Final Finish Bore Conditioning?

T

TheDutchman19

New member
Yesterday I came across a article about David Tubb's Final Finish Bore Conditioning System. After seeing it, my first thought was "I need to try this!"

I have talked to one guy who tried it. He swears by it, but he said it moved his lands 0.016 further away. I want to try it in a Savage that has a short throat, so that doesn't scare me. He also said that it was back to the drawing board to find a new pet load. The end result was tighter groups, the gun was easier to clean and he could put more rounds down range before the accuracy went away.

Does anyone have any experience with this product? I would love to hear the pros and cons that others have experienced.

Thanks
 
Unless you're involved in some sort of precision competition and need to wring every last bit of accuracy out of your rife, are having accuracy issues with your rifle or are experiencing excessive metal fouling, I think it amounts to paying money to put some accelerated bore wear on your rifle.
 
If this is a form of lapping and this is what you want to do, I would have a professional (gunsmith) do it for you. To change the inner dimensions of the barrel sounds like a crapp shoot to me. Now as far as barrel wear goes, you will erode the throat of a centerfire rifle way before you wear the lands down.
 
I'm a firm believer in the Final Finish system. I've used it on a couple rifles that had rough bores from the factory ( Button Rifling ).
Each rifle shoots excellent now,and doesn't copper foul any where near what they did before fire lapping.

I really doubt about the guy claiming it wore .016 off his lands,my barrels are just fine,but are a lot smoother instead of looking like a wash board.

I admit about being skeptical about doing this to a rifle,but since I did,I'd have no problem doing it to any rifle that was having problems. It can/will fix a bad shooting/copper fouling rifle.
 
The rifle I am wanting to try it on is new. I have only put a few hundred rounds through it. This gun fouls up fast, and it's tough to clean. The few people that I have talk to that have tried it, love it.
 
I am using the system on a rifle right now. Going to shoot my last 10 tomorrow. I haven't been shooting for groups. The first 50 shots through the rifle will be tubbs. I have noticed with each 10 that it takes less and less work to clean the rifle. The pre shoot cleaning was terrible. The last cleaning was about 3 patches of solvent, which I run through once down and back.

I intend to shoot the throat maintenance every hundred rounds in the rifle as well. This is my first go with the tubb system, so I will let you know how I feel after I get to shoot real bullets next week.
 
I would lke to hear the results as well.

Just yesterday I was watching a Tubb's Highpower Rifle Reloading video and when I went to his web site I saw the Final Finish description and didn't know what to make of it. He certainly has the knowledge to put something like this together.

Please let uk know the results.
 
I don't really know what to make of the system. Seems like a lot of voodoo, but someone I trust had good experience shrinking groups in a rifle with the system. I don't know that this rifle even needed it, but it was a good chance to try something new. The range trip will be sometime next week weather permitting.

I didn't have someone else lap it because I wanted to try something. I have a friend who hand laps his own barrels. Why pay someone to do an easy, but time consuming job just because they are a pro? Especially since most charge by the hour.

I am regretting not shooting the rifle first to see what the groups were, but I wanted it to be "the break in" for the rifle.
 
Coyota1

To be honest, I was not looking for a fix. I was talking with a person I trust about some loading issues and the topic came up.

He tried it when they first came out and was very happy with the results. He then did a few other guns that he felt might benefit from it and experienced the same results.

I had never heard of it before, so I started to research it. I also started this post. Personal I have used two gunsmiths in my area. Both are an hour, one way. One of them did a bad job fitting a Beretta shotgun. The other is great. He fixed my Beretta as well as most of my other work.

If the Final Finish can product improves my rifle for $35 dollars, isn't it worth a closer look?
 
Tubb's Final Finish isn't a new concept, you've been able to buy fire lapping kits for years. The nice thing about Tubb's is that it is a lot less work. The old kits you got two metal plates and polishing compounds of varying grits. You rolled a bullet between the two metal plates to impregnate with the polishing compound and then loaded them into your cartridges.

You can do the same thing as a fire lapping kit with JB Bore Paste and a tight patch. It takes a lot more elbow grease to lapp a barrel by hand but the results will be the same. It just takes a lot more time to get to the finished product by hand.
 
Agree w/ Taylor... and have tried/done both: the hand-lapped bore-paste route and the Tubbs Final Finish route. BUT the hand lap is somewhat of an art in both hardware & technique, while Tubbs is (literally) shoot-it-by-the-numbers.

Two cautions: FireLapping a barrel to smooth out tight spots/constrictions require different/rougher grits than found on the Tubbs Final Finish kit. Tubbs' FF polishes out slight roughness and tool marks as well as throat transition -- and can dramatically improved cleaning as well as group consistency. I've used it on my original HBAR many years ago when Colt truly screwed the pooch in rifling the barrel. It worked so well that I used it on 4 other rifles after that as well -- all to good effect.

