I have been trying to figure out this old 1960 110 since I got it nearly two months ago. It appears to have been shot quite a bit, which is fine, but I'm trying to get a good idea of what I can milk out of it accuracy-wise. When I bought it, on close inspection of the muzzle end of the bore, it appeared to have quite a bit of copper fouling in the grooves. So I got out the CR-10 and went to work. It took me about an hour, but I got out nearly all the copper (that I could see with a pair of cheaters in good sunlight, looking into the muzzle). It seemed to shoot better after doing this.

However, within 20-30 rounds, there was an obvious amount of copper in the grooves once again. After another 20-30 rounds, it looked just like it did when I bought it. I can't say it's shot very well since those first 20-30 rounds after cleaning either.

Is it my imagination, or is this thing fouling that quickly?

I almost never clean my newer (less than 3 years old) Savage barrels. They are all stainless now, but I've owned plenty of blued (matte black) newer Savages in the past 5-6 years and never had this problem with those barrels either. But I have a few hundred rounds through both my newer stainless barrels, and I can't see really any amount of copper buildup in the grooves and they still shoot very, very well.

I suppose my next step is to clean the copper out of that old vintage barrel again, and see if the accuracy returns. If it does, I might just have to do what I see several old-timers doing, and that is to clean the barrel after every single range session. If that's the case, I'm probably not going to shoot that rifle very much, which would be a shame because it's a beautiful old rifle.