What am I seeing in my barrel?

JollyJerp

Private
Minuteman
Sep 11, 2022
16
18
Kentucky
Hey all, the other month I bought a borescope and checked out my B14r. I noticed some marks in my barrel, that haven’t seemed to budge or clean up after several hundred rounds and also some cleanings (C4 sitting in the carbon ring, then pushed through the rest of the barrel, then patches ran through until they come out clean).

Just curious if this is lead buildup or some manufacturing defect
 

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I’m too new to really know where it is compared to where it should be, balanced with my trigger pull abilities right now.

Top half is 50y, bottom half is 100y with SK rifle match
 

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Your groups are about what I would expect from a decent rifle with that ammo - especially if you scrubbed the entire barrel completely clean and have less than a couple hundred rounds through it since. At least one of those photos has unburned powder in it, so I assume the photos are of a fouled bore.

Whether or not the barrel is pristine as one would expect from a premium barrel, the rifle appears to be shooting ok. I'd expect to see performance like this from either my Vudoo or RimX with a random lot of SK ammo (any label) fired through a bore with less than a couple hundred rounds since a chamber-to-muzzle scrubbing. I have a centerfire gas rifle whose barrel, by comparison to a Bartlein, Krieger, etc., looks like it was machined with a hammer and chisel - but it's MOA-or-better accurate with match ammo nonetheless. If your rifle shoots well, and yours looks like it's doing fine (and may improve with lot-tested premium ammo), don't worry about slight imperfections in the barrel.

Your cleaning regimen matters too. Take a look at the video below by Greg Roman at Vudoo. He advocates cleaning the chamber and carbon ring while leaving the barrel "seasoning" pretty much intact. While some of the video is Vudoo-specific (e.g., bolt disassembly/reassembly), most of it applies to any .22LR. At about the 15:30 mark, you'll see he runs only one wet patch through the entire bore, followed by three dry ones.

Good luck.

 
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I’m too new to really know where it is compared to where it should be, balanced with my trigger pull abilities right now.

Top half is 50y, bottom half is 100y with SK rifle match
Looks like you are shooting about .5 at 50 and 1.5 at 100? That is ok. I'm about 400 rounds of Eley Benchrest Outlaw though my 455 and it has really tightened up. I will clean the chamber and bolt to keep it feeding good but I'm not touching the barrel. It takes some fouling to tighten up and some barrels take longer. Put 200 rounds through it and see how it shoots, then look down the bore. Whatever it looks like when it shoots best is where you want it to be.
 
Get about 1200 rounds through it before you get to crazy. I noticed a improvement at about 1200-1300 on mine.

Plus if your still using the factory trigger....look to either replace it or very minimum before moving forward dial it down to its lowest setting. And torque tune the stock's bolts.
 
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