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Clearly, we all want to look at a rifle's bore and see perfection. Many of the "interesting" doubles and single shots we appreciate have bores that are pitted. My worst example of the is a 450 BPE Farquharson. When purchased, it seemed a candidate for rebarreling. Pits started in the chamber, continued into the bore, and were severe. The muzzle was a mess, sort of an oval with hit or miss rifling. Initial shooting with nitro for black 4198 loads behind lead bullets was a joke...shoulda been throwing rocks. Further, the brass had to be knocked out of the chamber with a rod as it had flowed into the chamber pits. Perhaps that is how the muzzle/crown was ravaged. Wanting to save the original barrel, I tried a few "fixes" befor rebarreling. First I sleeved the chamber with chrome-moly, then counterbored the muzzle 'till there was good rifling...about 2" in. Finally, I added an over powder card wad and shotshell buffer to my cartridges, same charge of 4198 and same bullet. Bingo! Consistent 2 1/2" groups at 100yrds. The buffer seems to clean the bore with each shot, as there is no problem with leading. Cases fall from the new chamber. Venturino wrote about his experiences with pitting and bulges/rings. He found that pitted barrels could always be made to shoot acceptably...bulged/ringed barrels sometimes and sometimes not! My thought is that many pitted barrels suffer from bad muzzles, and if cut and crowned or properly counterbored, these barrels would perform surprizingly well.

Otto

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