Nice Barrel

[sheepherder]

I recently purchased a rarely seen old barrel. Slight bore frosting/speckling.

This should clean up pretty nice, don't you think?

[Edward Tinker]

tis but a scratch

[aldo35]

I thought it was a stainless barb wire coil

[ithacaartist]

Haven't seen a post from you in a while, Rich...

Whatever it is in this barrel looks pretty bad (really?). Think some genius ran a tap through it? Is it rust that's blossoming on lands and grooves? This one might be a good test of the frequent claim that even a sewer pipe lookin' Luger bore is usually still remarkably accurate. What's its destiny?

Steve at Gunblack showed me a couple of Lugers not too long ago. IIRC, one was a Mauser military that just seemed to need a better refinish. The other had been deactivated by a plugged barrel at least. It had been diagnosed as lead at the time, so my recommendation to Steve was that since the fusion temp of lead is below that which would mess with the temper of the steel, he should just heat 'er up and melt 'er out...then scrub-a-dub-dub. Next visit, which tale I expect to install in its own post, he told me it turned out to be weld. Bummer. I think there is some other damage, too, but it sounded as if it might be able to be reclaimed, and a barrel change might just get the project home.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by ithacaartist

Haven't seen a post from you in a while, Rich...

Ill health, Dave.

Whatever it is in this barrel looks pretty bad (really?). Think some genius ran a tap through it? Is it rust that's blossoming on lands and grooves? This one might be a good test of the frequent claim that even a sewer pipe lookin' Luger bore is usually still remarkably accurate. What's its destiny?

I'm thinking something got stuck in the barrel and the owner used a hammer and steel rod to drive it out. I've never seen circular scratches before, and there's no bulge in the barrel. It is rusty, but not as bad as some I've seen (and own).

I have some special tools from my millwright days that might help, but I can't find them. Things keep changing location...

My initial idea was to use this as a kind of chamber gauge, to check for excessive OAL after seating the bullets. I'm using an 'oddball' LRN bullet from Missouri Bullet that has a 'step' that should be level with the case rim or else the cartridge locates on the 'step' instead of the rim, resulting in a too-long cartridge. Took me a while (50 rounds) to figure that out. Now I've got it.

I will shoot it a couple times, just for S&G. I had a couple of junk barrels but I ended up using them for a wildcat round I'd heard about, so they were no longer usable for this caliber. "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter..."

[sheepherder]

Rooting around on my workbench, it occurred to me that those scratches might be from a rat-tail file...