New Stealth 10 BA - tool marks in bore, ejector shape and other questions

[MeatAxe]

Just took delivery on a new Stealth 10 BA in 6.5 Creedmore, my first centerfire Savage rifle, and after initial examination and 5 rounds down the tube, have the following questions:

1. Taking my trusty Lyman bore scope through the brand new barrel, I noticed a lot of tool marks all the way down the bore (juddering, rail road track tie effect, perpendicular to the rifling). Some areas worse than others, some areas more or less smooth. Is this normal on a Savage button-rifled bore? After the initial 5 rounds down the tube, I don't notice any change.

2. Barrel break in - know this is a controversial subject. Will probably just follow the "Larry Potterfield method": clean after each of the first 5 rounds, then shoot 5 rounds and clean for the next 50 rounds -- unless somebody has a better idea.

3. Ejector: after the first 5 rounds and cleanings, I noticed that extraction / ejection of spent shells seemed more difficult than I'd expect. Removed the bolt and looked at the bolt face and it appears that the protruding part of the ejector is beveled in half at a 45 degree angle (which I hadn't notice previously). Is this normal? It's doesn't look like it sheared off but was intentionally machined that way.

Thanks!

[jerry shaw]

Ugly marks from button rifling are just about what one expects in a lot of factory Savage barrels. They generally aren't a lot of trouble. I have owned a lot of them, and they all shoot fine. Most of them shoot a lot better than fine.
The ejector bevel isn't unusual either.
It never hurts to do a little polishing and cleaning to smooth things up.
Your barrel break in method works about as well as any other method. But there are folks who have religious fervor about breaking in barrels. For what it's worth, I never use wire brushes. Nylon only. I typically use something like Butch's Bore Shine or the Outers Foam product. Let it sit and then follow with patches until the patches come out clean. Sometimes I get a bit OCD about these things.

Your rifle should do really well and make you happy for a long time.

Good luck with your rifle and welcome to the brotherhood of the barrel nut.

JS

[drybean]

Sounds like a normal savage

[ToolAA]

After 800+ rounds my rifling still looks the same, but It’s shooting quite accurately. My extractor looks similar and I’ve had no issues.

As for hard to eject cases, I cannot really comment on that issue.

[foxx]

1. Never look at the bore of a Savage.

2. Just my opinion, but there is NO reason to do anything special to "break in" a Savage barrel. Just shoot it and lightly clean when done. After about 100 rounds you will see improved accuracy, unless you have aggressively cleaned and stripped all of the copper fouling away. (don't do that).

3, Never look at the bore of a Savage.

4. The extractors for the 6.5 Creed are like that.

5. Never look at the bore of a Savage.

6. Chamber might need light polishing, or your loads might be getting hot. Not gonna go any further on that.

7. Never look at the bore of a Savage.

[IDbound]

I wasn't real happy with the accuracy of my Stealth 6.5 CM so I ran some Tubbs conditioning bullets through mine. I was worried about taking off too much rifling so I only used a few of the coursest bullets. However after I YouTubed a video of Mr. Tubbs discussing how to use them, he said something to the effect that the joke in their shop is they need two kits of bullets to begin smoothing out a Savage barrel. I was hoping our Stealth's were fitted with better quality barrels but it doesn't sound like it.

[foxx]

I wasn't real happy with the accuracy of my Stealth 6.5 CM so I ran some Tubbs conditioning bullets through mine. I was worried about taking off too much rifling so I only used a few of the coursest bullets. However after I YouTubed a video of Mr. Tubbs discussing how to use them, he said something to the effect that the joke in their shop is they need two kits of bullets to begin smoothing out a Savage barrel. I was hoping our Stealth's were fitted with better quality barrels but it doesn't sound like it.

Savage has a great, well-earned reputation for high quality, accurate barrels. They are not known for pretty bores. Don't look at the bore. Shoot the dang thing and then judge it. And don't over clean or try to remove all the copper. After around 100 rounds it should be a good shooter.

[MeatAxe]

Thanks, guys, for the info!

So, is the consensus to not bother with breaking in the new barrel? And not to clean the bore very rigorously?

Should I just use a nitro bore solvent like Hoppes #9 to remove powder residue and leave the copper fouling intact as much as possible?

And resist the temptation to look down the barrel of a Savage rifle with a bore scope...

