I bought a borescope. Probably not a good idea.…

[M14AMU]

Don't make a hoot no hells difference how the bore looks.....as look as the bullets go where you want 'em to!!

 

[Just Dave]

I posted on this awhile back,, my "custom" gun with a trued, remmy action, locked to a douglas match barrel, shot great once I found the right bullet.powder combo.
Consistently shot .3" groups off a bipod. But then I got a Lyman BS
.
Turns out the barrel was "pre-chambered" by Douglas, who apparently never checks their reamers. Big gouges in the neck area of the chamber,, chatter marks all around the neck.
Bore was smooth, and in mint condition, with only a hint of throat erosion starting.
.
Somebody presented the question, if I was to have those areas re-cut, did I think it would get to .2" ??
.
No, or Yes, .. . Maybe ?
.
IDK, but I think I might just ;eave it alone, shoot the darn thing until it doesn't any more.
.
IF there was some form of structural integrity issue, then for sure change it out.
,
But for me,, I'll use it as described above,, a tool to find out why a rifle DOSEN'T shoot well, or if I notice a change in accuracy.
AND as a tool to check effectiveness of my cleaning procedure.

 

[jamesh]

Your finding surprises me. One of the most pristine bores I ever looked at with a Hawkeye borescope was my Howa 22-250. That is comparing it to top of the line barrels like Bartlein Krieger Shilen Hart. Some worthless POS stole the Hawkeye so I have not had a chance to look at my Howa 6.5 Creedmoor but looking at it with my mini borescope which you can only see a magnified view of the chamber and start of the rifling I thought it looked pretty good.

 

[6MMsteve]

First, understand that we are talking copper here. I mean, you can scrub powder fouling out of a bore with Formula 409 and a brush, copper is the problem. JB Bore cleaner is one and Shooters Choice MC-7 is the other. Iosso is another that will work so says some friends that use it and also own a borescope, but I have no personal experience with it.
As to why...when you have a bore full of copper JB will absolutely, positively take it out quick. I have found nothing {except maybe Iosso} that will do this and I have tried them all. JB is the one bore cleaner that you can say, "I am going to remove this copper right now" and do just that in a matter of minutes.
The other, Shooters Choice does exactly what it says it will do, which is something I just have not found with any of the others. It's not fast, in fact you might have to slop up the bore with it and let it soak over night if you don't have JB, but it will harmlessly remove every molecule of copper eventually.
Sweets 7.62 will remove copper, but I have found that it is a little dangerous to use. If you exceed the time they say to leave it in contact with the bore you will get fine pits where it has etched into the metal. I have seen this with two different bores and yes, I did it and yes, I exceeded the time because there was still copper in the bore.
The others either accomplished absolutely zero or took so long to do anything that they were dismissed as useless. This is my findings, I am not going to lie to anyone and no doubt some fanboys are now going to bawl about me saying their favorite bore cleaner is no good, but this is what I have found to be true.
It's funny, when some shooter is blowing off about how great his bore cleaner works.....I ask "what kind of borescope do you have" or "when did you get a borescope".....the conversation is usually over right there.
Without a borescope you are guessing, period, end of story.

J&B is the only thing I clean with, I use all the other bottles of crap I purchased to remove powder fouling and powder fouling, they do a good job. Hoppes and J&B for me I'm glad I bought a borescope now I don't have to buy all the so called copper removers

 

[swadiver]

J&B is the only thing I clean with, I use all the other bottles of crap I purchased to remove powder fouling and powder fouling, they do a good job. Hoppes and J&B for me I'm glad I bought a borescope now I don't have to buy all the so called copper removers

How often with the JB? it's mildly abrasive so................

 

[6MMsteve]

How often with the JB? it's mildly abrasive so................

not every time I clean, maybe 250 to 350 rds or when the barrel says to but I don't shoot alot so it's not very often at all, I try to keep the carbon out of the nk area that's it

 

[Bob L.]

Don't make a hoot no hells difference how the bore looks.....as look as the bullets go where you want 'em to!!

I bought a borescope. My friends use it. I just shoot.

 

[dogdude]

The three best purchase's I've made in 15 yrs in this game are:
1) Hawkeye borescope, by far
2) GD-503
3)AMP annealer
#2 & 3 are nice, but the Hawkeye is instant proof of your cleaning routine.
You guy's should take a look at what most to ALL cleaning solutions say in there instructions..''when patch comes out white its clean''
WRONG!!

