doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com How much pitting is acceptable?

Husky's are a dime a dozen...Sell it and find you one in better condition.

Which doesn't mean they're bad guns. I like it, shoot it well, and probably couldn't get what the gun's worth. I've got a 310 AS, which is in my view, as good as a Fox Sterlingworth. The bores are perfect on it.

The pitting isn't terrible, maybe not even bad, it's just not what I want to see.

Forgive him, jOe can't comprehend that someone else's second tiers are just as good as his second tiers....


Best,
Ted

I'd follow the previous advice to have the bores checked and measured by someone who is competent and has the correct tools. I looked at a 12 ga. gun on Gunbroker last night that the seller says has .750" bores. That thing is already about half way to being 10 gauge. Who knows how much pitting has been struck off the exterior of those barrels? Imagine what some more honing could do. A lot of these old guns have been screwed with by fools before they find their way into our hands. You've got 10 fingers and 2 eyeballs. Try to keep it that way.

Take this advice if you like your anatomy........

You said: "It's driving me crazy".....stop the pain, sell the gun...........

jOes advice is correct IMO, they are plentiful and not costly guns, so if the pitting drives you nuts, just pick one up that is nice and clean and sell the pitted one..........

You would invest more trying to fix the pitting than the gun is worth .......and possibly change your anatomy.........

I've pretty much decided to use it and not hone nor polish the bore. It's really not all that bad and doesn't seem to affect the patterning. It's not my main gun by a long shot, just a kind of trifle.

So long as I don't look down the bore too often, I should be OK. I don't think polishing the bore is nearly as questionable as lengthing the chamber, which I am not going to do either.

Probably your best option. Might be well though to do something to make sure its not still rusting down at the bottom of those pits. There've been lots of recipes posted here over the years to accomplish that. Easiest may be naval jelly swabbed down the bores left a while to act, and then a thorough power brushing with steel wool over a bronze brush to burnish and brighten things up...Geo

In a couple of decades of looking at Husqvarna LeFechaux action hammer doubles with two shotgun barrels, I don't recall any that had obviously reamed bores (unless some American had it done after it was imported). These were utility guns in Sweden, NOT guns one spent a lot of money on, either to buy or subsequently.

Where I have seen lots of reamed shotgun bores is with Husqvarna LeFechaux action kombi guns. These guns cost much more and most were heavily used. Most show signs of repairs, often seemingly done by blacksmiths.

Husqvarna made numerous toplever hammer doubles. Some are quite nice handling, many basically copies of Sauer hammer doubles, perhaps using Sauer actions and other parts. These merit careful attention to how much they might have been reamed, either in Sweden or in USA. I have one where the right barrel appears to have been reamed at least twice. It still has more than adequate barrel thickness because the barrels are early fluid steel, made thicker than Damascus barrels because of suspecions about strength of early fluid steels.

Niklas

A barrel can be full of pits and still be stronger than one that's pristine but honed out to 20 thousands wall thickness. I think what you have to modify here is your attitude to pitted bores rather than the bores themselves. Learn to love those pits.
Nial

I might have said this earlier, but it's a $200 shotgun. It would cost me about $30 per barrel to hone it out, but I'm not gonna.

My primary question, which was in no way clear, concerned how pitting would affect shot pattern. I realize there's not enough data in my post to answer that, as it all depends. I previously didn't have a frame of reference, but this morning I saw a pitted bore on a 12 ga. and my pits are better than his pits.

I will never love the pits, although that's a good idea. I'll tolerate them, however, and maybe not think of them so much.