Thread: How much pitting is too much?

Heres your reminder to clean that shotgun

I had read its common to not clean the barrels for a couple hundred shells at a time, I do wonder if thats for more quality built guns rather than mine...
Not the end of the world to clean after an outing I guess, good habit to form as im planning to run some BP once I get my hands on some.

One of the boresnakes makes this a super quick and painless job.... tell you one thing for nothing..go shoot along salty water will teach you to clean your gun....TWICE....once when get home and again 3-4 days later..the red stuff shows up anywhere you missed first time around....really ups your game.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

One of the boresnakes makes this a super quick and painless job.... tell you one thing for nothing..go shoot along salty water will teach you to clean your gun....TWICE....once when get home and again 3-4 days later..the red stuff shows up anywhere you missed first time around....really ups your game.

true that
i left my remmy 870 in the gun bag overnight after a rough wheather trip to ellesmere
jesus what a mess next morning .
thankfuly it all cleaned off

thats the one time a can of wd40 type stuff will save your bacon...spray the crap out of it and leave it muzzle down in corner overnight..safe and secured inside locked premises where you still are of course ....

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

thats the one time a can of wd40 type stuff will save your bacon...spray the crap out of it and leave it muzzle down in corner overnight..safe and secured inside locked premises where you still are of course ....

i always leave mine with a light coat of rem oil anyway thats why i think it cleaned up so well
but jesus rem oils darer now than f...kin eggs

looks like plastic/powder fowling :-) I use kero to get as much out aspossible before shifting to costlier chemicals.

But yeah reminds me must clean the shotty..

shot some antiques "alot" worse than that over the years they shot just fine. the clays agreed with me.
as the others said and you found out most of that will clean out

What I’ve noticed is that it seems to come back the same each time I take it out of the safe, doesn’t seem to matter how much I scrub it then oil it, about all I can come up with is that there’s a patch that’s worn down there that gathers fouling/corrosion, I guess I’ll find out how bad it is when I switch to BP
granted I’m in a 100 year old house that’s pretty much always wet so I’m sure that isn’t helping

My old man says a bit of pitting puts some spin on the charge.

I think it would have to be very excessive to be unsafe. Most pitting that people worry about is just cosmetic.

Ill put up a pic of my old SXS, I would love to shoot it but the pitting is much worse and I fear for my fingers if the barrels were to open up.

The clean barrel is the L/H side,
the nasty looking one is the R/H,

marked, C.G Bonehill, Birmingham.
late 1800's to very early 1900's IRRC from the stamps,
never proofed for nitro,
I feel that would be too much pitting, I suppose I could always strap it to a post with a stout charge of BP and some long string
it has been relegated to wall hanger (well more of a shelf sitter I guess)

give it the same cleaning treatment....you may be surprised.

Now that you mention it I think I will,
Never really bothered cleaning it as it was given to me in this condition, granted the putter barrels aren’t to flash either, no pattern left to the steel twist just patchy blueing/corrosion marks

Could be a little side project to try and bring some of the lister back to the barrels

Did clean up a fair bit, still loads of pitting though, might consider have a gunsmith look over it but I think given the overall condition its probably not really safe to be anything other than a wall hanger, I suppose it could be possible to sleeve the barrels but most likely worth more than the gun to do that, wonder how a sub bore insert would play out, anyways.
I just realised that the photos are rather rubbish this time around, pitting is pretty much in the first 1/8th of the barrel (would that be the forcing cone?) and a patch at the end which of the barrels which could be cut out I suppose.

Use your battery drill with the brush on the end of the cleaning rod.
It will clean way better than just pushing the brush through.