TargetTalk

Dude, I have a question..... this thread has wondered around a bit, but I think it has all been informative to the OPs original question. So, Dude, you are saying there is no "combustion ring" or "lead ring" buildup? There is only pitting and erosion that will discolor and hold some lead and carbon causing it to look like a ring buildup with a borescope?

Don't take my comments wrong here, because I will be the first to admit "I don't know!". I am simply asking questions to hopefully better understand. SO....... I have done quite a bit of reading of rim fire BR material. Books, (Bill Calfee) BR magazines and blogs, etc....... Calfee and others go into great detail about the combustion ring buildup and it's effect on accuracy. They describe this as buildup, not an erosion. Yes, they talk about the erosion you described, but treat it as a different issue from the buildup. I was at the Eley test facility last week. The guys there talked about the combustion ring as a "buildup". Calfee describes in his writing how he would slug a barrel with a large buildup, measure slug, then clean the ring out and slug it again and the initial slug would measure smaller because it had been sized by the ring. If this ring is only erosion, there would be no sizing of the bullet (slug).

Again, I'm not trying to start an argument. I am just seeing what APPEARS to be different information from two different sources. Just trying to make it all jive!

Anonymous wrote:

Firstly, cheap ammo is false economy.

rayjay wrote:
Two points.
Firstly, cheap ammo is false economy.

Quote of the day.

And a J3 new to the sport firing very top end ammo is a waste of money.


Cheers,
'Dude

Everything you say is exactly right except for this OP there is NO TIME to be farting around with anything but top line ammo. They are 3 weeks away from going to Camp Perry. There is no time to be taking the inexperienced shooter to the range and then not getting to practice due to less than stellar ammo.

Secondly, torpedoing a new shooter's efforts by trying to save a relatively few pennies is the worst sort of false economy . I also feel that rushing to make CP with an inexperienced shooter is misguided but....

IMO, they should buy a couple of bricks of Eley Match EPS to get them by the next few weeks and after CP they can settle down to a more normal routine of learning the ropes of a new athletic endeavor at a more relaxed pace.

The above assumes they get the chamber and bore cleaned back to metal as gently as possible AND the Eley gives them no chambering issues in a long string [ which is what I would assume would be the case ]. Assuming is fraught with peril but there isn't much time to do anything else.

Regarding rmarsh:

There are multiple things going on here, including the passage of time and advance of technology. The "Mark III Ring" as it was originally called in the 1970s could be seen with the naked eye. The "Mark III Ring" was clearly an erosion phenomenon with metal being removed, presumably a tiny bit with each shot.

Lead and carbon deposits in a smallbore barrel for the most part can usually only be seen with a borescope or other visual aid. A high time barrel will have both some erosion and some deposits. Borescopes have become much more common so the precision shooting community is much more aware of some of these subtler phenomenon.

In a typical smallbore barrel, after some number of shots the lead and carbon left behind reach kind of happy balance, the erosion just keeps on going.

Now you are correct, the Benchrest guys are doing tremendous amounts of research in getting the most they possibly can out of the simple old 22LR rimfire. I have not read much of Calfee's material but what you say he describes is totally believable. Perhaps ammo manufacturers have the erosion problem far enough under control now that they can focus more on the deposits. Bottom line there, a regularly cleaned barrel will usually shoot better than one that never gets cleaned and will always last longer.

An observation was made about 2 years ago that attempts to import some of this technology into the smallbore game, prone and 3P had not really netted any results with improved scores. Now that they are experimenting with decimal scoring for the prone event this may change.

As we sort this all out, one other subtle difference, pitting vs erosion: Pitting is usually in reference to some kind of chemical attack, while erosion is mechanical abrasion. A barrel with aggressive residue (mercury primer for instance) left uncleaned will pit. A barrel with lots of rounds through it will show wear from erosion.

Hope this helps
'Dude

regarding rayjay,

If you read my longer post about the levels of ammo, buried in there you will notice I am advocating a midrange pricepoint. For a new junior Wolf, SK or Eley Target would all be fine choices. Match EPS, for a little splurge just before Camp Perry, well OK.

I am not saying Federal Gold Medal is fine match ammo, it is probably only decent ammo at 50ft, certainly at the bottom of what might be acceptable.

The bottom line here, while the Federal is not top of the line match ammo, I can think of no good reason why just by virtue of the ammo alone it should be shaving or shedding lead so badly that it renders the rifle inoperable or even the bolt hard to close for that matter.

A good cleaning, with solvent that goes after the lead and different ammo are easy, and quick to implement and so long as the ammo is a respectable target grade ammo, almost any selection (or right now almost anything target grade that it available) will do.

Cheers,
'Dude

Thanks Dude, interesting stuff!

In regards to the cheap ammo bit, I have run more than a case of each, Eley Sport (as I like to call it the dirtiest ammo I've yet to see (Serious amounts of fouling in the barrel)), Remington white box (Not sure 100% on the actual name I just know it's in a white box and the ROTC program here uses it), and Eley Tenex Ultimate EPS and haven't noticed any difference at 50'. Even the holy hell expensive Tenex has had misfires but it does burn very cleanly. For 50' it really doesn't matter. In all honesty my old Diana 100 (air rifle) could one hole in the wind at 50'. If you start shooting at 50m then you might want to start getting to know what ammo works best with your gun.

The only suggestion in addition to support buying a brick of Eley Tenex is to buy a few boxes of R-50, Tenex and Xact. To buy a brick of Eley you are assuming that the rifle is happy with it. Maybe it prefers R-50.
Say buy 4 boxes of each. Do a quick test to see which brand makes the rifle happiest. If there is not enough time to actually purchase the right brand (and ideally the right brand but a lower grade), then use the unhappy brand to train first until run out. In this case, save the R-50 for the actual competition, while using up the 8 boxes of Tenex and Xact.

