Browning A-Bolt barrel borescope

[Plowboy85]

So here is the story in this one. A good friend of mine that is not an OCD shooter like most us that handload asked me to look into his factory 270 WSM A-Bolt with stainless steel barrel. He stated the gun shot horrible groups with all types of box ammo. I told him I'd clean it and try to work up a load. First thing of course was to borescope it, noticed heavy copper fouling and a little bit of a carbon ring. After ALOT of boretech patches and brushing I got the bulk of the carbon out. Do y'all think this is the inclusions in the steel exposed during manufacturing of the barrel or is this corrosion? I would assume it goes up wet with gun powder residue in it often. I have one factory barrel which is a 17HMR and it is better than this. The gun has well under 100 rounds and little to now fire cracking btw.

 

[25WSM]

Pics are a little blurry on my phone but I don't see anything out of the ordinary for a factory barrel. Trust me I've seen way worse in some expensive custom barrels. This is a 400 dollar match barrel from very popular maker. I took 20 picks of flaws and had only looked at first 3 inches.
Shep

 

[Plowboy85]

Shep, that's surprising. I have quite a few of custom barrels and I'm happy to say they are near flawless. I work in a Reliability Department as a materials and corrosion SME so I have a solid understanding of the steel manufacturing process but thought these barrels would have been better than this. Now that she is cleaned I'm going to try some 145 eld-x and accubonds. A dang borescope will cause you to over think things for sure.

 

[25WSM]

I had a kreiger that looked so bad I wasn't going to use it. But was in a pinch so put it on anyway. Won more with that barrel than any other. I normally am looking to see if there are major flaws and to look at my cleaning. I've seen some real nice barrels come through the shop but never a flawless one. The proof barrel I'm working with now might be the nicest finished inside barrel I've seen but it's 100 fps slower than it should be.
Shep

 

[HappyWarrior]

Looks like a typical factory stainless barrel. Get a NECO kit, RTFI and run 10 800 grit and 10 1200 thru it. It will shoot MOA or better