that had been shot but cleaned. After the scotchbrite treatment I ran a cleaning patch wetted with Isopropyl alcohol. It came out filthy black. I have been told this is the graphite from using Goex or for that matter any black powder. I also coned the barrel and this really helped as the re-bored barrel was a tight .40 caliber and coning really helped in starting the ball.

[rich pierce]

Any steel will turn any abrasive black.

[Eric Kettenburg]

Rich aren't you recutting barrels for people or something like that?  Would like to hear your thoughts on the issue, especially if you're pouring any lead laps.  I've done that a few times and using very fine valve grinding compound have had really good results, but have to be careful especially out toward muzzle.

[recurve]

all your attempting to do is remove the burrs on the cut barrel that cut into the patching (shooting it several hundred times will do the same thing)
but it does seem to clean up faster and have less fouling buildup

[rich pierce]

Rich aren't you recutting barrels for people or something like that?  Would like to hear your thoughts on the issue, especially if you're pouring any lead laps.  I've done that a few times and using very fine valve grinding compound have had really good results, but have to be careful especially out toward muzzle.

Yep, lapped a lot of barrels. It’s about an hour’s work and ruins a perfectly good ramrod blank. One of the guys at the Gemmer club in STL used to finish the ramrod blank first with shellac or varnish. Then a 4’ blank could be re-used as a ramrod by cutting off the lap. I lacked the patience, wanting to get at it. I was told to lap new barrels from certain makers (or shoot 200 rounds) and not others to get best accuracy. The advice about not exiting the bore completely is spot on.

[davec2]

Just as an alternative that might be more fun, I used some lapping compound (600 & 800 grit) that Brownells sells and just used it for patch grease.  Fired several rounds with the 600 and the several more with the 800.  Had to do a quick wipe between shots, but I could smooth up the bore AND shoot at the same time.  I'm sure any grease filled valve grinding compound would work as well.

[mossyhorn]

Great advice fellows! I really appreciate all the great responses and will follow up with smoothing my barrel. This was an old smoothbore barrel that I bought for a few dollars and sent it to a gentleman to have it cleaned up and rifled to a 40 cal. and  didn't really notice until recently that it needed smoothing. I  had John Bergmann build a really nice East Tn. Rifle that I really like and will do a little more work and hopefully it will be a shooter! Thanks again for all the responses!

[Scota4570]

The ultimate process is to lead lap it.  Pull the plug,  Cast slugs on all thread, use a threaded breech plug bore guide, Steel rod, work you way from 100 grit to 320 grit.  Make it smooth and uniform with slight choke.  Polish with flitz.  It is a lot of work. 

My best barrels are all lapped in this traditional way.  A very smooth barrel will not require wiping between shots. I think this may be why the shoot all day idea has varied experiences.  Different barrels work differently.  I used to have to swab a lot.  Now I only swab between relays, and it is probably not needed.  I now shoot very well finished barrels. 

The last one I lapped this to was a rebore job too. 

For now, try the scotchbrite and see where you end up.  Good luck. 

[Daryl]

Been shooting various maker's barrels since 1972. I've never had to "polish" a barrel yet including cut barrels by Bauska (.450" with .028" deep rifling - .506" groove to groove),
Rice, some unknown .32bl. with narrow lands, a weird deep buttoned barrel by Hall Sharon in 1975, buttoned TC barrel in 1972, Green Mountain, Getz, GRRW, & Bill Large - that about sums them up.
Learned in early 1970's to use a .005" undersized ball with .022" denim patches, wet with lube and have at it. Good accuracy right off the bat, without fail, except for the GRRW barrel.
It now shoots well with the thin .021" to .0225" denim patches. When new, I had to use a 12 ounce denim I measured crushed in calipers at .030" and .025 in my mic. due to the reamer
marks being too hard on the patches. Now that it has been shot over 5,000 times, although the reamer marks are visible, they are only a memory. The bore is smooth.
Even the .004" deep rifling of my TC Hawken(s) liked the .495" ball and .022" denim patch, but with 85gr. 2F GO then GOEX or Curtis and Harvey.
One guy at the range was having trouble loading my recommended load in his .50 TC(H) so I recut his crown with a sharp pocket knife, then polished it with a piece fo 320 emery from my pocket.
Total time, might have been 5 minutes. It loaded nicely after that.