After the competition you can start buying RWS but for a much cheaper grade.

I know most of you look at these rifles as beginners, not that great; but it is still a high precision match rifle. To a layman these rifle is so expensive that it is beyond their imagination. To most people rifles means $200-$400...with magazines. Hence, you still need to feed it high quality ammo. Otherwise why not feed it with the infamous Golden Bullets? Grouping is not everything. If you own a $15,000 Bleiker 300FR , will you try to save up $300 to buy some second or third rate ammo, even for training?

Sergei Martynov always uses his new old stock Olymp-R for major competitions, but he would use other stuff for training. Olymp-R is too precious, and is no longer in production. I think that should be the strategy, Buy a brick of R-50 and save it for competitions, but purchase bricks of RWS Target Rifle for training. $16 vs $6 per box is a lot of difference economically if you are talking about bricks. For me I use Tenex for competition and occasional simulated match for preparation of a match, but Team is the one that I have the most. Never tried RWS, and the pistol hates Lapua :(

This being a junior - use whatever ammo you can afford, and see what's available at Perry. Vince, remember this is a junior!
For the barrel part of the problem - take the gun to Perry and plop it down in front of the gunsmiths there. Last year both 10-Ring (Lisa and Todd) and this site's own Scott Pilkington were there for smallbore phase. If anyone can do anything about it, these folk can. Also talk to the good experienced people at those other "Champion"-style vendors :^) Get there early enough and they can fix it before practice day.

And your results from give it a good scrubbing with solvent and a bronze brush were....?

(One guy mentioned a drill....excellent.)

wrc wrote:This being a junior - use whatever ammo you can afford, and see what's available at Perry. Vince, remember this is a junior!

True, but take me for an example, I adore my two cats both of whom were adopted and not of any breeding heritage. I buy them the best food to the best vet, etc.
Everyone's situation is different. I personally will spend the extra dollar to give my daughter a better ammo even I (and everyone) knows it makes little difference at this stage.

Finally, I rather sell the rifle and say it has 500 rounds of R-50 in it instead of a box of winchester 555, if my daughter needs an upgrade or give up the sport. I am sure people would pay the extra for the rifle that has been fed with good ammo.

Please, no newbie wielded drills in the chamber. This isn't a 10/22.

rayjay wrote:Please, no newbie wielded drills in the chamber. This isn't a 10/22.

On the other hand, it is certainly a good excuse to buy a Lothar Walther barrel afterwards.

Thank you Mr. Clays for starting this thread and the rest of you folks for all the great replies.

I’m sorry that I don’t have any other suggestion as to a cure for your issue I just thought I would add my experience with the 1903 model. We have a half dozen 1903s that are “club guns” that have shot thousands of rounds of thunderbolts, wildcats, and the like with little or no problem with function. These rifles have not been well maintained; honestly they have been downright abused. The kids that use these rifles aren’t really encouraged to buy their own “upper end” rifle until they are consistently breaking 1050 in a 3X40 course. I’m not sure what these abused rifles are truly capable of shooting but on occasion a kid will complain that something is wrong with the rifle. I will get one of the top shooters to fire a ten shot series with it that results in handing the rifle back saying something like “I don’t think it’s the rifle”.

Please keep us informed with what you find out (I hope and think a good cleaning is all it takes) and good luck at Camp Perry.

OK- sorry for not replying sooner and thanks for all the ideas!

I did take some Flitz and gave the chamber a good cleaning, broze brush, solvent, patches and really cleaned it.

When we went to the range I stayed away from teh gold medal we previously shot and used CCI standard. So far everything is great!!

While my daughter was shooting, I was visually comparing a few different ammo brands that I had available to me at the moment (Gold Medal, Wolf Match, CCI Standard, Agulia). I didn't have my camera with me, but will be taking some pictures tonight....

That gold medal I was using had a lead ring on the CASE just below the bullet. I was able to scrape it off with a pocket knife and it looked just like the ring that I push out of the chamber (when I first had this problem). So Now I am convinced that it was this lot of ammo I first used that gave me this problem.

I'll post some pictures later- but you guys won't believe it when you see it. Unbelievable really. I talked to the previous owner and he said his daughter did use gold medal in it before- but it was an older lot (80's vintage).

Thanks again for all the knowledge! This is an awesome group!! :)

That's great. The smallest little things can trip you up. Just think if you had arbitrarily decided to use some other on hand ammo fate wouldn't have bit you. That's life. keep pushing !

At our club's last RF BR match we had a first time female shooter win her class and another lady finished 3rd. We had a father/daughter pair, husband and wife and a father and son pair. It was cool !! The grandmother of the group was off on vacation :).

Can't wait to see the pictures!

Rover wrote:First, I would wrap some 600 grit paper around an old brush and twist it around for a while in the chamber

My god no.

Since you have an opinion, I trust you have tried this on a rough or slightly pitted chamber and found the results unsatisfactory (as opposed to merely a dirty one).

Or how about fire-lapping a rough bore or one with a constriction where the barrel enters the frame (S&W, Ruger, air rifles).

I have done both on my TOZ FP and improved the accuracy of it and one of my S&W41 barrels.

Well?

Applying emery paper to a chamber would be my absolute last resort, and even then I wouldn't consider using something of unpredictable profile like a bore brush to press it into the chamber walls and the rifling lede.....

And yes I have fire-lapped barrels, and honed chambers with brass laps etc.

Interesting and good observation.

As has been noted, I expect that 1903 will give you plenty of fine service, usually with pretty standard ammunition. Clearly this lot of Federal is an exception.

And no rounds of Eley Tenex were harmed during the solution of this problem.

Cheers,
'Dude

PS Good luck at Perry.