 

[6MMsteve]

The three best purchase's I've made in 15 yrs in this game are:
1) Hawkeye borescope, by far
2) GD-503
3)AMP annealer
#2 & 3 are nice, but the Hawkeye is instant proof of your cleaning routine.
You guy's should take a look at what most to ALL cleaning solutions say in there instructions..''when patch comes out white its clean''
WRONG!!

everyone just about has to see for themselves, what is that word I'm lookin for, but I did see for myself hot barrel then clean with borescope close by, actually 4x all same results copper just shining... then J&B but I learned with the J&B and kroil or some oil, that it does not take much and 5 to 10 strokes and clean then use the copper cleaner to remove the J&B lol

 

[msinc]

How often with the JB? it's mildly abrasive so................

I only use JB when the bore is full of copper and Shooters Choice is taking longer than I want to spend. Definitely not every time I clean the bore. I like to check new barrels and keep the copper out of them for break in. A good general rule of thumb is that when you can see copper streaks at the muzzle after removing the powder fouling you probably could use some JB. By the time you are seeing copper in the muzzle you can best bet that there is more in the area ahead of the chamber. This is when you need to be careful because that copper at the muzzle may come right out, leading you to believe you have a clean bore.
It is my understanding that the active ingredient in JB is nothing more than ordinary chalk. They claim it is "non-embedding", but I cant say it is not abrasive. I can say that I have several barrels that copper fouled so bad I finally gave up. I cleaned them way more than any reasonable person would ever scrub on a bore and I saw no smoothing or what looked like rounded edges or wear to the sharp edges of the lands. I wouldn't worry too much about putting undue wear on a barrel.

 

[ireload2]

If you have a rifle with a barrel band front sight and barrel band sling swivel beware about what you cannot see. I had a Ruger #1 that put only 3 shots out of 5 into an 18" group on a 24"X24" target. The other 2 shots missed the target.
That rifle had a bore as nice as most but it would not hit anything.
I finally pushed several .45 cal cast bullets through it. It had a .75 long restriction of .001 at the barrel band and it had a 1" long constriction of .0015 at the muzzle.
I sent the rifle back to Ruger with 4 muzzle loader round balls so they could check it. They put a new barrel on it at no charge and test fired it. The new barrel is very accurate.
I don't think a bore scope would tell you squat about that kind of defect.

 

[TikkaSporter]

First, understand that we are talking copper here. I mean, you can scrub powder fouling out of a bore with Formula 409 and a brush, copper is the problem. JB Bore cleaner is one and Shooters Choice MC-7 is the other. Iosso is another that will work so says some friends that use it and also own a borescope, but I have no personal experience with it.
As to why...when you have a bore full of copper JB will absolutely, positively take it out quick. I have found nothing {except maybe Iosso} that will do this and I have tried them all. JB is the one bore cleaner that you can say, "I am going to remove this copper right now" and do just that in a matter of minutes.
.......
It's funny, when some shooter is blowing off about how great his bore cleaner works.....I ask "what kind of borescope do you have" or "when did you get a borescope".....the conversation is usually over right there.
Without a borescope you are guessing, period, end of story.

Some comments & questions:

- Did you ^^ try KG12 for copper removal? This is one that my borescope tells me is effective. Another effective technique for removing copper that I tried (but don't necessarily recommend) was an extremely soggy, wet patch or two of Sweets 7.62, followed by a very wet patch of Hydrogen Peroxide. Also, as stated ^^ JB was effective. I'm starting to like the results of the VFG pellets also, but mostly use them to apply JB.

- Obtaining a borescope definitely changed the way I went about barrel cleaning and what products and techniques were 'optimal'. I first realized that 'clean' wasn't 'CLEAN'. Then I realized that 'CLEAN' didn't necessarily produce better results on paper. In my experience since observing things with a borescope, there's a big benefit to keeping carbon/powder fouling at bay, especially in the chamber and throat area. There is not much benefit to getting a barrel completely copper-free, sometimes a copper-free barrel is a big detriment to accuracy IME and won't return to accuracy until it gets 're-fouled' with copper (I'm not talking benchrest here and generally it wasn't high-end custom tubes that suffered from having the copper removed).