If your rifle shoots well/cleans easily, you don't need Tubbs FF.
If it doesn't, Tubbs might well help considerably.
It's a $35 (and 50-case) gamble.
 
Thanks again for the input. I think a have a candidate for it in my safe.

For everyone who has tried the system, did you stop at the initial kit?
 
So is this for new barrels, or for rifles of any age? I don't remember where I heard it, but I thought a barrel smooths out after a couple hundred rounds.
 
And like PTFE in an engine, it can make it worse.

Do you guys remember the miracle additive that would let an engine run dry?\

It was a chemical resurrected form WWII research that did just that, get a hold shot in your engine and the oil leaked out, it would get you home. What not to like?

Well, the downside is that it involved a nasty chemical called chlorine. While it had fantastic anti friction characteristic, it also attacked lead and tin.

That being the primary constitution of shell bearings. .016 off your lands is huge.

There is huge amount of opinion and vodoo out there and I have yet to see a scientific study on it.

Its not his gun thats at risk, its yours, and good luck recovering if it really messes it up
 
I've got five data points.
None bad. Five good
Three of those five dramatically so....

Other than that, I have no opinion.

:rolleyes:
 
I thread, chamber my own rifles and I get barrels in several grades.

1. Target Grade I am going to shoot long range with or high power competition.

2. Standard grade to use when I am making up a training rifle for new shooters as they will do fine and save them 75 to a hundred bucks.

3.Take off target barrels are recycled to hunting rifles by cutting off threads and cutting new along with chamber and cutting off muzzle a tad to restore the crown integrity.

4. Take off hunting barrels are saved to put on SHTF rifles for friends who don't have the funds to get good stuff.

As several have pointed out above a lapped barrel will not be beneficial unless you are a serious competitor.

One of the best quotes I ever heard was from a top flight gunsmith I know who moved to Alaska and he had a perfect description between a Douglas Air Gage Select barrel and a standard production Douglas which was "very few guys are good enough to shoot inside a standard Douglas barrel" which if you are a serious shooter you can shoot tens all day on a 600 yard target reduced for 100 yards. All a lapped barrel will do is perhaps increase your X count by decreasing your dispersion.

As a rule of thumb until a new shooter can put all shot in the 9 ring at 600 yards a lapped barrel is not going to make any difference save for lowering his savings account.

Bottom line is a lapped barrel is not going to necessarily make you a better shooter so develop your skills to the point you can physically tell the difference between a lapped barrel and a standard barrel.

I was at a match one day and this guy kept complaining his rifle would not shoot worth a crap. After the match I asked him to let me shoot it and I laid down and shot 3 shots (w/ iron sights) in a 1 1/2" group at 200 yards prone with sling while he watched in his scope. I got up and handed him the rifle and asked him if he wanted to sell it since it was not worth a crap. To my disappointment he kept it.

The throat moving forward .016" can be accomplished by firing 200 rounds of 30 cal in normal competition.

As a general rule you can expect forward throat movement of .100" per every thousand rounds fired through it in normal highpower competition. That is why gov't erosion gages (30 cal) have the rings spaced at 100 yards. That spacing was determined in a exhaustive test at Aberdeen Proving Ground in the 50s conducted by Otto Hanel who I shared a office cubicle with.

He took ten new M1s from depot and had the throat location measured as they were unpacked. He also chronographed all barrels for 30 continious shots and recorded the velocity differences each 1000 rounds. Then he fired 1000 rounds each through the ten rifles and had the throats remeasured again.

At 10,000 rounds the barrels were right at rejection and the average throat movement was .100" per 1000 rounds. Now here is the key thing to remember. Acceptance accuracy for a new M1 was 5" at 100 yards. Rejection was 7.5" at 100 yards or until the velocity dropped 200 fps. Obviously the acceptance figures were louzy and the rejection figures were even worse.

Here is what I do:

On new barrels I measure the throat erosion with a erosion gage and record it in my data book I keep with each rifle which also records round history, loads used etc.

At each 500 rounds or there abouts I run the erosion gage in again and record it. Generally about 3000 rounds I remove barrel and set it back say .500", rechamber and recrown and go back to shooting it again. Obviously this is only possible with a bolt gun. That keeps me in somewhat new rifling for many thousands of rounds.

One of the finest bolt gun shooters in the Southeast (Frank Van Cleave) of Tennessee shot a rifle for 10,000 rounds shortening barrel every 2500 rounds and he averaged in the 790s. If you are a highpower shooter you know very few folks shoot consistant 790 range scores (possible 800) from 200, 300 and 600 yards.
 
As several have pointed out above a lapped barrel will not be beneficial unless you are a serious competitor.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ. I am a varmint shooter. If you are going to hunt big game, then 2 MOA is not as big of deal. With military standards, the target is human in dimension, but with varmint hunting some shots are taken past 300 yards at much smaller targets, so I could put to use benchrest accuracy for this kind of hunting. If lapping will help shrink groups, then it's the thing to do.
 
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