[Jerry V Lape]

Regarding the muzzle Daryl posted some years ago to polish the end of the muzzle by pressing some emery paper or fine sandpaper to the edge of the bore is smooth.  do this by walking around the barrel so it is uniform.  I do this because it really makes a difference in loading.  While I am at the muzzle, I round the sharp edges on the outside of the muzzle including rounding the sharp junction of the flats.  This I do because it is pretty easy to make contact with those edges and points which can draw blood, and it hurts. 

[Daryl]

As Jerry notes, the outside corners of the barrel flats and each flat themselves need to be 'broken'. Hitting your knuckles and taking the skin off is especially hurtful in sub freezing temps.
It might happen anyway, but the damage is less if the edges are "softened".

[rfd]

On all rifles, old and new, I do Lee's bbl "break in" process ...

Excerpt from “Breaking In a Barrel” by Lee Shaver:

Several years ago, I developed a process for breaking-in barrels for lead
bullet use that eliminated the afternoon of shooting and cleaning with
jacketed bullet.  It began because I would occasionally have to get bad
leading out of a barrel for a customer, and when you charge what a
gunsmith must charge to stay in business you don’t want to spend an
afternoon scrubbing the lead out of a customer’s gun.  And I’m sure the
customer would rather not pay for said services.

What I learned was that when scrubbing lead out of a barrel, I could run
a tight oily patch through a few times and then take the patch off the
jag.  I would then unroll a little 0000 steel wool and cut a piece the size
of the patch.  Place that over the patch and then run it all through
together.  (The proper fit is when you have to bump the rod a few times
with the palm of your hand to get it started in the bore.)  When you
shove that steel wool over a patch through the bore of a badly leaded
barrel, it may sound like paper tearing as the lead is ripped out of the
barrel in a pass or two.  I can clean the lead out of the worst barrel in
about ten or fifteen minutes that way, and an average leaded barrel will
be clean in a few strokes.

After using this technique for a while, I began to notice that the rifles
that I was de-leading that way seemed to lead less afterwards, which
got me to thinking.  We use fine steel wool on the outside of old guns all
the time to do some cleaning or spot rust removal, and it does not
damage the surface of the steel.  It just scrubs it.  Which lead me to
consider the fact that we are trying to break in a barrel by smoothing
the surface without cutting, and it seems to me that process would go
much quicker if we used something on the inside of the bore that was
closer to the hardness of the barrel instead of lead or copper.  So I
started trying the steel wool and oiled patch technique on new barrels
before shooting them.  I use it about as tight as I can get in the bore and
wear out a steel wool pad or two in about 15 minutes, then I go and
shoot the rifle.

How well does it work you might ask?  On a few occasions, I have built a
new rifle and taken it to a match without ever having fired the rifle.  All
have performed flawlessly in their first match and several times I won
the match or set a record with them.  On one occasion, I set a new 300
yard range record with the first 13 shots out of a barrel.  This method
has become a service we offer to our customers here in the shop and I
have shared the technique many times with others.

[Daryl]

For getting leading out, I've tried a myriad of different "solutions including lead removing chemicals, lead-away cloth patches by Birchwood Casey. As well as a few strands of Curly Kate kitchen scrubber (copper strands) wrapped around a bore brush. The Curly Kate worked just about as well as "Lead Away" cloth (which was magical)and is much less expensive.

[Scota4570]

A problem with just shoot it a couple hundred times is cost.  Depending on caliber, powder charge, and if you are shooting a cap lock it will cost you about $100 to do so.   A second issue is 200 shots of sub par function. 

[rfd]

Seriously, if all y'all haven't tried Lee Shaver's "lead out and bbl lapping" method, yer missing out big time on both issues.  And if ya don't know 'bout Lee, he is a world class percussion muzzleloader champion at Creedmoor distances, besides being one of the USA's best 18th/19th century firearms gunsmiths.