Its an eye opener, entertaining and somewhat disturbing. How can such a beautifully polished revolver that shoots so well not pick up a bunch of copper in the rifling chatter marks? Look at the leading in that S&W target 38 and Heavy Duty! It appears it takes a pretty high end target barrel maker to make a barrel that looks good under a magnified bore scope. I'm afraid that most of my normal production rifles that shoot very well won't look very good when I look at the bores under magnification.

Good to have the ability to inspect crowns, I think it might be better than a range rod at checking cylinder alignment and verify gas port condition and gas block alignment. I think it will be very useful to inspect used guns before purchase.

Its kind of like getting a psychological report before you hit on a pretty girl. Well not completely like it because they're all crazy anyway, I think.

I bought one recently as well, a mixed blessing! I had no idea how much copper fouling was in my centerfire rifle barrels, and found myself kind of disappointed in the finish of the barrels on my brand new Winchester Model 70 Super Grade Maple rifles, and definitely disappointed in the amount of what appears to be pitting in my brand new Browning BLR! Was very happy with what I saw in my Tikkas though, and some of my milsurps. Put it a lot of elbow grease since I bought it though.

You need to learn how to use them.

And I don't mean how they work, or understand what you're seeing.

But how to accept the "unhappy things" you find and not fret too much about them. lol

I am on the fringe of the long range precision rifle community, where it seems 90+ % of people in that group have bore scopes.

In general my opinion is:
If the gun shoots to your standards, it doesn’t matter what the bore looks like

If the gun does not shoot to your standards, it doesn’t matter what the bore looks like

It can tell you WHY it doesn't shoot to your standards. It can tell you if/where your cleaning is lacking.

I've learned a lot with mine. Learned that a barrel I thought was shot out and removed years ago, wasn't. That despite my "cleaning it to death", it wasn't clean. Just horribly fouled. (a barrel I used for multigun and related rifles matches for years) I finished cleaning it, put it back on an upper and put it back into use.

I learned I was doing a great job cleaning the bores of my muzzle loaders, but not so great cleaning the patent breech on them.

Learned why a rifle I bought wouldn't shoot for long (3/4 MOA for 15-20 rounds, then 7-8 MOA) I was sold a dog with a horribly pitted barrel. But I now know when it's truly clean, so it will give me another nice 15-20. It's a pain, but for a hunting rifle it works.


Odd things I've used it for, checking arrow inserts. I actually used it a lot for that last year. (long story)

Yesterday I used it to check on the tip of a firing pin in a rifle I didn't feel like disassembling.

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
In general my opinion is:
If the gun shoots to your standards, it doesn’t matter what the bore looks like

If the gun does not shoot to your standards, it doesn’t matter what the bore looks like

Yep.
I know folks who have scoped their bores and stated the throat looks like shit. "But...does it shoot well?" If yes, keep on shooting.

My gunsmith scoped my first shot-out bolt-action barrel, and he said it looked really bad. He said the 6.5CM barrel's throat was cracked like alligator skin, with a jump of over an inch to the lands. I told him it still shot well out to a few hundred yards -- to which he was really surprised. But the barrel had lost a fair amount of muzzle velocity, and low "flyer" impacts were somewhat common beyond 700-ish yards. The barrel just wouldn't do for that season's ELR match.

He hasn't scoped my old barrels since then. He just replaces barrels when I say it's time. I have no plans for my own bore scope at this time.

Scoped a few rifles today and mostly good news. Some rifles I suspected to look not so good didn't. Interesting that blued inside barrels are about half blued from the chamber to mid then silver after that. A little copper deposits in the 270, not worried about that.

One barrel that looked surprisingly smooth and precise is an about 1960 Remington 550 that my grandfather bought for my dad. One day I was at a gun show dickering on one and my dad calls me out of the blue and tells me I can have his. I refinished the stock in shop class in 9th grade.

Some dry lake bed cracking look in my Garand, but I'm sure I'll never shoot it out.

My 22-250 FN Mauser varmint rifle got a rusty spot in the bore from a spider nest. I was happy to see no signs of pitting in that area. The rust scrubbed out with a bronze brush.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: pbslinger,