That sounds appealing to me, as I've never been one to want to get too anal about rigorous gun cleaning. Would rather shoot than clean any day.

Thanks!

[foxx]

Yep!

[want2ride]

Yep that is exactly what I recommend.

[want2ride]

Just make sure you clean the accutrigger regularly.

[LoneWolf]

Barrel makers hate shooters with bore scopes.... especially cheap bore scopes....

1. you likely don't know what you're looking at (I wouldn't really know myself)

2. it does not show enough detail to actually see an issue because it's a cheap bore scope....

3. how it looks does not really correlate with how it will shoot.

So, just shoot the barrel and make a determination from there. If you do not yet have solid fundamentals to shoot good groups etc., then work on that before you make a final determination! Everything else sounds like the norm.

As far as break in I might shoot 10rds and give it a quick light cleaning, then shoot it till I get 150-200rds on it before I do any serious load dev if you're a reloader. If you aren't just buy quality factory stuff like Prime, Copper Creek, or Hornady and shoot whatever shoots best.

Lastly have fun!

[MeatAxe]

I've been using a product called Patch Out for several years, which is the non-foaming version of Wipe Out, which works really well at removing copper and powder fouling chemically without brushing, but is not nearly as noxious as Butch's Bore Shine. You just apply it with a patch, let it soak for while (or overnight) and the copper comes out in bright blue patches -- though I'm being told on here not to remove too much copper fouling from Savage barrels.

http://www.sharpshootr.com/patch-out/


"Ugly marks from button rifling are just about what one expects in a lot of factory Savage barrels. They generally aren't a lot of trouble. I have owned a lot of them, and they all shoot fine. Most of them shoot a lot better than fine.
The ejector bevel isn't unusual either.
It never hurts to do a little polishing and cleaning to smooth things up.
Your barrel break in method works about as well as any other method. But there are folks who have religious fervor about breaking in barrels. For what it's worth, I never use wire brushes. Nylon only. I typically use something like Butch's Bore Shine or the Outers Foam product. Let it sit and then follow with patches until the patches come out clean. Sometimes I get a bit OCD about these things.

Your rifle should do really well and make you happy for a long time.

Good luck with your rifle and welcome to the brotherhood of the barrel nut.

JS"

[243LPR]

One more time foxx?

[MeatAxe]

OK, so, I cleaned after each of the first 5 shots, but following the advice here of "just shoot it," have not cleaned it for the next 80 shots.

Noticed that, indeed, the groups have tightened up at 100 yards from shots 65 to 85 quite a bit to form one jagged hole... awesome! I hate to spend a lot of time cleaning guns, anyway.

As I understand it, the Savage bore, which, ugly as it is, should never be looked at with a borescope, needs a certain amount of copper fouling to maintain accuracy...

So, my question is, do I just keep shooting until the accuracy starts falling off, or is their some routine maintenance regimen to keep the bore in optimal (copper fouled) condition for accuracy?

When bore cleaning IS necessary, what is the maintenance procedure? Just wet patches with nitro solvent down the bore? No copper solvent or bore brushes? Or what?

Thanks!

[foxx]

I say just keep shooting till accuracy falls off. Keep track of round count so you know what to expect next go-round. Wen cleaning, clean lightly, going after the carbon, not the copper so much. I don't expect you to continue to accumulate copper like you did when it was stripped clean. The theory is the "pot holes" are filled with road gravel and now the bullet will slide over them fairly easily, like a smooth road.

I would think, now that you are getting good groups at 100 rounds, you will get another 50-150 with same results, then drop off. At that point, clean lightly with Hoppes or similar and general purpose bore cleaner that targets carbon more than copper. Just use wet patches and dry or maybe run a plastic bore brush as well through it. Bore snakes are good for "light cleaning". hopefully this will take you back to about where you were at 100 rounds and then you will have another 50-100 to go before you lose accuracy again. Let's say you find that point at 100... clean it the same way as last time, then clean it again after 75 shots (not 100, because 100 was too many before). If that works for you, then always clean after 75 shots. Of course, it won't be that simple or consistent, but it gives you something to work with. Different loads, powders, bullets, etc. may effect it differently, too. If you are only shooting casually (like me), it should work well for you. If it ever goes south even after cleaning, get more aggressive with carbon cleaners. If that doesn't help, go after the copper and start over. Somewhere around 2,000 rounds the throat may be eroding.

