I didn't pay $40 for the barrel, I paid it for the whole thing. Part of what made me so suspiciuos in the first place. But basically, I was at a gun show, and found a guy that had a lot of stuff for pretty cheap. Off in a corner rack, he had this old, beat up, CVA rifle that he seemed to know nothing about. He seemed to know less about BP than I do. It was missing the wedge that holds the barel down, so it felt like it was falling apart, and it looked like someone had left it on their workbench for a few years. There's alot of surface rust, there will be some minor pitting, and the whole thing had had white paint splattered on it, there were what looked like vice marks on one part of the barrel, and the bore was obstructed. It looked like crap, frankly.
But the mechanical parts work good, the nipple looked almost brand new, and the area of the barrel where it screws in looked good, and what I could see of the bore looked good. Seemed like a nice project. I talked him down to $40 from $60. It took me hours to get the obstruction out, turns out that somebody managed to snap off the end of the cleaning/ramrod and lodge the brush in there. It'll take some more tlc to clean up the rest, but the paint's coming off alright, I got the brass to make a new wedge, and I'm thinking I'll strip/lightly sand the barrel to get rid of the rust, and re-blue it. i'll have to blue the barrel in the kit I want to do, so I think it would be good practice.
I'm traveling back to Oregon soon, and there's a BP gunsmith at a specialty shop there that'll look over it for me, but I think I made a pretty good choice. Worst case scenario, I make alot of mistakes on it so I don't make them on my kit gun, and have something neat to hang on the wall. Best case scenario, I have a sweet rifle that I have a deep conection to from having brought it back from the dead and making her a nice, pretty deer slayer again.