Cleaning my 91/30

D

diaperchanger

New member
Good evening all,

Just purchased my first surplus rifle and I'd like to know what to look out for as far as the bore is concerned once it's been scrubbed and swabbed. Assuming that I've cleaned out the fouling and my dry patches are coming out clean, what next? If there is pitting or frost, is it still shootable? I'm truly green in this area and would much appreciate any input. Thanks!

dc

P.S. What are "lands"?
 
My 91/30 has a pit or two and is still iron-sight accurate to 200 yards. Past that I can't see.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but the 'lands' are the raised parts of your barrel between the grooves, or rifling.
 
Frosting is a precursor to pitting -- a deterioration of the normally shiney inside of the barrel, that comes from shooting corrosive ammo (the standard ammo for these old guns.)

As long as you clean thoroughly after shooting, with something that stops the corrosiveness, it won't be a problem.

(Go to www.Cruffler.com or www.empirearms.com for a primer on shooting corrosive ammo.)

For collectors, a pitted and/or shiney barrel is a slight downer, but for someone wanting a "shooter," its generally irrelevant, unless the pitting is severe. Frosting won't affect accuracy or function; it just doesn't look "factory new."

(Even if there's pitting, it may not greatly affect accuracy. The big concern is that the pits not be so severe as to affect the structural integrity of the barrel.)
 
FWIW, rifling is either cut into a barrel by a tool called a rifling cutter, or (in recent times) pressed in by hammer forging around a mandrel. It is made as a spiral to spin the bullet and stabilize it in flight.

The lower or cut points are called "grooves"; the higher points, between grooves are called "lands".

In a modern breechloading rifled firearm, the bullet diameter is made to match the "groove diameter", so that the "land" is forced into the bullet as it goes down the barrel, not, as some think, the bullet expanding into the groove. The distance across the lands, having been bored out before the rifling process, is called the "bore diameter".

In muzzle loading rifles, the bullet must clear the lands, so it is smaller than the "land diameter" and it (or its patch) does expand to fill the grooves.

This gives rise to some confusion in cartridge names. The .30-'06, for example, is called 30 caliber (or 30 100ths of an inch), from the rifle bore diameter, but the bullet is actually .308" diameter. The .308 caliber uses exactly the same diameter bullet, but is named for the bullet/groove diameter. The bore diameter is .300; the groove depth is .004, so groove diameter is .308 (.300 + .004 +004 = .308).

Jim
 
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