T/C Hawken Rusty Bore

Too bad they weren't honest enough to put that in the description. I have got quite a few auction items and been lucky. Never got burned in fact I got some deals because their description of bad things weren't as bad as stated and cleaned up well. I imagine that kept some of the bidders out.
I have never had to deal with a barrel as bad as yours but have heard of worse that came out ok in the end. If you get some refund clean it up and shoot it. It may surprise you and you may be satisfied without a rebore.

Spoke with the gun/pawnshop this morning. The guy that bought the gun for the shop said he was in a hurry at the time and didn't inspect it as well as he should have.

The bore was dark, and he figured it was just dirty, and didn't bother to clean it before sending it off. I believe that he didn't purposely try and rip me off, it was more of just a mistake.

They were willing to work with me which is good. We settled on $100 off the price as a happy medium.

I'm gonna clean it up really good, perhaps some steel wool to knock down the rough stuff, and then some molasses to get all the rust out of the pits. Then I'll see how it shoots, I'm not optimistic there, but if it doesn't I'll ship it out to be re-bored. .58 with rifling sounds like the way to go, I bought the gun for deer/elk hunting - and a .58 with prb rifling would be pretty cool.

You guys who went with smoothbores, why did you go that route? My slivers of knowledge make me think that would shoot accuracy out of the window, am I wrong?

Glad for you that he at least tried to make it right. You might try fore lapping too. Either way as long as you are happy in the end, that's what counts.

By all means, clean the bore as best you can and try it out. You may be pleasantly surprised. I've encountered a couple grungy bores that have shot very well after clean up...it's a manure-shoot, but sometimes you win! :thumbsup:

Glad that they were willing to work with you. To thoroughly clean the rust from the bore, I would use Evapo-Rust available at most hardware & auto parts stores. Just be careful not to get it on the bluing unless you want it gone too.
http://www.evaporust.com/evaporust.html?gclid=CNfBvKvegLwCFexcMgodnEIAFg

For deer and elk hunting I would recommend that you go with the .58 rifled bore. IF your maximum distances were going to be 50 yards, thinking elk in heavy timber, the .62 smooth would do nicely.

I have .45, .50, .54, .58, and .62, all rifled. The .58 is a great compromise between brute power, velocity, and recoil.

You still have the option to buy another 1" barrel for a bit more flexibility. :thumbsup:

Smoothbores are more flexible in that you can shoot both shot and PRBs. The downside is that accuracy at distance with PRB is diminished.

Mooman76 said:

James Bond said:

First let me say I have had several satisfactory transactions on GunBroker. However, recently I purchased a used BP revolver and when it arrived the front sight was missing. When I contacted the seller (a gun shop near Kansas City), they replied the ad says "as is". I said the ad also indicated any known defects are listed (there were none). I offered to pay for professional installation if they would pay for the $5 part and have it shipped to me. No deal. All I could do was leave negative feedback on this auction and order the sight myself. No dig on GunBroker here, but not all sellers are ethical and reasonable.

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So by that reasoning if someone took your gun and smashed it in a vice, they could still fall back on "we said as is".

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The seller claimed the front sight was missing in the auction photos he posted. I guess I should have noticed. Some lessons in life can cost a lot -- fortunately this one did not. :haha:

localfiend said:

Spoke with the gun/pawnshop this morning. The guy that bought the gun for the shop said he was in a hurry at the time and didn't inspect it as well as he should have.

The bore was dark, and he figured it was just dirty, and didn't bother to clean it before sending it off. I believe that he didn't purposely try and rip me off, it was more of just a mistake.

They were willing to work with me which is good. We settled on $100 off the price as a happy medium.

I'm gonna clean it up really good, perhaps some steel wool to knock down the rough stuff, and then some molasses to get all the rust out of the pits. Then I'll see how it shoots, I'm not optimistic there, but if it doesn't I'll ship it out to be re-bored. .58 with rifling sounds like the way to go, I bought the gun for deer/elk hunting - and a .58 with prb rifling would be pretty cool.

You guys who went with smoothbores, why did you go that route? My slivers of knowledge make me think that would shoot accuracy out of the window, am I wrong?

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glad to hear that they 'stepped up to the plate' on your deal ...

as regards your question about a smooth bore, I went this route for a number of reasons: I already have a fifty and a fiftyfour rifled barrel for the Renegade, but nothing in smooth, so I was interested in a scattergun.

by way of disclaimer, I have not yet fired the new 20 gauge, but I am given to understand that I could well expect 'minute of bambi' accuracy out to at least sixty or seventy yards, so I have all the bases covered.

your mileage, and your needs, wants and personal tastes, may vary.

good luck with your project!

So I spent a couple hours on the barrel yesterday with some kroil and 00 steel wool wrapped around a bronze brush.

Got a whole heck of a lot of the rust out, which just exposed a lot of pits. The only rust that's left is in the grooves where the steel wool doesn't reach very well, and it seems to have thinned out a good bit. Also, the bad part seems to be the last 14" or so of the barrel, from the middle down to the breech the barrel is pretty smooth.

Took the gun out to shoot it. Was using Goex FFg, a .530 round ball and .15 patch with wonderlube. Ball started ok, used a short starter to help a bit, but it was kinda hard to push through the rusty area. Once past the rust it slipped right down.

