I can't remember the name of the process when ya "polish or smooth the rifling" of a barrel. I know this but can't remember, Alexa ain't helping either.
I used a brick of red rouge (jewelers) and got excellent results. I simply impregnated a heavy cleaning patch with it, added a bit of FP10 oil and polished a bore that I thought was a goner. I got it back to smooth and increased the ball size .01 and got a great shooter!Specifically a lap is a lead plug that is dipped in a mild polishing abrasive that smooths the rough areas of the lands and grooves. My explanation is way to simple to describe the pouring of molten lead onto a lapping rod and having a means to expand the lap as the rough areas are polished out.
Most of us use a polishing device such as a scotch abrasive pad wrapped over an undersized cleaning jag to do the polishing. Sometimes we use a patch dipped in polishing compound to do the polishing in the bore.
Fire lapping is done by putting the polishing compound on a patch to be used with a ball and fired from the rifle. For that matter fire the rifle about 200 times with a standard patch and ball.
All of these work to remove roughness from the bore and take the edges off the lands. A lead lap offers far more control and a degree of choke (0.001 to 0.003" at the muzzle) can be worked into the barrel. To a great extent, less is better than more and polishing compound is better than valve grinding abrasive.
At this time I don't have a brand name for the polishing media. There should be some listed in the Brownell's catalog.
Can't take the credit. Got the idea from another. Wish I had written their name so I can give proper credit. Only thing I changed was applying a springy material to maintain pressure rather than add paper to shim. I highly advise side wrapping bit with just enough paper to hold the bit firmly so the bit doesn't tilt. Also bevel the ends of the bits so they won't hang up. Because of that it's extremely important to use same number of strokes on each groove to maintain even cut. I ran 150 strokes. It made a marked visual difference. The improved smoothness of ramming is vey noticable. I did the overal lapping first to make sure roughness on land was corrected. Then the groove cuts to deepen grooves. I think I can say for sure the depth increased .003-.005. Needless to say the more strokes the more depth so you can get however you desire. The process took little over a week for 2 barrels. Thats 900 strokes per barrel. I would do one barrel 50 strokes per groove a night, 300 strokes. Clean, polish and blue. Trust me 900 strokes per barrel in one day will wear you out. I'm considering repeating the process but probably not since all I do is shoot target for fun. From the results I got it's most likely the best I'll get considering my age and eyes. Both went from 4 inch group at 25 yards down to inside 1.5 inch and some touching in that.Now that's neat, I'm gonna try that.
Thanks Bang
Good luck. I'm sure it will work. One other thing. When you make the first few strokes go slow and make sure the dowel is turning. I found that once I was accustomed to it I could turn my hand with the twist. When it's all sure hold a marker inline with the bit and stroke to make spiral line on dowel. This will let you know if the bit jumped out of the groove. Really nothing you can do but pull it out but it helps to know that you get total number of strokes per groove. The bit I used cuts both directions. So if it jumped 2 times to another same groove thats one stroke for that groove.I will check this out. I have three that needs spiffyed up, one for a friend and my two. Thanks for the info, Bang.
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