Tuning Barrel Polishing

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I never ever polish any airgun barrel unless it was in dire need due to severe inaccuracy since I don't want to shorten overall finite rifling life expectancy.

Others may not notice nor have been in the airgunning game long enough to agree but seen rifling wear down over decades only shooting pellets they will eventually wear out then become oversized inaccurate bores.
 
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You say accuracy can always be better, but, as a practical matter, I'm not sure that's necessarily true. If the barrel is in good shape, and the velocity is consistent, then I suppose the pellet is the variable to consider. Regarding barrel polishing, I've never hurt a barrel in doing it, and a couple showed improvement.These were barrels that showed lead fouling more frequently than I thought normal, so maybe that is a kind of consistent indicator. As most of us are stuck close to home these days, you could kill some time with polishing a barrel, it might help. You should not be surprised if the barrel needs a short break-in period after the polishing. You will likely hear others recommend polishing as an almost necessary step in achieving the best accuracy. I've never seen that myself, maybe I wasn't looking closely enough. 
 
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 Don't know your velocity, but a soft lead .30 pellet has a lot of surface contact area. We're shooting pellets of a size and velocity for which the basic rifle technology was not intended. I believe we will see more HP air rifle barrels made exclusively for slugs, and using 4 to 6 cut grooves. I digress, polishing is worth a try.
 
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I have polished when I thought it could be helpful. As others have stated, I have never hurt a barrel by polishing it. It's interesting that you say you want to try it in order to increase the time between cleanings. this is exactly what I have found, albeit at some cost. I notice on the barrels that have been well polished they require more shots to settle in after cleaning. My guess is that since they are smoother they clean easier and need a bit of leading in. I'm only talking about 10 or so extra shots. This is well worth the difference in cleaning every 50 to 100 shots to once in 300+. I say + because I have had some polished barrels that I have never cleaned again. I follow the practice of cleaning when accuracy fades. For some, this is 50 pellets and for others, not since new in the 80's.

Also remember it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can try lightly polishing first, or polishing mainly from the breech end.



You get what you pay for, especially with free advice!
 
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I do it to every new barrel I touch. Some it improves markedly. Sometimes it makes no obvious difference. Never has it made a barrel worse. 

https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/barrel-polishing-5/#post-813819
Click to expand...

Agreed. Sometimes I will see a small boost in velocity. Sometimes not. But almost always see an increased cleaning interval. And yes, some of my barrels have attained a complete loss of a need for cleaning. They just keep shooting straight 
 
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I have never polished any of my barrels, but I bought a Hatsan Flash Pup in 177 and it was a nightmare, it would not group within an inch at 15 yards with any pellets, soooo many flyers tried everything including mild polish pulling patchs with JB on them, put it away 6 months ago frustrated. Since I had some time on my hand last week I got it out and decided to be really aggressive with the JB and a wire brush, went thru full in and out about 20 times. Cleaned it and ran some fouling shots thru it. Wow it shoots JSB 10gr thru same hole now at 15 yds and is 1/2 with everything now at that range ! 

I do not think I would ever do it on my Bantam or Dreamline, but in this case it was game changing!




 
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