Bulge in Barrel?

I have read several posts in the past about this as well as read it in books, but how can you determine if there is a bulge in your barrel? Can you see it on the outside of the barrel? Could you see it in the bore with a light and what would it look like?

I would think it would be obvious with a tight patch.

I can't speak from personal experience (and hope it stays that way...LOL)


I've seen the following posted by folks who have had the experience:

Can see it on the outside;

Can't see it on the outside but can 'feel' it while lightly sliding fingers back & forth along the barrel;

Can see a 'ring' in the bore where it occurred;

Can feel the tension on a cleaning patch ease off then get firm again as it passes through a bulged area;

You can see it on a .45 TC that I know of. The owner heard you can use 2 roundballs, but only patched the first one. There's a bulge where they collided. :shocked2:

I think each bulge is an individual depending on the situation some are visable some are felt some may need to be measured to detect.

Flint311 said:

You can see it on a .45 TC that I know of. The owner heard you can use 2 roundballs, but only patched the first one. There's a bulge where they collided. :shocked2:

Click to expand...

Incredible...the front ball rolled away some then he shot it.

As an aside, T/C actually listed double ball .45 and .50cal loads in their early load dats charts, but stopped listing them, probably due to user errors like this. (people don't read directions)

PS:
I've shot many double .45 and .50cal balls at the range for the hands on experience of it and they're actually very accurate, printing only a couple inches apart at 50yds.

IMO, ringed or bulged barrels are easy to spot if one is looking at the outside of a modern thin wall barrel on a rifle or shotgun but with the thick barrels most muzzleloading rifles have it can be hard to see.

I use the tight oiled patch on a cleaning jag to check if a barrel has been ringed.

When pushing this jag/patch down the bore a pretty constant resistance will be felt if the barrel is OK.
After it is started, if it suddenly becomes very easy to push for a few inches and then returns to the former resistance you can bet the barrel has been ringed.

On a straight (not swamped) barrel just lightly close a caliper on the outside at the muzzle and slide back to the breech. If it hangs up at some point you have a bulge.

You can see a bulge generally and you can absolutely feel it in the barrel with a tight patch.

One of the most accurate .50 flintlocks I've ever fired had a noticeable bulge that could be felt with a tight patch. It wasn't visible from the outside but sure was detectable from the bore. A bulge doesn't necessarily affect accuracy but it may depend on the location of the bulge; in my case it was just behind the rear sight.

I had a bulge in a .41 just around the breech area that was so big that you could actually have the ramrod drop on its own when it got to it.. :grin: It was quite accurate too, but a bulge is a bulge, and though I'm not any kind of engineer, intuition (my female side probably) tells me that the barrel is weaker there.

Bulge in barrel: looking down a very clean bore, you might see a slightly dark ring at the bulge. On the outside, you may be able to see it when sighting down an octagon or round barrel, tapered barrel is another issue.

A tight fitting cleaning patch will slip easily throught that area, then continue with whatever pressure you previously applied.

Safe: if it looks like the python that swallowed the pig, I'd say no. A bulge of a few thousands likely is OK, but I'd hate explaining how it got there to others, especially if it was your fault.

Accuracy: some have said a small bulge (whatever "small" is) did not degrade accuracy, others disagree. I bulged a 1858 Rem barrel, my own fault, shot it about 20 times more and didn't seem to affect accuracy.

Couldn't stand to look at it so replaced, and BTW, not an impossible task, even with a few simple tools like a vise, a very big crescent wrench, and leather vise jaw faces, a file, and feeler gauge for cylinder/barrel clearance, as a factory replacement barrel may already have the front sight installed, so you need to screw the barrel tight into the frame with the front sight "up."

The beauty of ML shooting is that, unless you are a world-class champion shooter, many ML firearms are forgiving and many are not dramatically affected by reasonable loading variables.

Barrel bulges can be detected by taking a micrometer and checking the flats in an area where the cleaning patch feels loose. Some times people will get a fouling build up, or oil Gum area and over lap the area which will make the patch seem loose with no bulge in the barrel. :idunno: