Can someone tell me what I am looking at when I video'd my GPR bore? from bottom to top.

[Flint62Smoothie]

I find the 'straight on' shots give you all the details you need! I just push a piece of bigger-than-caliber sized cotton ball down thebore to grab the light and enhance the photos. NOTE the cotton ball is only needed to get top of bore to lower bore photos, otherwise the breech or breechplug reflects enough light. Here's some from a BP cartridge rifle as an example, All from a < $15 LED endoscope!

 

[Okie Hog]

i gave up trying to determine the condition of muzzleloader bores using scopes. Went to dropping a flashlight or fishing bobber into the bore.

 

[ormond tony]

Answers:
1. It loads smoothly for the first 2 loads, after that you can feel a bit of tightness at certain places. If I try 4th load, no way will I get RB to bottom.
2. I have to find the patches to see if they are intact.
3. I am working on 60 gr of 2F BP with .490 RB and .005 patch. Good for 25 yards at local range.

I will use another ACE finishing pad for metal on the bore with some cleaners along with brush to get down to breech end. Thanks for comments. And I might be able to get a better endoscope. (maybe tell the wife it's for my health screening.)

 

[rich pierce]

Answers:
1. It loads smoothly for the first 2 loads, so there’s no real issue except normal stuff with bore crud after shooting black powder. after that you can feel a bit of tightness at certain places. If I try 4th load, no way will I get RB to bottom.
2. I have to find the patches to see if they are intact. This is EVERYTHING.
3. I am working on 60 gr of 2F BP with .490 RB and .005 patch. Good for 25 yards at local range.sounds good; try 70 grains.

I will use another ACE finishing pad for metal on the bore with some cleaners along with brush to get down to breech end. Thanks for comments. And I might be able to get a better endoscope. (maybe tell the wife it's for my health screening.)

 

[Grenadier1758]

Your fourth load is telling @ormond tony that normal fouling is building up in the bore and that the lubricant in the patch is not removing enough.

The reloading process needs to be changed to reduce the amount of fouling from shot to shot.

His rifle is telling him that patch is too thin. He needs a thicker patch with a more liquid lubricant. The patch should be 0.005" thicker than the depth of the grooves when the patch material is lightly compressed.

Since there is a chambered breech, care must be taken to avoid packing fouling into the chambered breech and flash channel. If wiping the bore between shots is part of the loading procedure, the loading /cleaning rod could have a jag that is about 0.010" smaller than the jag sold for that caliber. This allows the damp wiping patch to identify over the fouling and bunch up to pull the fouling out.

If the shooting process is based on not requiring wiping between shots, then the patched ball must be the agent to deal with the fouling. The thicker patch is needed and it should be moist but not dripping wet. The wet patch will push the fouling from the grooves. Being soft the fouling will be shot out.

 

[LRSmoker]

Answers:
1. It loads smoothly for the first 2 loads, after that you can feel a bit of tightness at certain places. If I try 4th load, no way will I get RB to bottom.
2. I have to find the patches to see if they are intact.
3. I am working on 60 gr of 2F BP with .490 RB and .005 patch. Good for 25 yards at local range.

I will use another ACE finishing pad for metal on the bore with some cleaners along with brush to get down to breech end. Thanks for comments. And I might be able to get a better endoscope. (maybe tell the wife it's for my health screening.)

Get a Teslong endoscope with the caliber specific mirrors and you will see that you have rust in the bore. The safest and most efficient method of removing the surface corrosion is as I described to you previously. Remove that and you will see a significant improvement not only in loading but in precision on the target because your patches won’t be torn by the corrosion.
Smoke

 

[M. De Land]

View attachment 123192

 

[M. De Land]

here's a side view video
View attachment 123556
that is not very clear. I have a "nidage" endoscope.that I just got. I used various resolutions. Just couldn't get a clear video. I think I need a better quality endoscope.

You have light pitting as can be seen from the breech area. Not to bad if you get right after it with some rust de solving fluid and perhaps some fine steel wool.
Personally I would pull the breech plug and hand lap it with poured lead laps and abrasive paste but then I'm kinda of anal about traditional bore lapping. Pits are almost never completely removed as abrasive lead lapping removes material in the ten thousands range but the main advantage is it levels and smooths a bore and maintains land and groove profile. Truth be told if one can stand to live with it a pitted bore will shoot as well as a brand new barrel if it doesn't hook lead , tear patches and the crown is not buggered. They are a bit harder to clean and they tend to foul faster but not by much. Your bore is completely salvageable but it does need attention to arrest any further damage.
I hot water and soap clean and use Gunzilla bore conditioner to preserve them when dry. I've yet to find a better product on a tight linen patch for lead removal from a bore plus it does a good job of preserving them as well. It also works very well in the field when not able to hot water clean at days end but nothing beats hot soapy water for powder fouling removal.

 

[johnfrommd]

What you are seeing are mostly machine marks in the bore. Unless the barrel is hand lapped, it will take many shots to smooth them out. That said, it is not an issue as long as you aren't cutting patches.

The patent breech requires a .38 caliber brush for cleaning it out. I swab, brush and then brush with a piece of patch around the brush to dry it out. Then I treat my bore with a concoction of tallow, beeswax and olive oil that I made which keeps it from corroding but won't gum up like petroleum lubricants.

