Rimfire barrel life

it builds up fast. one day after putting a new scope on. i was looking
through the bore after shooting 3 rounds of wolf mt, just trying to get
on target. i could hardly see through it for all the gunk there. and it was
all laying in the bottom of the bore. if you blow a puff in there it'll clear most
of it. i asked on here awhile back if it would be feasible to rig up something
to blow it out with. a couple of guys thought they could rig something up.
might be a hassle taking a little tank of compressed air and hose to the
range with you. i take about 3 loads of stuff with me to the bench as it is.
maybe a little fan like the little battery powered vacumn cleaners they make
for computers running backwards would work, i have one, i'll have to try it.
 
I've got what appears to be a SS Border barrel in an Annie action that was retired from service as an Eley factory ammo testing rig. It was shot out of a machine rest at Eley. It was sold with three other barreled actions from Eley that had chrome moly Annie barrels mounted. They were purchased as a lot for the actions and triggers with the expectation that the barrels would be scrapped.

I've heard varying statements about how many shots went down these barrels before they were retired from service. The best information seems to be about 100,000 rounds. Reportedly, Malcomb Cooper was engaged by Eley to design a QC program that included ammo testing. That program design included scheduled replacement of the test barreled actions and a certain percentage of production tested at certain intervals during a production run. Out of that fell replacement at about 100K rounds.

Of the four barreled actions, my action and one other have been used with the test barrels as recieved from Eley. The barreled action with the Annie barrel delivered the level of accuracy that one would expect from any Annie, pretty good but not up to what is required to win BR with any consistancy.

By contrast, the presumed Border barrel on mine just drills. The bore of this barrel has the appearence of having been bead blasted uniformly top and bottom for ts entire length.

About six years ago I looked down a Lilja that had less than 500 rounds of Eley of that period down it and it clearly showed the beginings of change in its finely lapped finish as has been described in this thread...an accumulation of little scratches concentrated near the chamber end and on the bottom of the bore diminishing toward the muzzle. I don't know if this was from primer residue or powder residue or abrasion from unburned powder, but it was certainly obvious in a very short number of rounds.

It seems to me that ground glass residue would not help the life of a match barrel that would be expected to digest a lot of rounds. I don't know if or when Eley or anybody else started using glass in priming compound. I do know that my barrel is very high milage and had nothing go down it other than Eley of about twelve years ago when I received it and it has the appearance that it does and it will run with the big dogs in spite of it.

Perhaps after enough shots that interior finish evens out and a barrel will resume its performance. I have no reason to believe that this barrel ever had a cleaning rod in it before I received it. When received this barrel has an eliptical patch at six o'clock just ahead of the chamber that looked like serious erosion. It was gone after a very vigorous (by rimfire standards) cleaning.

FWIW

Greg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
jhar

Isn't it interesting that with all the testing they did, not one bit of care or concern was expressed about the effect of the ground glass on the rifles' barrel. I guess that is our problem!
 
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