Omega218er

I bought a used Renegade .50 barrel off eBay knowing that there was an issue inside the barrel, circular striations running the length of the barrel on the lands and grooves. If you would please look at the pictures and let me know your thoughts. The rifling looks good and the exterior of the barrel is exceptionally clean.

I bought it with the idea I would have it bored out to .54 caliber.

Thank you

Mark

Omega218er

Here is another picture.

cayugad

I would say shoot it. Use a moderate load and see what happens. If you have doubts of the barrel at all, take it to a gun smith and have him run a bore scope down it.

Blackpowdersmoke

I agree, shoot it some with patched round balls and check the patches after each shot. If you're getting shredded or torn patches, then you definitely have burrs that will plague you. If they're minor tears to the patch, you may be able to smooth the barrel up with JB bore paste or similar compound and some good ol' elbow grease. Otherwise, you might want to consider your other option of having it bored to a larger caliber as you previously mentioned.

Without a good look at the entire bore, it appears from your pictures that someone may have attempted to use the wrong size jag and got it stuck close to the muzzle. In their attempt to remove it, they scored the bore leaving those circular lines. I had a friend who did that with T/C Treehawk barrel. Instead of asking for help, he elected to just "unscrew" it and left circular score marks like the ones in your pictures.

BPS

Slowburn

I agree with cayugad and bps.

bronko22000

Right. Shoot it. If it is doing what BPS above said find mountaindevil and send him a PM about his polishing lube.
Or just continue with your plans and have it bored out to .54.

GoexBlackhorn

After checking the patches for tears, I would buy a box of full-bore conicals (350-385 variety) using frontiergander's new lube. Don't use more than 50 grains or-so of powder. Then do the JB Bore Paste thing.

MountainDevil54

No conicals with that break in lube. Its made strictly for patched round balls so the patch itself can hold the polishing compound and lube to ease loading and keep you shooting without having to clean the bore.

That one is hard to give you an answer on though. Its pretty hard to see the bore from that far away and what I see, says to bore it, but without it being up close, its just to hard to say exactly what to do.

Omega218er

Sorry about the pictures as they aren't the best. The striations are quite consistent from each other meaning the spacing is very consistent. I had a gunsmith look at it today and he stated it looked as if it had not been shot much at all and that he has seen some T/C barrels look like this.

So my two options are to shoot as is or rebore it. Talking to Bob Hoyt today he will charge $125 to rebore it to .54 and 1/60 twist. Open to opinions.

Mark

Blackpowdersmoke

Well... If it wasn't done by some one who used the wrong size jag and your Smith doesn't feel it's a problem, then SHOOT IT!! Being a machinist all my life... I'm gonna say it's possibly a tool mark left behind by a reamer getting dull that picked up a chip on it's way out. The barrel probably went through it's final honing process after that and QC either decided it was insignificant and let it pass or flat out missed it.

I say shoot with it for a bit, you already know what it's gonna cost if you want to have it re-bored.

BPS