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I do not know anything about this new 6.5, however do know or surmise that a lot of the wearing out of barrels in the past was due to improper cleaning - not wear. Most with a buildup of carbon ahead of and in the throat and the more powder you burn, the greater is the deposit of carbon. If not cleaned out often, the bullets constantly running over the carbon fouling turn it into a ceramic-hard deposit that cannot be removed and yo can hardly touch it with a carbide scribe. This tightening of the bore near the breech did indeed give the appearance of a shot-our barrel. It was smooth looking and would extent well up the bore. As the carbon become one with the bore and got thicker/tighter, the bullets wold be squeezed down smaller than the rest of the groove diameter and groups would continually increase at an alarming rate, sometimes after as few as 500 rounds. I think that's where the 'worn out before you find a load' saying came from. This is, in my opinion, of course.
Too, many of the old Swifts were simply fouled out, not worn out. People did not know about proper cleaning. Unlike them, we know a patch with 30 WGT motor oil is NOT cleaning. I know of guys on another forum who have resurrected old "Worn-Out Swifts" - purchased at a 'steal' and after days of soaking with solvents and scrubbing - turned them into sub 1/2" shooters again.
With today's better solvents and greater knowledge on cleaning, along with the use of bore scopes to check progress, much of the 'bore wear' of old has been reduced - again, in my most humble opinion.
Daryl,
Just read an article last night about the .220 Swift..and how a guy talked about bore scopes and the amount of money it would have saved him in barrels had he had one years ago..discussed how everyone had him convinced the 220 would take out a barrel in less than 1000 rounds..more like 6-800..one day he cam across a p-dog town and starting an afternoon of shooting..mid-day he noticed his rifle was off, thought he had bumped his scope, whatever..he put up a target on the side of an old building and fired a series of shots..was shooting about a 4" group at 100..thinking he had shot out his barrel he called his gunsmith and had him order up a new barrel, again in 26" length..
After installing the new barrel he had his gunsmith cut open the barrel to see what the "shot out" barrel looked like..what they found was it was NOT shot out, but had a large deposit of copper in the throat area and just beyond ..had they known that and had the products we have today, would have saved whatever a new a barrel cost back in the 60's...and a lot of misinformation about the .220Swift and others like it...
Wonder how many bit the dust over the years for that exact same reason???
Ripp
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