Will small scratches in bore harm accuracy?

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inSight-NEO

New member
Hello all...I just joined this forum and hopefully I havent started off with a topic already covered in detail!! But, due to my almost manic concern for the care of my firearms, this question just had to be asked. Currently I own a sig .45 ACP, a Springfield Armory .45 ACP and a Benelli SuperNova tactical 12g. Now, I have tried to always buy top quality cleaning accessories for these weapons and try my best to be as careful as possible when cleaning them. However, try as I may, I cannot seem to keep small scratches from showing up on the bores for ANY of these weapons. Now, granted, they are SMALL..but still noticeable.

I have heard several opinions regarding these "normal" scratches ranging from "for handguns and smooth bore shottys...not a big deal" to "it will harm accuracy...mainly with rifles." Now, Im not really concerned about accuracy beyond 50 yards for the pistols and 20 yards or so for the shotgun. These are mainly home defense weapons, so I doubt I will ever need full accuracy beyond 10 to 12 yards anyway. Any thoughts?
 
Small scratches won't harm the accuracy of you gun at all. Sometimes they may be tooling marks left over from the machining, and will smooth out with use.
 
I have a gun with what I believe to be a tooling mark on a land. It's going across the land, and I don't think a patch or brush would make a perfectly straight line across. It's my most accurate gun. :cool:
 
I once had someone give me some 9mm rounds I fired through my brand new Hi-Power. Turned out they had corrosive primers and my barrel wound up terribly pitted and cosmetically ruined. No observable effect on accuracy, however. Had to replace it anyway, couldn't take it.

I have also fired old M-1 Garands with terribly pitted bores, and accuracy seemed unaffected.

I seriously doubt any minor scratches would affect accuracy in a practical sense. In fact, absent a bulged or ringed barrel or a damaged crown, I don't think you'll notice any difference.

Actually, I have shot a weapon with a mildly bulged barrel (couldn't really tell from the outside, but you could see the dark ring when you looked down the bore), and it shot fine, too.
 
Presumably lengthwise scratches are from tooling to cut the rifling, and that depends on how worn the tools are, how fast they want to crank out barrels, etc. Some of the most accurate barrels, like Bar Sto, are very highly polished but it is because they take alot of care to make a perfect accurate barrel. Regular production guns have the most tool marks and they can vary in accuracy, there are other factors involved besides smoothness of finish, like is the bore actually perfectly round on a microscopic level? and a rough bore might affect accuracy just because it might allow fouling from lead or copper jackets to build up faster or worse. Jacketed bullets can perform from some ugly bores alright.
 
as others have said, it's probably tool marks from the manufacturing process. even severe scratches and pits often have no, or very little affect on accuracy. I know what you mean about it bothering you though, I'm obsessive too.
 
inSight-NEO - small scratches won't hurt anything as the others have said. You have implied that you are making the scratches yourself, so it's not machining marks. You should examine your cleaning process to determine how the scratches are occurring.

You say you use top quality cleaning accessories. What is your bore cleaning process?

Are the scratches lengthwise or across the lands? If the former, are they spiral (same as the barrel twist rate) or are they straight?
 
Mal H-
My bore cleaning process varies, depending on the weapon. In terms of those with rifled barrels, my cleaning process is as follows (in a general sense): wet down barrel with solvent, using a dewey nylon coated rod I then run a Brownells "special line" bronze/brass brush through the bore, always making sure to fully exit the bore before pulling it back through, then once clean, run several patches again followed up by weapon shield. I cant say for certain how many times I run the brush through the bore, it varies. Also, on occasion, I use a nylon brush for "general" cleaning, saving the bronze for heavier fouling. I also use Dewey jags for deep cleaning and simple plastic jags for general cleaning, either of which I tend to fully remove from the rod once its exited the bore. I am usually using 2" x 2" to 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" southern bloomer patches. Again, this is just a general run down of my method. It varies...particularly for the shotgun, of course. One of the scratches I noticed ran at roughly a 15 to 20 degree angle, semi-perpendicular to the lands. This was on a brand new weapon. Now, other than this and various other scratches, all bores for my firearms seem glass smooth...no pitting or rings. Just these damned scratches!!
 
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And you're certain that these scratches are accumulating? - it's not that the existing scratches have become more apparent.

The cleaning process that you've described shouldn't be scratching your bore.

There are going to be striations in the grooves of the rifling from the tooling that was used to cut the rifling. There will also be other imperfections in any factory barrel, or custom barrel for that matter.

For instance, I have rifles w/ lapped match barrels. These are a lot cleaner than your typical factory barrel. But if you inspect them with a bore scope, you'll still find imperfections. Frankly it's good that they're not mirror-smooth as they wouldn't retain lubricant.
 
Someone asked if you can wear out a pistol barrel-well probably not before the rest of the gun is worn out too. But you can ruin a barrel easily enough. That used to happen from corrosive ammo. That is why you see old guns with ate up bores. You can bulge them, damage the crown, split some forcing cones with hot loads, and scratch it with a stainless steel brush used too much I suppose. Well I suppose you could wear out a barrel if you could afford to shoot enough ammo thru it over a long time. Maybe thousands or tens of thousands of rounds. Over time it would probably become less and less accurate, but before it becomes so bad that it is not accurate enough for say, self defense within 25 yards, the gun maybe would be falling apart or something else would break. The way the bore looks depends somewhat on how it was made. Some barrels are hammered onto a core that impresses the rifling, some are button rifled where it is sort of pressed in, and some are cut rifled. Cut rifling probably looks roughest I would guess, unless the cutting tools were brand new and then the bore was polished out for defects somehow.
 
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