Does lead really wear out rifling by it's passage?

[tenngun]

and add, "poor maintenance practices"

I was thinking that as I read this. Old barrels are know to have got fresher out. While I THINK most old guns we see have their original bore. And soft wrought iron bores were not as tough as our soft steel even then they held as long as cared for. It was guns that were not well maintained that needed to get freshened.
We go further. They didn’t shoot as much as a shooter does to day. A hard core blood shooter needs practice. As much as a boy who plays an instrument. One needs to make lots of smoke. But I can still hit in general what I point at.
11 Bang Bang channel did some demos of a Brown Bess. In just a short time they over two thousand rounds through it. I doubt I ever shot a gun that much.
I bet few original shot that much in a decade.

 

[NorthFork]

I was thinking that as I read this. Old barrels are know to have got fresher out. While I THINK most old guns we see have their original bore. And soft wrought iron bores were not as tough as our soft steel even then they held as long as cared for. It was guns that were not well maintained that needed to get freshened.
We go further. They didn’t shoot as much as a shooter does to day. A hard core blood shooter needs practice. As much as a boy who plays an instrument. One needs to make lots of smoke. But I can still hit in general what I point at.
11 Bang Bang channel did some demos of a Brown Bess. In just a short time they over two thousand rounds through it. I doubt I ever shot a gun that much.
I bet few original shot that much in a decade.

I defer to your knowledge and experience, but I strongly believe the need for 'refreshened' bores really stemmed from the lack of cleaning back in the day. I firmly believe we today are more 'anal' about cleaning then our forefathers ever dreamed about.

 

[Uncle Miltie]

How did that work?


Did it turn them into mad hatters?

I've never used mecury for anything and I'm still a mad hatter.

It works great. Mercury was also useful to remove rosin from the bore after it was used by an unscrupulous shooter to sabotage the rifle of a fellow competitor.

 

[david w]

It is my personal belief that dirt embeded into wooden ramrods is a real killer on the rifling.Which is why I use a range rod with a bore protector to keep it centered on my target rifles . the hunting rifles don't get that many rounds shot through them to worry as long as you are careful when loading and cleaning.

A coned barrel will alleviate that problem. However, I periodically clean my ramrod, along with the wood stock. It's not just the metal part that require a little TLC. At the range, use a range rod, most of the time. I mix in a little loading time with my wood ramrod and loading from th bag to practice for squirrel hunting season.

 

[david w]

I defer to your knowledge and experience, but I strongly believe the need for 'refreshened' bores really stemmed from the lack of cleaning back in the day. I firmly believe we today are more 'anal' about cleaning then our forefathers ever dreamed about.

Actually, the early barrels were made of soft iron, not today's high quality steel. My Hoppy Hopkins barrels were made from ordnance steel. Talk about tough! As far as a lack of cleaning, I think they knew just how important is was to have a clean gun.

 

[deerstalkert]

lead has lubricating properties. early automobile engines had poured babbit bearings. even our modern bearings have a coating of babbit.

 

[William Sublette]

How was the mercury used?

 

[tenngun]

I defer to your knowledge and experience, but I strongly believe the need for 'refreshened' bores really stemmed from the lack of cleaning back in the day. I firmly believe we today are more 'anal' about cleaning then our forefathers ever dreamed about.

Never a good idea to defer to my knowledge and experience as I make up stuff as I go alongbut isn’t that what I said, that the guns needed refreshing were the ones that weren’t well maintained ?

 

[Uncle Miltie]

How was the mercury used?

On a patch or piece of wadded material and cleaning rod. Old timers in our club still had some at home and would use it from time to time.

 

[Jedidiah]

Does anyone really think that dirt on a ramrod, or a bronze or brass brush, an aluminum rod, etc can destroy a modern ML steel bore? How much abuse would you have to do to make any relevant difference? I am having a hard time accepting this line of thinking?

 

[andy52]

Does lead hurt a barrel? The .22 RF is the oldest contained cartridge and most are just plain ole' lead. There are rifles out there that fired thousands and thousands of rounds and the barrels are just fine.

 

[M. De Land]

Does anyone really think that dirt on a ramrod, or a bronze or brass brush, an aluminum rod, etc can destroy a modern ML steel bore? How much abuse would you have to do to make any relevant difference? I am having a hard time accepting this line of thinking?

I do ! I've been building and re-barreling rifles and pistols both muzzle loading and cartridge for over 40 years and can testify to how quickly a muzzle crown can be worn or deformed out of round from poor cleaning practice or accidental dinging. It really doesn't take much of ding or rod wear trough in the crown at lands end to cause inaccuracy !
I have personally experienced instant group tightening in several of my own guns from a freshly cut crown.

