What would cause this barrel damage ?

[Will Henry]

Ah very interesting. That being said since you mess with them a bit you happen to know where a guy would look to learn about fitting barrels for these things ? Tired grey beards but I can't ever seem to find it

I have never seen anything on fitting a barrel to these. I have re-barreled them by cutting the original off, ahead of the underlug. I then bored out the breech end of the barrel, turned the new barrel to fit, and soldered it in place. I then chambered the barrel as usual, and that was it. Somewhat more work than fitting a barrel to a bolt action. Worth it only if you are doing your own work and have time to waste! WH

 

[SmokinJoe]

My guesses would be that the wormwood stuff is steel inclusions. Sulfur is added to the steel to make it machine better and sometimes it gets concentrated in the steel and makes that sort of pattern occur. I have a few rifles both factory CM and custom match SS that have some of that in them but they still shoot just fine. The big globs of corrosion are probably caused by using cleaning products containing water, there are many, and leaving them in the barrel. In fact I would question your practice of finishing with patches of alcohol if I understand you correctly. Alcohol has water in it and attracts water also, so that is not a good thing particularly in a CM bore. Always finish up a CM bore with some sort of oil product. Of course your bore could have been damaged when you bought the rifle from the hock shop. Who knows the history of storage or cleaning practices it had been through before you bought it. I borescope all CM bores when I'm looking at purchasing used rifles particularly, but even NIB can have problems with CM. IMO, the only fix to this rifle will be a new barrel. Best luck with it.

 

[dellet]

I’ve seen and shot worse, with much better results.

A good cleaning including JB bore paste and possibly lapping. You should at least be able to get the same accuracy as your cast bullets.

Which brings up a question of load data and twist rate. What are they?
A quick check of bore size wouldn’t hurt, but I don’t think it’s old enough to have a “Horner bore”.

If you have to drive fired brass out with a cleaning rod, it’s either a bad chamber, or a bad, hot, load.

Hornets are not exactly known for being easy to develop a load for, so long before I junked it, I’d spend some time with it.

Only other thought is, your shooting set up screams of wanting to fight vertical. I know you’ve spent a lot of time trying to incorporate a bipod on a brake action, but you’d probably see significant improvement with the barrel on a soft bag.

Just some thoughts.