 

[Scota@4570]

Here is an example, I just took the pictures . This is a TC barrel, straight on it looks like a rusty mess, TC rifling is pretty rough with a lot of tool marks. This is a pristine kit gun barrel that may have been shot 10 times, I put the kit together a year or so ago.

View attachment 123525

https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/attachments/tc-hawkens-side-jpg.123526/
A side view shows the roughness but none of the rusty red.View attachment 123526

https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/attachments/tc-hawkens-side-jpg.123526/
That is a great picture. What we are looking at is a button rifled barrel. The barrel was drilled. A rifling button was then pushed (or pulled ) through to create the rifling. The drilling marks were swaged deeper in the grooves but still remain. The depth of grooves is limited by the button rifling process. This is the cheapest way to make a barrel.

https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/attachments/haines-after-scrub-jpg.123524/
The previous photo shows a cut rifled barrel. The machine marks in the grooves go the length of the barrel. This a good thing. The annular marks in the lands are less prominent. This indicates a reaming step was done. All things being equal the cut rifled barrel is better.

 

[M. De Land]

You have light pitting as can be seen from the breech area. Not to bad if you get right after it with some rust de solving fluid and perhaps some fine steel wool.
Personally I would pull the breech plug and hand lap it with poured lead laps and abrasive paste but then I'm kinda of anal about traditional bore lapping. Pits are almost never completely removed as abrasive lead lapping removes material in the ten thousands range but the main advantage is it levels and smooths a bore and maintains land and groove profile. Truth be told if one can stand to live with it a pitted bore will shoot as well as a brand new barrel if it doesn't hook lead , tear patches and the crown is not buggered. They are a bit harder to clean and they tend to foul faster but not by much. Your bore is completely salvageable but it does need attention to arrest any further damage.
I hot water and soap clean and use Gunzilla bore conditioner to preserve them when dry. I've yet to find a better product on a tight linen patch for lead removal from a bore plus it does a good job of preserving them as well. It also works very well in the field when not able to hot water clean at days end but nothing beats hot soapy water for powder fouling removal.

I've hand lapped a lot of bores over 40 years of gun work and have a Hawkeye bore scope as well as pin gauges which adds up to a lot of actual experience in what I'm, talking about. Each of those little clusters of roughness along the confluence of the groove and land are small patches of rust and probably pits. This is from inadequate cleaning of powder fouling not the roughness of the boring, reaming or rifling of the barrel. Most patch ball guns with rilfling over about .004 depth (about the limit of button rifling in sporting barrels) are broached or single point cut which tends to leave the finished bore some what ragged unless hand lapped. The reason for this is because the process involves chip production as the cutter passes over and shears metal off in the groove. Land roughness is caused by the reamer and will be radial in direction as opposed to the groove which will be longitudinal in cut or broached rifling.
This ragged condition is what cuts patches in a new bore and about 100 shots will usually be needed to wear off the sharp land corners to the point the patches will make the trip without tearing. A good hand lap will have them shooting from the get go usually and have the added benefit of leveling lands and grooves which all barrels have a tolerance of in depth and height. Patches will wear off the land corners but do almost nothing for the groove corners and very little for groove bottoms. Good hand lapping will smooth and uniform it all without rounding off land corners as does steel wool and other abrasives on a patch that are not cast to the actual bore profile without pressure points. Another benefit with hand casting abrasive laps is being able to work in some taper or choke to a barrels interior.
It is a lot of work as I've had some barrels require 2500 round trips (up and back is one trip) seven or eight new poured lapps and three grades of abrasive paste.
I know I men;tioned the possuible use of fine steel wool in the first post but as a general rule I discourage it's use beacause it tends to round off land corners and burnish the wire edge over which usually stops patch cutting but does not leave the profile as good as it could be. Hand lapping with poured slugs and the proper abrasive will cut the wire edge off clean and maintain a sharp land corner profile. It will also clean up the groove bottom and some what clean up the groove corners better than any other process I am aware of.

 

[ormond tony]

I just spent the day following some of ML'ers advice. Used finishing pad for metal to smooth; used brushes with width small enough to get into breech. Bore cleaner patches with brushes to further clean. In my first video, you couldn't see the breech from 1/2 down bore. Now you can see it from almost the top of the bore. The sides look like they have some rust. Some areas I guess will smooth out in time after shooting.
Thanks for all your advice. This is still the best place for muzzleloading education and advice.

 

[hanshi]

I've fire lapped barrels and also used 0000 steel wool as well as ScotchBright and J&B Bore Paste for smoothing out bores; all methods worked well. Use a thicker patch; it wipes out fouling and carries more lube than thin material. A .005" patch is like using NO patch. I generally use .024" canvas for patches or at least cotton canvas duck. Of course there's no need to load as tight as I normally load but .005" is way too thin.

 

[Nor'Easter]

Here is an example, I just took the pictures . This is a TC barrel, straight on it looks like a rusty mess, TC rifling is pretty rough with a lot of tool marks. This is a pristine kit gun barrel that may have been shot 10 times, I put the kit together a year or so ago.

View attachment 123525

A side view shows the roughness but none of the rusty red.View attachment 123526

Eric, how many thousands do you think it would take to clean up the tool marks and do you think it would noticably improve loading and cleaning? Thanks, NE

 

[ormond tony]

i think this video can be seen. Not sure about the one above.