I was only able to shoot three shots. Loading the second shot was rather difficult, and the third almost impossible. I tore up the patch on the third shot really good getting it past the rusty area.

So, I'm thinking that even if the accuracy isn't terrible, this thing is too hard to load as is, and I don't want to spend any more time on it. Trying to get Bobby Hoyt on the phone to get it bored to .58 now.

Any recommendations on twist? I want this gun to shoot PRB accurately at the fastest velocity possible. I'm hoping for a decent and accurate trajectory up to 100 yards.

And by the way, thanks for all the help guys, your input has been most helpful.

It would make a dandy .58 if you could get a hundred dollars back toward a re-bore.
Twist for ball would be around 1 in 66 to 72. MD

M.D. said:

It would make a dandy .58 if you could get a hundred dollars back toward a re-bore. MD

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I mentioned that in an earlier post, but I did get 100 bucks back from the seller. And that's what it's being used for - .58 here I come.

For a rebore I'd go all the way to a .62

Rifled is more accurate but I had a friend win a 50 yard shoot with a 56 renegade smoothie.

Mad Professor said:

For a rebore I'd go all the way to a .62

Rifled is more accurate but I had a friend win a 50 yard shoot with a 56 renegade smoothie.

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I'm kind of thinking that the get both option is the way to go here. Have a rifled .58, and a spare smoothbore .62 barrel for shot and the occasional really big stuff.

localfiend said:

Spoke with the gun/pawnshop this morning. The guy that bought the gun for the shop said he was in a hurry at the time and didn't inspect it as well as he should have.

The bore was dark, and he figured it was just dirty, and didn't bother to clean it before sending it off. I believe that he didn't purposely try and rip me off, it was more of just a mistake.

They were willing to work with me which is good. We settled on $100 off the price as a happy medium.

I'm gonna clean it up really good, perhaps some steel wool to knock down the rough stuff, and then some molasses to get all the rust out of the pits. Then I'll see how it shoots, I'm not optimistic there, but if it doesn't I'll ship it out to be re-bored. .58 with rifling sounds like the way to go, I bought the gun for deer/elk hunting - and a .58 with prb rifling would be pretty cool.

You guys who went with smoothbores, why did you go that route? My slivers of knowledge make me think that would shoot accuracy out of the window, am I wrong?

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A .58 rifle or a larger smooth would just be ducky. Be advised, you can get irregularities in the bore in a 1" TC barrel that you will feel with a patched jag even after taking it out to only .58. But that doesn't mean it won't shoot.
If you have a set of dial calipers or other means then by all means double check on how deep TC made all those screw holes before you send it off for rebore. That way you have a handle on how much can be taken out of the wall. You may later have a bump in the bore due to localized stressing but don't want it to be a through wall penetration. Hence, deciding rifling depth and rifling style as well as the bore diameter needs to be part of the path forward.
And that reminds me that I want to get a flat base plug for the 577611 or 577213 minie mold to make it a plain based spitzer for paper patching.
Just fer grins.

Figure out what you want and talk it over with Bobby Hoyt. The way I understand, he really knows his stuff and you can talk it over with him and come up with a good plan. he is spoken highly of here and I was thinking of having him do a barrel for me some day.

If it looks this a bad at the muzzle the breech is surely worse. My first thought is "why would anyone expect the bore to be good?"
These things are invariably shot with substitute powders that contain chlorates since the less corrosive BP "is too hard to get". Thus all percussion and maybe even FLs of this ilk should be considered to have junk barrels until proven otherwise. Even if shot with BP the average purchaser of such things, such as from Wal-Mart, has little idea of how to clean it even with BP. Or they leave it for a week before cleaning. etc etc.
If you have it recut make SURE that the breech is carefully examined to assure is has no "crawdad" holes eaten in it. I would assume everything exposed to powder gases to be junk until proven otherwise.
Even if the shooter thinks it been properly cleaned chlorate powders tend to cause serious problems. I have a reliable report by a custom maker I know of limited use by an experienced BP shooting resulting in pitting the bore and having a crawdad hole in the patent breech that eventually vented gas when it got deep enough. This was in one of my friends custom rifles which he then disassembled when it developed the leak.

So buyers of ANY used percussion ML need to have it available for examination before purchase if they insist on buying these things used.

Dan

A member here did some accuracy testing with a good quality smoothbore. He was getting results that frankly blew me away. They are allot more accurate than we give them credit for if you do everything right.

I spoke with Bobby Hoyt yesterday afternoon before reading some of the other posts on here, so I didn't get a chance to ask him out screw depth causing problems.

However, it sounds like he's been doing a lot of Thompson Center barrels lately, and with good success. I may ask him if he thinks there will be any issues, but from my earlier conversation he thinks things are good to go.

With the shorter barrel on a T/C - 28" he's recommending a 1 in 60 twist for PRB in a rifled .58. He says the slower twists lose a good bit of accuracy with lighter powder charges.

Seeing as this gun is going to be used primarily for hunting, heavier charges don't seem like that bad of and idea. And as such, I have started another thread.
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?fid/37/tid/285806/pid/1356348/post/

And hey good thing is it will make the gun lighter as well. What did he qoute ya for a price if ya don't mind I have another 54 barrel to send off.

I'm thinking of turning a 32 into a 36.