"Shooting out" pitted bore.
 

Last night, I saw a mention of a poster having a Luger with a pitted bore. Someone mentioned a particular type of ammo to run through it and clean it up a little.

As is usual, I can't retrace my steps to find the post. Did find lots of other neat stuff, though. Any help?

Sounds like some form of fire lapping, but I would question it as a method to "restore" a pitted bore. You may want to get rid of high spots and get the rust out of the pits, but at the same time you want to preserve what's left of the lands. With this method you can sure get rid of the high spots, but if you go on trying to remove pits you may end up with a bright, shiny bore that's oversized and won't shoot very well. Many pitted bores shoot surprisingly well, and I can't see any advantage in making them nice and shiny at the expense of accuracy. I have cleaned out many pitted barrels, but I just scrub them good with a good bore cleaner and leave it at that.

They are referring to bullets that have different abrasives incorporated into the surface that are used to polish the bore of new/rough benchrest rifles. They might help a little bit, but I wouldn't expect much. A barrel with deep pitting is not something that can be polished out with out markedly increasing the bore diameter. They have to be handloaded into your brass, as far as I know. I believe that Brownell sells them, and most likely others. The actual name of them escapes me currently(that happens a lot with me these days).


I guess that I type too slowly!!

IDK man if I were you I'd take it out and see if the barrel had any kind of grouping left to it, if it does leave it alone. Both of my barrels have pitting yet I can still put all 8 rounds in a group the size of a softball at 75ft. and for plinking or home defense thats plenty good IMO.

ammo
 

I thank you for the answers given, but also wish to state that I know enough about firearms to know that the only real "cure" for my problem is to reline the bbl, and there is no magic "cure-all to restore a pitted bore. I do plan to take it to the range soon and check out the grouping.

But, if you will re-read ny first post, I stated that I had read last night about a poster with a similar problem, and the answer given
was to run a box/half box of a specific type of 9 MM through the bbl and see if there was any improvement after cleaning.The answer given was not all that esterotic, I just forgot to write the type down. It may hav been as simple as a FMJ round.

I thought that someone else may have seen this current post and could re-direct me to it. Thanks again for the tips.

It is obvious to me that what you meant to ask, and what we thought you were asking, is entirely different. No one here is questioning your knowledge of handguns and pitted bores. If that is what your read into our responses, then you are mistaken. Your original post ask about a particular ammo to shoot down the barrel to help clean up pitting. You did not mention 1/2 to one box of this ammo was used for that effect. That would have made a difference, I believe, as to our responses. This forum tries to aid other Luger owners in any way that we can, and rarely do I ever see a condescending post from any member.

What rhuff said. Also keep in mind that it's not only you reading this, somebody less knowledgeable may just glance through it, think it's a great method and then ruin his pistol just because he didn't know "the rest of the story". You just signed up on this forum so nobody here has a clue about how much you know about guns, so better safe than sorry. At least you can't blame me if you ruin your bore. :D

I'd not be scared to use a small amount of lapping compound on a few bullets if I wanted to shine up a bore, however small group size, not shineyness, is what I like to see.
dju

Now you have me interested and wondering if it can be done. I thought what I had was good but if there is a way to make it better I'm all for it.

Fire-lapping
 

I have read about this in the past and the people who were using it were trying to "clean-up" the lead in an old shot-out barrel so that they could shoot oversize cast bullets accurately.

I think you might find that by shooting some regular copper-jacket ammo thru your old barrel and leaving it there instead of trying to clean it out would leave you with a smoother more accurate bore.

Essentially you are using the copper fouling to fill the deep pits and by leaving this fouling in the bore you end up with a much smoother and potentially more accurate bore. After you shoot your pistol, clean the chamber area ONLY with a 10mm brush, leaving the bore UNTOUCHED. Wipe off the muzzle and push a lightly oiled patch thru the bore. You should see an almost immediate improvement in accuracy.........................

All of my Lugers are shooters and just about all of them came with pitted barrels. I used Blue Wonder Gun Cleaner to polish the barrels. A couple of applications did the trick. Although they still show signs of pitting, their accuracy is flawless. Give it a try.

Unless there is severe pitting right at the muzzle that really destroys the crown, pitted bores will rarely adversely affect accuracy. Folks worry too much about pitted bores in shooter Lugers. Run a box full of ammo through it before you think about doing anything to the gun. Chances are that the gun will shoot a lot more accurately than the shooter. :)