Season a Barrel

[scrat]

I use gun oil a whole bunch when putting them away. Have been using it for years. The day before i want to go shooting i run a couple of dry patches. then i run a patch soaked in some Jack Daniels. run it through the bore.... a little Jack for my barrels a little Jack for me. Well the Jack daniels cleans the heck out of the barrels. So next day im good to go.

 

[Rattus58]

I use gun oil a whole bunch when putting them away. Have been using it for years. The day before i want to go shooting i run a couple of dry patches. then i run a patch soaked in some Jack Daniels. run it through the bore.... a little Jack for my barrels a little Jack for me. Well the Jack daniels cleans the heck out of the barrels. So next day im good to go.

I used to go drinkin with my dog rusty a time ago... never thought about tossin one back with the stuff and puff ...

Aloha...

 

[Cosmoline]

I use mineral spirits, but the principle is sound either way ;-)

 

[BowerR64]

Baloney...Steel is porous. Look at it under a powerful microscope. In fact it has a lot of imperfections.

In addition look at the lands and grooves in the barrel. If you have reasonably good vison you can easily see tool marks inside the barrel from when the bore being cut. A common question has to do with lapping the barrel to rid it of the tool marks. Pores are more easily visible with the naked eye on castings used making parts for firearms (Ruger frames for example.

Seasoning not only fills in small pores that may not be seen with the naked eye but it helps with covering the imperfections from when the lands and grooves were cut.

You dont even need a microscope just buy any newer pietta and you can see it with the naked eye even.

I know this is an old post what else am i going to do when its -7° outside?

Boil some water and season some barrels!

I think they make the barrels like this on purpose so there are pits to season!

 

[rodwha]

I'm curious why the markings I see don't follow the grooves???

 

[BowerR64]

That is a new barrel i got from cabelas. Target model date code is CL

I took the images before i ever shot it.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Seasoning not only fills in small pores that may not be seen with the naked eye but it helps with covering the imperfections from when the lands and grooves were cut.

OK lets clarify.

"Seasoning" theory is that the grease fills the "pores" of the barrel and stays in them throughout the shooting process, and was different and necessary when compared to using a lube on the patched round ball patch, which apparently it is thought does not do enough of a job of smoothing the passage of the round ball over these imperfections.

So what one needs to do to proclaim that seasoning does work, is to show that a well lubed patch actually fails to do the job so seasoning actually "works" instead of being superfluous...and...,

The Dutch Schoultz shooting system which does not use a seasoned barrel and uses a very different method of applying lubrication shows results that indicate as I first wrote, that seasoning is balderdash. If it did not show such results, it would fail miserably using a dry barrel....

LD

 

[[email protected]]

Seasoning has and always will be just a bunch of BS. Period .

 

[fdf]

Arguing with folks about seasoning a barrel is like wresting with a pig in the mud, after while you discover the pig is having fun.

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

I'm curious why the markings I see don't follow the grooves???

Excellent question.

Before the rifling is cut, a hole is bored through the barrel blank. The tool used is a rotating tool, so it leaves circular tool marks behind. After the hole has been bored, the rifling is cut, usually by dragging a cutter through the bore. After the rifling has been cut, what remains of the original hole forms the lands of the rifling, and the circular tool marks can often still be seen on the surface of the lands. Since the rifling tool was dragged through the bore, the tool marks left behind by it will follow the length of the grooves. Some barrels will have an operation to polish away or smooth the circular tool marks on the lands, but they are still present on many barrels.

Incidentally, notice I used the term 'bore', and not 'drill'. Sometimes somebody will erroneously use the term 'bore diameter' when they are referring to the diameter of the grooves. That is incorrect. Bore diameter is the diameter the hole was originally bored, which is the same as the diameter of the rifling at the lands. The diameter of the grooves is Groove Diameter, not Bore Diameter.

 

[jaxenro]

I don't "season" my revolver barrels but I do like to run a really oily patch down the barrel that's dipped in jojoba oil just before shooting. I can usually clean the barrel by running another oily patch down it then dry ones until they come out clean then another oily one

 

[fdf]

After some more thought, seasoning a black powder barrel makes as much sense as seasoning a Teflon coated frying pan, just does not work.

