New Barrel - Borescoped

[DShortt]

Wow. And people still think owning a borescope is a bad idea.

 

[Skedaddle Shooter]

Hi All,
Same question, different gun and barrel.

Take a look at photos of this new barrel, should I send it back?

In January I purchased a Springfield Armory Waypoint 2020 in .308 with the carbon barrel made by BSF. I really wanted to follow best recommendations on barrel break-in as this is my first really nice rifle. I am planning on shooting a mono/copper factory load bullet for this gun as it will be a elk/deer/antelope all around hunting rifle for me here in Montana.

So I purchased four or five boxes of 150g and 165g copper bullets and started shooting at the range with groups of 3, then a full copper cleaning using Eliminator, then lube, foul shot and repeat. Groups were initially impressive with several 3 shot groups well under .75 MOA. I'm not a great shooter so some were also in the 1-1.5" range.

After 20-30 rounds I decided to invest in a borescope as I wanted to confirm that I was doing a good job of removing all copper per break-in recommendations. I put the borescope in and was shocked to see the damage in the photos. It starts about 1.5" down from the muzzle and looks to be 5 or 6 cocentric "rings" of damage. Is this something I could have done? I've used nothing other than nylon brushes and patches.

I don't think this is damage I could have caused, and I showed it to a friend who has long range and custom barrel experience and he said I should send it back even though it has been shooting well. I emailed Springfield Armory two weeks ago and have not heard back.

Thoughts?
Dag Otto

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Yikes

 

[Dgd6mm]

I just shake my head and wonder how companies can send crap like that out.

 

[AckleymanII]

Wow. And people still think owning a borescope is a bad idea.

YEA BOY! YIPPIE KI YEA!

Ignorance is bliss.

 

[Ggmac]

Amazing it grouped at all !

 

[paperpuncher]

FUGLY!

 

[DagOtto]

Thanks for the verification, so many folks post borescope images on forums like this and everyone says they are being ridiculous and they should just go shoot and have fun blah blah blah. But this looked really bad to me, but I'm a newbie. I still have not received any reply from SA, but BSF tech support emailed me back yesterday, (the same day I emailed them the first time,) and said they would take care of it. I haven't gotten a follow-up from them today, but the fact they replied was a great start!

 

[DagOtto]

Just a quick update. Springfield Armory did finally email me back about 3 weeks after my initial email request. They sent a Fed Ex label and I shipping the gun back yesterday. They are saying 3-4 weeks repair time and I expect / hope to get a new barrel installed. I will keep you posted as I always want to share when a company comes through on a warranty issue.

 

[Rustystud]

Bore scopes are a great tool if you learn to use it correctly. Bore scopes show you visual defects. I believe one should learn how to slug their barrels also. You can feel tight and loose bores that you can not see. There are visual defect found in button and hammerforged barrels that only have minimal effects on accuracy. The Remington factory barrels use to be some of the ugliest barrels made but most would shoot about 1 moa new. Minor defects in the first inch and last 3 inches tend have the most detrimental effect. Tight and loose spots will effect groups as much as anything. There is an extreme difference in workmanship in ecconomy barrels vs highend custom barrels. Better barrels are made from higher quality materials. The blanks are cut and stress relieved. Then drilled, reamed, stress relieved again. Then pre lapped and buttoned or cut. Then contoured. After the machining the barrel is stress relieved again and post lapped. Some companies skip some of these steps and in my opinion their barrrels are inferior.

 

[davidjoe]

Can a barrel or button be turned against the other, without the button being drawn through the barrel for a short distance, so as to gouge out a large, deep gap of steel without any rifling in it?




An inch or so before the muzzle, there is a horrific rifling gap in a brand new rifle’s bore. The range groups had been so bad I thought the “8 T” twist rate must have been misapplied and the heavies weren’t stable.




I have emailed the manufacturer three pictures, after close of business yesterday.

My borescope is not very good anymore and I cannot discern if the rifling’s turn picks up after the gap where it would be expected to or not.

This a straight up, circumferential rifling interruption (a gap, and deep at that) toward the muzzle end of the barrel, before the rifle continues.

Any ideas on what could cause this?

I’ll edit to say I think I can surmise what happened here. I bet the gun drill or reamer fragmented in this barrel, such that a piece of it lodged and was spun by the remaining unbroken tool against the wall, effectively increasing its diameter and cutting (grinding?) out a short, deeper length in this part of the barrel. This probably squealed and vibrated alerting the operator to a broken cutting tool, which is why it didn’t go very far before shutoff, looking at the gap.

The barrel was probably set aside but eventually picked back up and run through with a new cutting tool, to finish the bore, maybe inadvertently. Then without noticing the defect, still, the button rifling step was completed, which tool works under tremendous force, is self aligning, and could easily traverse the short, deeper gap, and then it was installed. Nothing would be revealed as wrong with it in a contained proof shot.

The range velocities were off by nearly 300 FPS less.

 

[Aaron23]

When I had a guitar store and we did guitar repair, I realized if one customer guitar got dropped it could ruin all of my profit for three months.

Had a friend that was a jeweler. Guy ran up on hard times and let his business liability insurance lapse and then...

Broke and had to replace a 10,000 dollar stone.

If you is in any business working on peoples stuff like that - insurance ought to be thought about very seriously

 

[coldboreshot]

I just shake my head and wonder how companies can send crap like that out.

High volume, gross sales and percentage of failures.

 

[dhenry132]

Brand new, not fired so called higher end 22 rimfire barrel. After a couple of months of arguing, they finally accepted it back and when I got it back, all they did was run a reamer in it and try to smooth it up and call it good

 

[cb186]

I recently had an experience where someone sent me a barrel to have them make into a prefit for them. I didn't check the barrel I didn't really care they sent it to me I did my work and sent it back. And then they made claims that there were flaws inside the barrel. I told him it was his barrel and I didn't boriscope it for flaws He sent it to me.

And then I realized what an incredibly precarious situation you would be in receiving people's barrels and chambering them and then returning them to the customer and then the customer can make any kind of claim they make afterwards and say you did it. I'm not really sure I want to chamber anymore barrels from blanks that people provide to me because it simply their word against mine in the end.

Personally, at this point(early in my business) I prefer when customers supply their own barrels, tthat way (1) I don't sit on inventory/$$$, only to make a small amount on mark up, (2) if when I check it for straightness/tight spots/etc, if its poor/bad, they can make the choice of me spinning it up, or they can deal with the manufacturer/supplier.
That being said, spinning up barrels is a small part of my business, not a main part of my income, and most are locals/friends/word of mouth acquaintances.
That being said, I do plan on trying to stock a small selection of barrels in the future.