Another not so traditional use of a PC Endoscope.
The following are pictures from a T/C Rifle barrel.
I loaned this rifle to a friend here in town about 10 or 12 years back. In fact, we hunted together that year and he actually took a nice little 2 point Muley up in the Clockum Mountains with this gun.
After the hunt, he took the gun home to clean it up good, and he mentioned buying the gun from me since he had shot it a good deal at the range before going on the hunt and he felt it was very accurate.... which was all good at the time.
A couple of months later, not long after Christmas of that year, he brought the gun back.
He told me he had gotten his rod stuck in the barrel and had "one-heck'of a time" getting it out, and he also told me thar he had decided to wait a bit before buying that gun, or any gun, since Christmas had been unusually tough on the family....fine, I understand those things.
Not long after that in the early spring, another guy was interested in the same gun, so we both went to the range to shoot a bit.
He tried to shoot the gun several times and it would not fire. I tried several times, and it may have fired 4 or maybe 5 times out of a dozen, or more tries.
I cleared the powder and ball from that gun several times, replaced two nipples, did everything I could think of but it just would not fire....
Back home, I dropped a bore light down it (Light from fishing bobber) and couldn't see anything, so I changed out the old .50 barrel, a 15/16" for a .45 in 15/16, that I had sitting around and I eventually sold the rifle.
Fast forward several years after that, long after I had forgotten all about that old .50 cal barrel, up until the day I broke a case of my wife's canning jars, then while cleaning up my broken mess I found that old barrel, which had been pushed off the bench, and was lying flat on the floor up against the wall.
I dug it out, wiped it down good, and decided to have a look-see down that barrel, just for grins and giggles, now that I have that new-fangled endoscope....I've had this "scope" for about 4 years now, but I seldom use it.
After looking, and after digging out a bunch of little pieces out of the barrel with a long piece of fence wire, using a very tiny patch with 3in1 oil, I remembered Scott telling me he had gotten a rod stuck...but he didn't tell me it was a brass brush that he had gotten stuck down there..
Here is what I was seeing....after I got a lot of these little micro-fine pieces of brass looking stuff out, some of which were black, likely from the heat of popping so many caps on 'em.
This 1st picture is a part/shred of the twisted metal that holds the brass brush in place...you see that shinny metal every time you use a brass brush, a tiny part of it was actually hung-up in the flash hole, because I could not get my vent pick through the flash hole, at first.
https://i.imgur.com/SyZQAvz.png[/img]]
The next picture is the rough cut breech when the Ante Chamber / breachplug was added...I have seen this "angled cut before, but has always been smoothed out....this cut is ragged and rough enough to have possibly been chipped, or broken
before the breach was installed on the barrel....I don't know, but it is really hard to believe any quality control
whatsoever was ever applied here....and, this is one breach plug I could not pull...for the life of me.
https://i.imgur.com/iyNk2cM.png[/img]]
The last picture is my vent pick pushed well in through the cleanout hole, which can be seen in the above picture also.
The old barrel now plows dirt, grass, and snow when I pop caps through the old thing....she should shoot again, IMHO.
https://i.imgur.com/9BhzJL5.jpg[/img]]
Hank and I had had a short private discussion on these pictures a few days ago, like me, he simply could not believe that barrel ever made it out of the shop.
I think the old barrel will be fine as long as I never try to put anything other than a wipping cloths, and a breach scraper down the barrel...I hate to cut it up or throw it away because it's such a low serial number.
FWIW; I think by now we all realize that Thompson Center sub-contracted "a lot" of their work back in the early days.
And I personally believe it would be wrong to paint T/C with a broad brush, saying all their barrels were little more than trash because that is not true.
Back in the 1960's when Warren Center hooked up with the Thompson Tool Company they struggled to make ends meet. That struggle continued until Warren Center came up with a muzzleloader that resembled the Hawken Rifle. Then in the early 1970's sales began to soar, demand was outpacing production so they needed a little help, they got caught back up by hiring sub-contractors to make parts...The K.W.Thompson Tool Company had to buy, and even design new machinery in order to produce all their own in-house work, but they did get caught up within a few short years. However the cost of doing everything in-house was staggering, their bills were huge, but they did it in less than 6 years and started once again to make a profit.
They also started offering better wood for their stocks, they made several different models, and it was all being done in-house.
Their complete and total History, insofar as who made what during what years were all lost in a fire back in the mid 1990s.
There has been a lot of rumors, and many untruths told about who made what when, but they built a legacy, a legacy I am thankful for, because the rest of this story is history.
T/C was a major factor, if not the major factor, in establishing the popularity of the muzzleloader with the more common folk, just before and even years after the Bicentennial.
Many of their guns are just as good today as they were when purchased, my own small collection is proof of that.
Anyway, sorry the post is so long, but there are a few things that require just a bit more talkin than others.
Russ...
Topic: Teslong Borescope (Read 2289 times)