Bad Barrel?

Those marks are nothing. Bore scope enough barrels, you will see that or worse from every maker. Those marks wont affect a thing, coppering or accuracy.

Well I've got a Bartlein and I've never seen a tool mark in it. I do agree though that they are probably not causing any coppering issues. But, just the fact that they were not lapped out might signal that something like the lapping was not ideal.
 
Well I've got a Bartlein and I've never seen a tool mark in it. I do agree though that they are probably not causing any coppering issues. But, just the fact that they were not lapped out might signal that something like the lapping was not ideal.
Bore scope 100 and you will find plenty. Those "tool marks" you can see with a bore scope usually wont even make the needle on a .0001" indicator move. They make a surface finish change look like a canyon.
 
Those marks are nothing. Bore scope enough barrels, you will see that or worse from every maker. Those marks wont affect a thing, coppering or accuracy.
I think based on your comment about how long it took to get all the copper out, that you did not break in this barrel. When you do the shoot one and clean type break ins, you have to clean ALL the copper out every shot. If you dont, then you defeat the whole purpose. Its usually an 8 hour day of 5 shots, mostly soaking out copper. With that said, there is a lot of copper in that barrel for one shot. These higher velocity, larger bores will usually always leave a little copper but not that much. Still, it may end up being the best shooting barrel you have ever had once it settles down, if it does.

You may have misunderstood. It didn't take 2 full days. I would go out in the morning and scrub for 10, then leave solvent to soak till noon, then do it again and let it soak till evening.

The initial 10 shots took a long time as always. About a day and a half of shoot one, scrub for 10 minutes, go back in the office and work for an hour, scrub again and shoot another. Repeat. I didn't look in it every time with the bore scope but did make sure patches came out with no blue on them.

After 10 I started trying to find pressure by shooting 3's and cleaning in between. After about 10 sessions and 40 rounds of this crap I shot a text to the guy that built it for advice and he said to quit worrying so much about fowling and see if it will shoot. I put about 20 rounds through it, cleaned it and about another 25 after that.
 
I have an idea that MAY work and allow you to hunt with your rifle this year. I coat all my bullets with hbn. One of my rifles is a 224tth with a badly heat checked throat. And I mean bad. Should be replaced. I shoot swift sciroccos in it. Coated they do not foul and pressures and velocity is stable. Worth a shot, but watch the stuff plugging hollow points.
 
What are you hanging your barrel on?? Some of us may have a spare pipe lying around with life left in the barrel to get you through the season too... Heck, I've got three barrels in my rafters waiting for a need to be used...

If she's acting as you describe it will be a thorn in your side 'till the barrel dies so you ought to dump and run while they will help you.
 
Barrel is pulled and is being sent back. Friend has a Brux available and is going to try and get it spun up in the next day or so. I'm trying to figure out what flowers and candy his wife likes to bribe her, so she will bribe him...if ya know what I mean.

I've got other rifles, but I'd rather the wife and kids shoot 180 class. Of course I just sold my 300.
 
What are you hanging your barrel on?? Some of us may have a spare pipe lying around with life left in the barrel to get you through the season too... Heck, I've got three barrels in my rafters waiting for a need to be used...

If she's acting as you describe it will be a thorn in your side 'till the barrel dies so you ought to dump and run while they will help you.

Appreciate that.
 
You know the answer, you just don't like it because you are so close to hunting season. Realistically, that barrel is not usable even for a hunt due to the rapid fouling and pressure problems. The barrel is unsafe at proper working velocities.

I would take a factory barreled rifle over that one if I had to go hunting. I am sure you have some good shooting backups, send this *** back to the maker and shoot something else or spin on a good barrel to this action until your refund shows up. Best of luck hunting.

Sorry, just saw your post that you already sent it back. Oh well.
 
alex w, not doughting what you said , but how in the Heck in this day an age can the Best bbl makers get away with that kind of product, granted I don't own a bore scope but still ,ive always thought the best of the best Cut-Rifled bbls would be close to perfect, just cant wrap my head around this one, hope you bbl makers are reading some of these posts .
 
Gun Smith/friend did my a solid and spun up a Brux real quick and I'm back in business. Had to do a little stock work this morning, documented touch with several flavors of 180's, headspace and all the other prep work. Ran the bore scope in it first thing, throat looks great and so does the rest of the bore.

1 round down it so far, probably a third the fowling the other one had. Solvent soaking in it now, will post results.
 
Update on this situation from a few fronts.

May as well get the barrel manufacturers name out there for the first barrel that gave me fits, its a Bartlein. I sent it back in to them and this is what they responded with;

As for the copper fouling issue, they said they couldn't see anything wrong with the barrel, but they did a light lapping job on it. They also stated that everyone in the shop felt like I was running this barrel over pressure with the load data I provided. QuickLoad doesn't agree with that, neither do my cases or primers. Majority of the load data given was 180 Berger VLD's, RWS Brass, F215 Primer, H1000 from 68.5 to 76 grains, velocity from 2800 to 3100. My notes say I saw faint ejector 8 times and shiny 3 times out of the 90 some rounds.

They also told me that the coppering can be expected out of a "wildcat" cartridge that only has a barrel life of 400 to 500 rounds. I disagreed with that according to my research and folks I have talked with that have shot them for years. They said "we have a larger pool of information."

As for the tooling marks on the rifling, they said the light lap job pretty much removed all of them.

They want to ship it back to me and run it again to see what happens. I can understand that, but I'm really not interested. I already have quite a bit of $$ and a lot of time sunk into that barrel, I really am not interested in putting any more into it. Especially since the Brux I have on it shoots just fine.

As for the new Brux, it started cleaning up real well after 7 shots of shoot 1 clean, moved to sets of 3 for another 12 rounds until there was virtually no copper fouling. At that point I already had a good idea of what it would shoot for now, this barrel acts as it should and is pretty consistent with pressure and accuracy. Shot 2 group of 5 to get a little better sample of average velocity and to get a 250 zero. A few days after that I shot a bull behind the ear at just under 200, I think his head was the first thing to hit the ground. Load development is far from over, I will continue to shoot it where it's at till it fully breaks in and quits speeding up, then I will finish it.

It's really my fault that I had to get this done by a deadline, in a perfect world I would have been able to wait on them to have a chance to fix this one before I re-barreled. However, the reasons they are giving me for the fouling are bogus and they didn't give me a reason for the tooling marks. All I really wanted was a blank to replace my gunsmith's shelf supply that I used. What I got was $700 sunk into a barrel that isn't worth much of anything to me.

I do have a Brux on it that I am happy with, shoots well just as the rest of them I have do. Shouldn't have went away from something I know works.
 
Thanks for the update. Did you ask Bartlein to replace the barrel?

I didn't specifically ask, I did tell them that I already had a new barrel on it when they informed me that they were going to send it back to me. They said unfortunately that's not how they do business or that's not how this works. Can't remember the exact verbiage.
 
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