Some of my guns just get a bore snake every 50 shots and have never had an issue.

[MeatAxe]

I say just keep shooting till accuracy falls off. Keep track of round count so you know what to expect next go-round. Wen cleaning, clean lightly, going after the carbon, not the copper so much. I don't expect you to continue to accumulate copper like you did when it was stripped clean. The theory is the "pot holes" are filled with road gravel and now the bullet will slide over them fairly easily, like a smooth road.

I would think, now that you are getting good groups at 100 rounds, you will get another 50-150 with same results, then drop off. At that point, clean lightly with Hoppes or similar and general purpose bore cleaner that targets carbon more than copper. Just use wet patches and dry or maybe run a plastic bore brush as well through it. Bore snakes are good for "light cleaning". hopefully this will take you back to about where you were at 100 rounds and then you will have another 50-100 to go before you lose accuracy again. Let's say you find that point at 100... clean it the same way as last time, then clean it again after 75 shots (not 100, because 100 was too many before). If that works for you, then always clean after 75 shots. Of course, it won't be that simple or consistent, but it gives you something to work with. Different loads, powders, bullets, etc. may effect it differently, too. If you are only shooting casually (like me), it should work well for you. If it ever goes south even after cleaning, get more aggressive with carbon cleaners. If that doesn't help, go after the copper and start over. Somewhere around 2,000 rounds the throat may be eroding.

Some of my guns just get a bore snake every 50 shots and have never had an issue.

Thanks for the info! Will follow that regimen (just shooting) until things start to go south accuracy-wise. So far, accuracy is improving as shots 65 - 85 were basically printing in the same ragged hole at 100 yards with various factory loads. Now will try some all-copper Hornady and Federal loads as we'll be pig hunting in CA next week and are forced to use only "unleaded" pills.

I have to confess, I broke a cardinal rule and stuck my borescope down the tube to see how things were progressing. There was surprisingly little powder fouling after 80 rounds and only a modest amount of copper fouling accumulated in various areas of "rail road track" tool marks, not even close to filling the "potholes" in the rifling, but apparently something is going right.

Thank you!!!

[foxx]

^^^Well, I am not gonna look, but if you are, let us know how different it looks after 50 more shots and then again once accuracy falls off. My guess is you won't see much more copper than what you have now, but I don't know that for sure.

[MeatAxe]

I shot the Stealth again this evening and the groups started opening up again @ 105 - 110 rounds...so I cleaned with Hoppes #9 a couple of wet patches and a plastic brush. Unfortunately, it worked too well. My second pass through I got a lot of copper fouling on the patch, so when I resumed shooting, I had to work back up to 20-30 rounds before the groups started coming back together.

Hard to find a "powder only" solvent. So I used some CLP Breakfreee, which, according to the borescope, did a great job of removing powder fouling from the bore, while leaving the copper fouling more or less intact.

However, it seems that there's been some discussion on the inter webs in the past against using CLP Breakfree as a bore cleaner since it contains Teflon, which makes subsequent shots hard to group, apparently. So, I used some dry patches and wet with 91% rubbing alcohol to remove the CLP Breakfree from the bore. There still seems to be a significant amount of copper fouling remaining in the bore, as is desired, apparently.

Some 170 rounds down the pipe so far. Some of the areas of "rail road tracks" perpendicular to the rifling seem to be flattening out.

[jerry shaw]

Everybody has his own opinion regarding barrel cleaning. Barrel cleaning seems to be a matter that attracts a lot of near-religious fervor.
My go-to method on these barrels is a combination of Butch's Bore Shine and nylon brushes followed by cotton patches. It's very effective and gentle on the bore. Don't be in a giant hurry. It can take a while for the solvent to work on the copper in the bore, but it works very well. I also have used Outers Foaming Bore Cleaner. Spray it in and let it sit for a long while. Again, no rush on cleaning it out. You'll find that both products work well without eating away at the barrel's innards.
Judicious use of JB Bore Paste also helps. You won't need to use it all the time, but it doesn't hurt every now and then.
Use good cleaning rods with the right sized rod guide. I made my rod guides from PVC. The cleaning rods are mostly from Dewey.
This is what I have used on my Savage Palma guns for years. They both have north of 3 thousand rounds through the pipes and show hardly any wear. I do pretty much the same thing with my space guns I use in highpower. High round count, low barrel wear.
Patience is your barrel's best buddy.