Lapping a barrel

[Renegade]

I was wondering if any of you guys/gals lap your own barrels and what method you use? I would like to smooth out the barrel on my Jaeger. my cleaning patches always come out with little tears on them.

[Stormrider51]

Renegade,
Tears in patching may or may not be a sign of a bore problem.  An overly tight patch/ball combo, especially if coupled with a "hard" lead ball, can cause the same tears.  If that's not the case I'd still ask myself how well the gun groups.  While an "ideal" patch is one that shows no tears or burn holes the proof is in the accuracy.  I won't overlook burns because they mean I'm getting gas blow by and therefore losing velocity but tears are of less concern.  But let's say you do have a bore that's rough or is new enough to have micro-burrs still in it.  One simple solution is to just go shoot it.  Repeated passage of patched balls up and down the bore will eventually smooth things out.  Anything you do to lap the bore quickly is just accelerated wear anyway.  A faster method has you unbreeching the rifle and pushing patched balls with the patching coated with valve grinding compound through the bore.  An even faster method lets you avoid pulling out the breech plug.  Load the rifle with light charges and "lube" the patches with the valve grinding compound.  This laps on the way down and again on the way out when fired.  Depending on how rough the bore is that last method should do the job quickly.  Just be sure to clean the rifle thoroughly with solvent because the water many of us use to clean BP fouling won't remove the grinding compound residue.

Those are the techniques I've used for over 40 years but I'm sure others will have different and possibly better ones.  It's just my two cents.

Storm

[Hanshi]

Sometimes the vent liner (on flinters) protrudes slightly into the bore and snags the patch which ends up with little tears on it.  I've had two guns that did this and it's an easy fix.  I just remove the liner and grind it a teeny bit shorter and it works fine.  You normally only have to remove a miniscule amount to accomplish this.

[pathfinder]

Yup,Stormriders right,"Fire Lapping is a great way to go on rough barrel's. On new barrel's that I use I wrap jute twine around a ram rod,put it a few inches down the barrel,warm the barrel a little and pour some lead down the barrel,let it cool a bit,then withdraw the lead,NOT ALL THE WAY OUT, brush on a little oil with a small amount of pumice or rottenstone,run it up and down the whole length of the barrel a couple of times,and repeat with oil and compound for @ 20-30 strokes. REALLY polishes that bore!not really good for re-storing bad bore's.

[Ironhand]

It's not exactly lapping but one way to clean up a rough bore is with steel wool. Put a sub caliber brash brush on your rod. I used a 45 for a 50 cal bore. Wrap the brush with fine steel wool till it is a tight fit in the bore. Dope the bore with WD-40 till it is well soaked and then start running the brush in and out. You will feel the brush catching on the rough spots. Keep at it till you feel the resistance decrease then add a little more steel wool. Repeat. Eventually you get to a point where the steel wool moves down the bore tight but smooth. Be sure to use lots of oil and clean well after. This has worked for me on a couple of rough bores. As an added bonus you do not have to pull the breach plug to do this.