doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com bore pitting; is it dangerous?

ok after my last thread about not cleaning my guns i prolly deserve this but this gun i only shot abt 8 rounds through so i doubt that the lack of cleaning had much to do with the pitting i found abt 2-3inches from the muzzle. it was most likely my fault for not inspecting the gun well enough during purchase. i discovered some pitting whilst cleaning and peering throught he bores into the bright natural sunlight. scraping the "marks" with my cleaning rod confirmed abt 4 rough areas. the barrels are some nice krupp fluid steel that othewise are in great shape. is this something to worry about? how would it affect the value of the gun and the safety of the barrels. i estimate the rough patches to be about 2 or 3millimeters in diameter.

Not the usual place for pitting to develop first. Perhaps your cleaning technique isn't fully developed yet - needs more frequent practice. Put a brush to that area again because it could very well be plastic wad deposit which tends to form going into the chokes.

If you must have pitting, then have it as small, shallow, and far down the barrel as possible. Big, deep, and close to the chamber is, of course to be avoided.

A pit in a tube acts as a stress riser. "Big" increases the stress over a wide area - think bulge. "Deep" tends to a local failure - think fatigue crack. Close to the breach is higher pressure, but usually thicker metal.

I have only seen one barrel set that looked dangerous to me. It is a friend's Rem 1894 and has a pit or several pits in the chamber that are about 3/16" dia and over half the chamber wallthickness deep. Any 'smudge' 'roughness' or 'frostyness' wouldn't give me pause to think of safety. Keep in mind...engravers (factory and "upgrade") carve deep, sharp cornered lines on the outside of the chambers all the time... and the outside of the chamber is more highly stressed than the inside of any part of the barrel.

I agree that there might be a cleaning issue involved here. But if you've got pits that close to the muzzle . . . Think of it this way: Ever see a ported barrel? If holes in the barrel out at the muzzle don't hurt anything, why should you worry about pits in the same vicinity? They're only cosmetic in that area. Any pitting will decrease the value of a gun somewhat, but how dangerous it is or how much it will decrease the value depends both on the location and the extent (and/or depth) of the pitting.

I agree, only the outside should be engrave.

This topic points out an often overlooked trick purchasing a gun--ALWAYS carefully inspect the barrels from both ends. It is very difficult to see flaws near the muzzle when viewing from the breech end and vice versa.

Geoffrey,
...but it would be a challenge to engrave inside...

"Oh, you see THESE pits were engraved by a masterscratcher! They are not your ordinary garden variety pits. No sir, these babies will stand the test of time as high art!"

I think I may have found a means of off-loading "sub-standard" barrels.

I had a Herb Orre Model 12. His name was engraved on the inside of the barrel. Unfortunaly, his name was worn away after a few years of shooting it.