 

[Howard Pippin]

My experience with a rifle crown is pretty limited, of the three cases I know of, my dad carried a Winchester semi automatic rifle so long against the floorboards of his pickup that it wore the barrel off crooked on the end. The darned gun still shot fairly good, But I never really tested it for accuracy like I do things now and I don't know what happened to that rifle after I left home. When I was about 20 I took a single shot 22 and cut the barrel to 16 1/4 inches, took a drill bit and by hand smoothed out the rifling on the fresh cut, Filed a new sight notch and the darn thing shot really good but was just noisier. I also shortened the stock by about an inch and a half. Later years I put a peep sight on it and used it for younger kids at a shooting range. The third one was a muzzleloader I bought secondhand that had stood with the barrel down in a damp closet for many years and eroded the rifling away on one side for about an inch and a half in. The gun shot all right but it shot the first shot 6 inches to the side at 50 yards. I took a round file, Took the Rifling off on the other side and by golly it shoots pretty good now. It is a 45 caliber percussion with a 1 in 60 twist.
Squint

 

[Tumbledown]

It is my personal belief that dirt embeded into wooden ramrods is a real killer on the rifling.Which is why I use a range rod with a bore protector to keep it centered on my target rifles . the hunting rifles don't get that many rounds shot through them to worry as long as you are careful when loading and cleaning.

Just how much dirt gets embedded in a wood rod?

 

[M. De Land]

Just how much dirt gets embedded in a wood rod?

Enough to ruin a good crown job over time. We say crown but really it's the ends of the land corners at bore exit that get the cleaning rod wear and effect bullet exit. I believe a ball is far less effected by this than is the base of a conical bullet because what happens as the projectile clears the lands end is, any wear trough or ding allows uneven gas escapement which can disrupt the gyroscopic spin stabilization of the projectile. A good example of this is how retro fire in a rockets base changes it's direction in space. An uneven gas escapement of a projectile from a barrels muzzle has the same effect.
A ball not having a square base is less effected by this but what can and some times does happen in my opinion is the patch is holed just as it releases it's grip on the ball. I've picked up and examined a lot of spent patches from guns I've built and when I've found them holed or burned through I have come to suspect a freshly cut crown the culprit as often as a new sharply rifled bore.
This crown cutting or weakening of the patch probably begins at loading and as we shoot for a while the burrs are lapped off just as the land corners are down bore.

 

[ord sgt]

I bought a well-used unmentionable small bore rifle. It was oval shaped at the muzzle from excess cleaning. I wanted to have a sleeve installed to return the rifle to shooting status. Found out from the gunsmith doing the re-sleeve that there was a sleeve already in the barrel.
The original bore was so bad, one sleeve was installed and worn out at the muzzle that another sleeve needed to be replaced.
The little rifle is now a good shooting piece.
Too much cleaning with metal rods had ruined the barrel twice. This can be true with any firearm, muzzle loader or cartridge.

 

[Juice Jaws]

From what I can determine, lead actually reacts in it's passage through a bore more like lubricant than a cutting agent and when lube is added it is even less prone to barrel wear.
Linen (cotton) cloth patching has the effect of smoothing a bore of reaming and rifling abrasions. Paper patching is more abrasive but will work for many thousandsof rounds before accuracy suffers.
It was said in the chunk gun era that target rifles would shoot smooth, meaning the rifling was still sharp but a glaze would form and accuracy would suffer. The remedy was to clean with some vinegar and let stand a bit to rough up the polish or glaze that had formed. My guess is this may have been nothing more than carbon fouling which is often very hard to detect and even harder to remove.
Black powder pressure and temperature while combusting does not seem to erode rifling very much if any as can be seen in the breech area of muzzle loader or cartridge guns.
Having built and serviced many rifles and hand guns for a lot years I have concluded that lead bullets and black powder pressure simply do not wear out barrels but rather loading, wiping between shots and cleaning procedures are the real cause.

In the old days they talk about freshing out a barrel

 

[TDM]

I do a quick wipe down on my ram rods and range wads pretty much after each use. Especially during cleaning. They pick up a lot of crud.

 

[M. De Land]

I do a quick wipe down on my ram rods and range wads pretty much after each use. Especially during cleaning. They pick up a lot of crud.

I think the main thing is to use a muzzle protector that keeps what ever rod that is being used centered and off the crown during loading. These can be used very easily with the wood loading rods as well as metal range rods while hunting. Just keep one in your loading pouch like all the other stuff needed.

 

[tallPercshooter]

I often wondered if the indigenous natives of the US ever cleaned their black powder guns. After years of shooting and neglect, rust and crud in the bore, would the gun even be "minute of buffalo?"