 

[[email protected]]

Here is my 32 barrel. One in 16 twist

 

[BowerR64]

WOW! that is sweet

Look how deep the lands and grooves are on that thing!

No wonder that thing shoots so good for a full 10 shots!

 

[BowerR64]

Those pits in the images i posted will get filled in with something as i shoot it. There is no way they will stay open like that if i shoot it.

My question is what will they fill in with if i dont do anything at all?

Will they fill in with lead? with fouling?

I dont use a patch when i shoot a revolver so the theory that a patch fills in those pits as you load it doesnt apply to my gun.

IMO if i do nothing to this barrel like it is it wont help it. The lead will clog into those pits and the substitute fouling will fill in what the lead misses.

IF i atleast run bore butter threw it those pits you see will atleast get filled in with something that isnt corrosive right?

 

[BowerR64]

I tried it on that barrel, boiled some water ran it threw the barrel about 5 cubs of boiling water then while the frame was boiling hot i ran 2 patches threw it with bore butter all over the patch. I did that twice then let it sit and cool flipping it around every so often so the oil would cool on just one side.

It kinda looks like its been shot.

It kinda looks like fouling all over the inside now its cooled.

 

[BowerR64]

After it cooled a few hours i ran a cool dry patch down it.

Here is the dry patch

 

[frontiergander]

if you guys want to seal the bores, Dynatek bore coat. Best stuff you can buy and completely eliminates the need to oil the bore after cleaning.

 

[BCRider]

I'd read the article in the first post but I'm getting a 404 error so I'm guessing it's been taken down or the site went dead.

Comparing seasoning a traditional cast iron fry pan to a barrel bore is a non starter right out of the gate.

The seasoning on the pan involves using stupid high heat to polymerize the cooking oil or animal fats into a varnish like coating. That's the black shiny stuff you see left behind which you never want to scrub away.

It's a whole other thing with a gun bore. Swabbing the bore with Bore Butter or some other unguent or potions might just be a beneficial exercise. But you're not "seasoning" it at all in the same manner as we do with a fry pan.

Pores in steel? Not today or any time since the earliest days of making steel from cast iron unless the metal is deliberately produced to have a "sintered" makeup for specific purposes. And if metals were pourous in the manner that some seem to think then we could not make pressure cylinders from the metals and expect them to hold the pressure over a longer period. Instead they'd leak down like our rubber tires.... which ARE porous.

Instead what steel DOES have is a varying amount of surface texture based on the machining and other finishing steps. This leaves a rather scratchy surface. The little valleys between the peaks can and do hold stuff that comes into contact with the steel. This can be desirable stuff like oil or paints or it can be undesirables like lead and fouling that catches and holds ever more such contaminants.

But to expect a coating or "seasoning" to build up over time that the bullets and patches slide over is a bit of a stretch. There is supposed to be a pretty good amount of pressure between the bullet and the walls. And just like a good scouring will remove and "ruin" the seasoning from a fry pan the bullets and patches are going to scrape away any sort of film buildup unless it's pretty tough.

So.... has anyone tried smearing Bore Butter or Ballistol or other such things on our metal and heating it until the stuff changes states and becomes a hard varnish like film? Because that's what we're expecting with any sort of "seasoning" process. If these products don't do this then all we're doing is lubricating the bore. And as such it needs to be re-newed on a regular basis.

Do not discount the burnishing and polishing effects of the bullets and patches either. Over time dust, dirt or other contaminants in the patch cloth or even the lead used for our bullets can and will burnish or polish the metal in the bores. Hopefully the use of some sort of lubricant makes this action a minor and beneficial one which doesn't plug up the bore.

I've seen this for myself. I've had two new rimfire guns which leaded up badly for the first couple of hundred rounds, leaded up less for the next couple of hundred rounds and then stopped leading up altogether. I've never seasoned the bore in any way or done anything but remove the lead when needed, clean the bore with solvent then oiled it followed by a dry patch.

 

[BowerR64]

One thing that has shocked me is what the bore butter looked like when it was heated. It was still yellow once i scrubbed the borebutter fouling junk out but its weird that it seems to burn or bead up like it did.

I might have to try that other stuff i have thats blue, its wonderlube or something simmilar to borebutter.