Looking at a really nice milsurp but it has a frosted barrel????

[purple]

The rope creates friction. The fibers in said rope are abrasive. When the rope gets dirty it is even more abrasive. It is next to impossible to get the abrasive grit out of the rope once it gets dirty. The carbon residue from inside the barrel is harder than the steel as well.

I can remember a Portuguese Colonial Sergeant jamming his boot half way up a recruit's butt when he insisted the pull through material was to soft to harm the crown of his rifle and couldn't be bothered to use a muzzle cap/protector supplied with the rifle. More rifles have had their accuracy destroyed by POOR cleaning techniques than any other cause.

Why do you think so many old Mosins/Mausers/SKSs/Martinis/Springfields etc are counterbored???? The counterbore was done to make an other wise accurate bore serviceable again after some troopie for some unknown reason used POOR cleaning techniques. I have seen more than one fellow use pull through cords and pull them to one side of the muzzle, rather than straight through. It is a recipe for disaster down the road.

This is something to take note of. The so-called "boresnake" is just a modern version of the old pull through cord with all of the same perils associated with the pull throughs. Cdn Army EMEIs on the No4 rifle dealt with barrels with ruined crowns/degraded accuracy as a result of cord wear. If the bolt can be removed to give access to the bore from the breech end by all means use a cleaning rod with a proper fitting patch rather than a pull through. If you can locate a bore guide to insert in the chamber and help keep the cleaning rod centered, so much the better.

I can still remember guys in the barracks cleaning their FNs with a pull through and getting the patch stuck in the barrel. Then they would tie the end of the pull through to a bed frame and give a mighty heave lodging the patch even tighter and maybe breaking the cord in the process. Good way to set themselves up for a blast of sh$t and have the rifle sent off to the armourer. There was a cleaning kit, which included a rod, issued to each section and that was the best way to get it done. We were still being issued the old 4x2 patches for the .303 which were a bit oversize for the FN. If you forgot to tear off a small strip before trying the pull through in the FN you ran a pretty good risk of getting the patch stuck.

A "frosty" bore, which is a polite way of saying a pitted bore, can still shoot well if the rifling is sharp and the crown is good. A pitted bore will, however, strip off more bullet jacket material and foul more quickly than an unpitted bore.

 

[cantom]

Basically, a frosted bore can never really be cleaned properly, never 100%.

You can get it pretty clean, but then if you shoot it with corrosive (which in some calibers is the only thing available) you've just put that crud down into the bottom of millions of pits. Once again, you can try to clean it....

Any time I've tried selling a rifle with a frosted bore, I was shown little interest. They are hard to sell. I understood as I don't like them either.

All of the people on this thread who say it doesn't matter to them...will no doubt expect to get said rifle cheaply with the frosting factored in...right?

 

[Mike Webb]

JB Bore Paste will make a frosted bore a little smoother and remove any remaining fouling. Accuracy is not usually affected by frosting, another word for a lightly pitted bore as has been said.

 

[purple]

Removing bullet jacket fouling from the barrel can be a mixed blessing. Generally it does enhance accuracy as all of those squeaky clean benchrest barrels show ( a lot of these are hand lapped to be very smooth in the first place), but sometimes a heavily fouled barrel shoots a lot better than a clean one. I found this out the hard way with a very accurate .223 bolt rile that I decided to de-foul. Accuracy went straight to hell after the fouling had been removed. After a hundred rounds or so it was back where it was.

For a hunting rifle I like to leave the rifle dirty after final zeroing with the expectation that bullet placement from a dirty and slightly fouled barrel will be closer to zero than would be the case for a clean barrel.

 

[sunray]

Frosting is the beginning of rust. Anything that deals with rust will help. As mentioned, frosting isn't the end of the world.

 

[cantom]

Rifle with clean bore: Young attractive woman, with shiny beautiful hair, walking down the street.

Rifle with frosted bore: Old woman, with white hair, waddling down the street with a walker.

They both get there...but which one do you want?

 

[Thresher]

Frosting is the beginning of rust. Anything that deals with rust will help. As mentioned, frosting isn't the end of the world.

I have to disagree. Frosting is not the beginning of rust nor does it cause rust. It is CAUSED by very light surface rusting creating many minute pits etched into the bore. Not really big enough to see, but enough to stop that mirror shine. Depending on the severity it may not matter, as long as the rifling is sharp and the bore is tight. It may be harder to clean depending on how bad it is, or you may not notice at all. I had a very tight bore on a 6.5X55 that some idiot fired with corrosive and let sit. No real damage visible, but it took the shine out and gave the bore a greyish hard chrome look. Not any harder to clean than my other mint bore 6.5s, and shoots just as well. Its starting to polish up after about 300 rounds too.

 

[collector67]

As long as she shoots straight, who cares? You might make it worse by trying to make the bore as pretty as the rest of the rifle....

 

[midnightpossum]

I had a pitted Mosin that I could shoot better with, then my shiny bored k31 !.. I sold it cause it never came clean.

 

[bigedp51]

Below is my favorite .303 British Enfield rifle with a frosted bore and it was very easy to clean. After shooting all I did was give it one shot of foam bore cleaner and then lightly oil the bore. So just remember this, more damage is done to rifle bores by excessive and improper cleaning than any other reason.

Below is a 50 yard five shot group from the same Enfield rifle.

The only Enfield rifles I had that didn't have a frosted bores were unissued Enfields or rifles with replacement barrels. Corrosive ammunition was used and if not cleaned promptly the bore would become frosted, meaning looking like the frosted bathroom glass in shower doors and you get them clean also.

And now a reality check, below is a brand new buttoned rifled Savage barrel before and after fire lapping.

The fire lapped area magnified.

The same type Savage button rifled bore highly magnified at the throat and mid bore.

The new Savage barrel is rougher than my frosted Enfield rifle, so what are you crying about. So take your pick, a new rifle with speed bumps the entire length of the bore or a milsurp rifle with microscopic pitting called a frosted bore.

 

[Philthy1]

If I avoided "frosted" barrels I wouldnt have any interesting guns.

 

[kjohn]

If I avoided "frosted" barrels I wouldnt have any interesting guns.

Bingo! It is quite one thing to be a discerning, very particular "collector", with only the pristine examples in your collection, but quite another to be an ordinary dude with some rifles that have frosty bores. I fall heavily into the second category.

One particular example is of my ugly old Mosin Nagant rifles that I happened upon is worth a lot more $ wise than any one other rifle in my pile, and it likely has a frosty bore! Nothing wrong with holding out for the best of the best, but some of the homely ones deserve a look too.