Photographing barrel rifling -- Round 2

[earlmck]

So I broke out the old 25 Remington with sewer-pipe barrel to compare to the nice 250 Savage I pictured yesterday. This took a long time to pull off because, as you might guess, it is quite a chore to get a barrel clean that looks like this one. I musta had 8 shots of the old foaming bore cleaner before we stopped oozing dark blue crud.

It turns out to be real tricky to get perfectly centered and I never quite got it, so I am posting two pictures, one showing the left side of the rifling best and the other showing the right. Here we go:

25Rem1.jpg

24Rem2.jpg

And so you don't have to hunt up yesterday's post to compare to a nice barrel, here it is:

AllFocus1.jpg

I know it looks like there are chunks of stuff in the 25 Rem barrel but I think they are pits: I don't feel anything rough when pushing a patch through the barrel.

[JerryB]

Bad bore or not, it is still great camera work to show a barrel as you do.

[Old No7]

So I broke out the old 25 Remington with sewer-pipe barrel to compare to the nice 250 Savage I pictured yesterday...

Sorry to hear that you actually had a "sewer pipe" to look at!

But wow, those images you made are awesome!

These are borescope (Hawkeye/Gradient Lens, taken with a camera focused on the eyepiece) images of my old .22 BSA Martini... Not the best pix, but this would have been a great sewer pipe to look at with your camera:

Martini 22 Bore 02.jpg

Martini 22 Bore 03.jpg

I said "would have", as I just had Taylor's Machine reline it, and now I need to get some better "after" pix -- and put some groups on paper too.

Sure wish I'd had your photo capability for the before & after on that one.

Nice work!

Old No7

[vancelw]

Thanks, Earl!
Are you illuminating the chamber, or is that just exposure of ambient light?

[earlmck]

Thanks, Earl!
Are you illuminating the chamber, or is that just exposure of ambient light?

For these I propped a piece of white paper back in the action area and illuminated the paper with my desk light. Other things might work better; that's the only way I have tried and it seemed to give a pretty even lighting effect.

[Marc]

Amazing photos!

[J Miller]

earlmck,

Great pics.

The bad barrel on your 25 Rem still looks better than the barrel on my 303 Brit battle rifle.

Joe

[earlmck]

earlmck,

Great pics.

The bad barrel on your 25 Rem still looks better than the barrel on my 303 Brit battle rifle.

Joe

Yeah Joe, I am still expecting that little rifle to shoot something decently, though it hasn't been very good with what I've tried to date. And I also have some worse barrels: I had 3 I was cleaning on yesterday and the 25 Rem was the first one to "come clean". I should have a couple more ugly pictures to show but it might be a couple days before I get to them: gotta go shootin' today.

I have an Arisaka that has never had the barrel clean, though a few years ago I spent a couple days scrubbing/soaking/scrubbing with Montana Extreme. It is one of the ones still "bleeding" dark blue junk with the foam treatment but one of these days I expect to get there with it and will be interested to see if there are any riflings left after all my scrubbing. The other is a 32 Special that I have had clean at one time so I know for sure it'll not be many more treatments before it gets clean and ready for its portrait.

[BrentD]

Earl, those are really cool and useful pictures. I sure like them. But I have to say, it sounds like you have a lot of badly fouled barrels.

A "before" and "after" portrait of them might be interesting as well. Just push out the loose fouling with a couple of damp patches and then compare that to a clean barrel.

[GonnePhishin]

Yes, interesting pictures.

[J Miller]

Earl,

I got hooked on Hoppe's #9 many summers ago and still use it. When I shoot my jacketed bullet rifles I always clean them thoroughly. But not anally.
I slop the bore with Hoppes after running the bronze brush through it to dislodge the fouling and then prop the rifle muzzle down on a thick pad of folded up rags. Some of my rifles such as the 303 take days to clean. The solvent breaks loose the copper fouling as it runs down the bore and keeps them cleaner than any other method I've used.
I have tried other bore solvents but some of them give me such horrid allergy reactions I just can't use them.

Perhaps I should try your method of taking pics of my 303s bore. (Insert puke icon here. Yuck.)

Joe