I have to post this due to a recent thread and because on many boards in general, some people confuse bore and groove diameter.
Bore diameter- If you were to use a traditional way of making a rifle barrel, you would use what is called a rifle drill (go figure) to drill a hole through the barrel from end to end. The diameter of this hole would be considered the 'bore' diameter. The easy way to remember this is that you use a drill to 'bore' holes in things.
Groove diameter- After a barrel is bored, rifling is put in by pushing through a button that expands part of the bore, or a cutter is used to remove metal from the inside to produce the rifling. The distance from the deepest part of a groove on one side of a bore to the deepest part of a groove in the other side of the bore is your 'groove diameter.'
In a 30 caliber rifle, typically, the bore diameter will be .300" and the groove diameter will be .308" but this can vary a tiny bit within a barrel from end to end and from barrel to barrel. A kink in the middle of a barrel can reduce the bore/groove diameter slightly, while cleaning rod wear can increase the bore diameter slightly on a muzzle.
If you want to check the barrel dimensions of a rifle, especially if its a foreign rifle where dimensions tend to vary more, you can slug a barrel. After slugging, the high spots on your slug would represent the grooves and the low spots, the bore.
I posted a bit on slugging awhile back.
http://forum.hunting.net/asppg/tm.as...ugging󒾞