- I have a Lyman borescope and thought it was good until I looked through a Hawkeye recently. That was like comparing a Tasco to a Schmidt & Bender. The Lyman may be good enough for my needs, maybe.

- The biggest benefit I've seen from my borescope was keeping track of carbon rings and keeping them at bay.

- A barrel/throat can look really worn/fire-cracked with the borescope and still shoot great for quite a while before it becomes noticeable on-target.

 

[msinc]

One of the things I found with copper, and it's interesting that I have only seen this in the most expensive custom "match" quality barrels, was severe copper fouling limited to one land only. I cannot say why because after carefully cleaning all the copper I inspected the "fouling" land but never was able to find anything visual wise that could suggest a reason for this. It just had a lot of copper on it while the others had slim to none. Some guys have suggested a tight or higher land and maybe that is the cause. I have seen this phenomenon on several high end barrels, but it didn't seem to matter how they were made, button or cut. I have not seen it on a hammer forged pipe, but then again I don't use them.
One thing is for sure, I didn't have any trouble figuring out when it got puked up with copper because the rifle fell apart accuracy wise and wouldn't shoot decent groups again until the copper was removed.

 

[snert]

I got one and immediately my guns shot worse.

I put it away and as confidence (and reality that I can't afford new barrels) dawned again, they shot better.

Nice tool, but the corrolation is not direct between what you see and how they shoot...at least as far as I can tell.

 

[McHaggis]

Thanks for all the replies guys
I'll just have to shoot and see what it's like. I've taken lots of images with the borescope so I can compare things later on. When I get a chance I hope to post a couple of pics of the more concerning areas and see what you guys think.

 

[McHaggis]

Well times tight, the weather’s getting worse and daylight’s disappearing at 3 minutes a day so I’ve only managed a few hours shooting. Fired, cleaned, fired, cleaned etc. and managed to get a whole 8 rounds down the bore. Once home I used the bore scope to check my cleaning process. There’s not much chance of hiding anything with a bore scope so after much cleaning I removed all carbon and copper fouling. So far it copper fouls badly but I hear they normally settle down after 20-30 rounds. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, talk about a different looking bore. It seems to be much better than when I first looked. It was badly copper fouled from the factory test firing???? so a lot of what I was looking at, thinking the worst, is now gone.

Now I happy to say buying a bore scope was money well spent. It’s a great bit of kit that I’m now using a lot. But then I looked at some of my other barrels. That was an eye opener! Now I know what a carbon ring is.

 

[Ledd Slinger]

Lost my borescope virginity today. Up my new barrel guys! What I saw has me stressing. I expected to see nice defined rifling and a smooth bore in between. What I saw was line, marks, pits and scores. I also expected to see a nice defined start to the lands and that was the case with 3 of them. The other ones looked like the leade was smeared off and there was no defined start to them. There also looks like some sort of galling in the chamber area like a metal buildup in a few places. Nothing is smooth like I expected.
BUT am I getting over excited for nothing? As I said I’ve never scoped a bore before so maybe what in seeing is normal? I realise that the Lyman borescope has magnified the bore many times so anything I’m seeing is actuall very small. This is a new, never fired, Howa HCR in 6.5CM with a 26” barrel.

Factory bores can be pretty bad no doubt. I've seen some awful factory chamber jobs and ungodly tooling marks. It will iron out a bit as the barrel breaks in, but will probably take a LOT of rounds before it starts looking 'smooth'.

I use my Lyman Borecam all the time to inspect my cleaning regimen and lands condition. Use it a lot for myself, friends, and family when they claim to have trouble finding accuracy. Found things like a crooked chamber cut on a custom barrel, fire cracking, worn out lands, bad carbon/copper build up, etc...A borescope can save you a lot of wasted time and money shooting at the range with a bad barrel or cleaning job. Definitely an invaluable tool to have in your inventory.

 

[Ledd Slinger]

Don't make a hoot no hells difference how the bore looks.....as look as the bullets go where you want 'em to!!

Somewhat true, but when the bullets DON'T go where you want and you can't seem to find the accuracy no matter what you try.....
Are you just going to assume the bore and chamber are ok and it must be something else? Its nice to have a look inside the barrel to see of something is wrong.

I like to inspect my barrels all the time to make sure everything is in good order before I head to the range or hunting field. Dont care if the last group i shot with the rifle put every bullet in one ragged hole. It still gets inspected regularly after cleanings. So to me, a good borescope is an absolute necessity.

 

[msinc]

.....Factory bores can be pretty bad no doubt. I've seen some awful factory chamber jobs and ungodly tooling marks. It will iron out a bit as the barrel breaks in, but will probably take a LOT of rounds before it starts looking 'smooth'......

I agree, and have seen the same thing. The important part to remember, as posted several times by different guys is that no matter how it looks don't loose sight of the ball. That is to say, if it shoots like it is supposed to but looks really bad then roll on.
I have a Kimber Mountain Ascent in 280AI that I bought for hunting in the mountains. The chamber was so bad that it had to be set back and rechambered just to get the rifle to reliably extract!!!! Kimber was using Douglas barrels at one time {no proof here, just what I have read and been told numerous times}. They got into making their own barrels within the last few years and they are cut rifled. It appears that they also went with a Sunnen hone too. The top flats of the lands in this barrel are perfect and the bore does not copper at all. The grooves look atrocious and if there is a way to cut a more rough pitiful looking groove in a barrel I don't know how...cutting torch maybe, chain saw?? The point to all this is that the rifle always puts the first cold bore shot dead on dead nuts perfect zero. This being a "big game" hunting rifle, I have no complaints. I can shoot one shot and let the rifle set and completely cool off, shoot another and no matter how many times I do this they just about go into the same hole. But, sit down at the bench and try to see how good a group it will shoot in the typical way, shooting one after another until it gets hot and I am lucky to shoot a 2 1/2" group. I have to say, I was very frustrated with this rifle when I first got it and sighted it in. Then one of my hunting buddies pointed out, "you know, it does put the round that counts right where it needs to go everytime!!"
Bore scopes are a very useful tool, just don't dismiss a rifle for the way the bore looks until you shoot it the way it is intended to be shot.

 

[Ledd Slinger]

I agree, and have seen the same thing. The important part to remember, as posted several times by different guys is that no matter how it looks don't loose sight of the ball. That is to say, if it shoots like it is supposed to but looks really bad then roll on.
I have a Kimber Mountain Ascent in 280AI that I bought for hunting in the mountains. The chamber was so bad that it had to be set back and rechambered just to get the rifle to reliably extract!!!! Kimber was using Douglas barrels at one time {no proof here, just what I have read and been told numerous times}. They got into making their own barrels within the last few years and they are cut rifled. It appears that they also went with a Sunnen hone too. The top flats of the lands in this barrel are perfect and the bore does not copper at all. The grooves look atrocious and if there is a way to cut a more rough pitiful looking groove in a barrel I don't know how...cutting torch maybe, chain saw?? The point to all this is that the rifle always puts the first cold bore shot dead on dead nuts perfect zero. This being a "big game" hunting rifle, I have no complaints. I can shoot one shot and let the rifle set and completely cool off, shoot another and no matter how many times I do this they just about go into the same hole. But, sit down at the bench and try to see how good a group it will shoot in the typical way, shooting one after another until it gets hot and I am lucky to shoot a 2 1/2" group. I have to say, I was very frustrated with this rifle when I first got it and sighted it in. Then one of my hunting buddies pointed out, "you know, it does put the round that counts right where it needs to go everytime!!"
Bore scopes are a very useful tool, just don't dismiss a rifle for the way the bore looks until you shoot it the way it is intended to be shot.

I agree with the cold bore shot on a hunting rifle, but a rifle shooting a good group is equally important to me for the type of hunting I do. It is very possible to miss a target when shooting long range across a wide mountain canyon or wide open prairie valley. An unseen wind current, a gust of wind picks up suddenly, an animal takes a step or gets spooked by something right after you pull the trigger, etc. For my hunting purposes a barrel must group very well for follow up shot corrections. A bore that's only good enough to produce a 2-1/2" rapid fire group at 100 yards simply won't due for my type of hunting. Wont actually due for any type of shooting i do unless perhaps I'm using a large handgun at 50-100 yards. Just my preference. It might be perfectly fine for someone in the south hunting close ranges in heavy brush and thickly wooded areas. Not so good for long range hunting in high mountains and open plains.

If I paid a good price for a rifle with a bore like you describe in the Kimber and could only get it to shoot 2-1/2" groups, it would be definitely be going straight back to the manufacturer for replacement or refund. Just my opinion