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POLISH AN LW POLYGONAL BARREL?

22lr. It's not too dirty at the moment, but I'm following the Vudoo cleaning method, so no solvents will ever go down this barrel, only C4 for the carbon ring.

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Well, bore scopes make barrels look ugly because of the magnification. So, yes, shooting well is what matters, rather than looking pretty. What a bore scope can tell is if the quality of the operation in making it were lacking. That suggests the manufacturer did not care about the machining quality, so why would they care how the barrel shoots.

The thing with slugging is that a tight spot swages the slug down, and unless some part of the rest of the barrel is tighter, there is little further signal about the rest of the barrel, unless the tight spot is lapped out first. Insert a new slugs and find the next right spot, and so on.

A tight patch on a cleaning rod can help identify tight spots all the way down, but provides nothing to measure. I think that all of these diagnostic and measurement tools should be used together, rather than using only one.
 
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It's pretty hard to say what a barrel will do on a target by looking at it with a borescope. Lots of things that look objectionable to the eye are not problems on the target. Much more about how it may shoot can be learned from slugging.

Mike

In this case I was simply curious what it looked like, if it ended up very smooth, or still had tooling / lapping marks.

Btw I rechecked my data from another slug, AVS 32 gr .253, and it was the same velocity afterwards. So maybe the first slug (AVS 32 gr .2513) was slower as well? Meh, I'm not concerned.
 
In this case I was simply curious what it looked like, if it ended up very smooth, or still had tooling / lapping marks.

Btw I rechecked my data from another slug, AVS 32 gr .253, and it was the same velocity afterwards. So maybe the first slug (AVS 32 gr .2513) was slower as well? Meh, I'm not concerned.
Ya, sorry. I just making a general comment about bore scopes. Not directing it at you.

Mike
 
In regards to the op that specifically asked about a LW poly...I can tell you this. There is a fairly high probability that the first 2-4 inches of your barrel is tight. You can find this out by simply pushing a pellet through the barrel. If you feel the pellet go suddenly loose after the first few inches....go a little further and then push the pellet back toward the breech and you should feel it tighten up again at the offending spot.

Theoretically the tight spot should have swaged the pellet down rendering you unable to feel the spot on the way back....but in practice it's quite easy to feel. Remove this area and you will have a very different shooting barrel.

If you push a pellet down a barrel ... tension should ideally feel the same all the way down, but if you stop anywhere and turn around the pellet should go loose in a couple inches. if you have a barrel like this it will most surely shoot.

Mike
 
In regards to the op that specifically asked about a LW poly...I can tell you this. There is a fairly high probability that the first 2-4 inches of your barrel is tight. You can find this out by simply pushing a pellet through the barrel. If you feel the pellet go suddenly loose after the first few inches....go a little further and then push the pellet back toward the breech and you should feel it tighten up again at the offending spot.

Theoretically the tight spot should have swaged the pellet down rendering you unable to feel the spot on the way back....but in practice it's quite easy to feel. Remove this area and you will have a very different shooting barrel.

If you push a pellet down a barrel ... tension should ideally feel the same all the way down, but if you stop anywhere and turn around the pellet should go loose in a couple inches. if you have a barrel like this it will most surely shoot.

Mike
Do irregular impressions from the lands, on a pellet that has been pushed through, mean that it will not shoot well ...in most cases?
 
I can't say. I generally don't examine the pellets or slugs after pushing them through. My guns don't have transfer ports in them so I don't have to worry about burrs tearing stuff up. I can tell what I want to know just by the feel. About 99.5 percent of the LW barrels can be great shooters if you know how to deal with the slight problems they have. I call a slight problem something that a tiny amount of lapping can fix. Probably 99.9% of airgun smiths have no experience lapping....therefore they have no effective means of fixing much of anything inside.

Somebody sent me a rather expensive barrel from a new company that happened to have the same basic problem that most barrels that cost 1/3 of the price also have. I'm gonna lap a barrel anyway...so I'm not interested in paying 3-4x the cost for something that I'll have to do the same amount of work to. This barrel was already supposed to be lapped....but clearly nobody slugged it.
 
I can't say. I generally don't examine the pellets or slugs after pushing them through. My guns don't have transfer ports in them so I don't have to worry about burrs tearing stuff up. I can tell what I want to know just by the feel. About 99.5 percent of the LW barrels can be great shooters if you know how to deal with the slight problems they have. I call a slight problem something that a tiny amount of lapping can fix. Probably 99.9% of airgun smiths have no experience lapping....therefore they have no effective means of fixing much of anything inside.

Somebody sent me a rather expensive barrel from a new company that happened to have the same basic problem that most barrels that cost 1/3 of the price also have. I'm gonna lap a barrel anyway...so I'm not interested in paying 3-4x the cost for something that I'll have to do the same amount of work to. This barrel was already supposed to be lapped....but clearly nobody slugged it.
I suspect this is button barrel problems .? If so is there is NO way around the tight spotting because of machine work done after button pulled. ? Basically to eliminate "luck" ..all button barrels need lapped it seems. I better mellow out abit on the JB blue... I use clover for the tight spots, but get abit crazy with the jb blue...lol
 
In regards to the op that specifically asked about a LW poly...I can tell you this. There is a fairly high probability that the first 2-4 inches of your barrel is tight. You can find this out by simply pushing a pellet through the barrel. If you feel the pellet go suddenly loose after the first few inches....go a little further and then push the pellet back toward the breech and you should feel it tighten up again at the offending spot.

Theoretically the tight spot should have swaged the pellet down rendering you unable to feel the spot on the way back....but in practice it's quite easy to feel. Remove this area and you will have a very different shooting barrel.

If you push a pellet down a barrel ... tension should ideally feel the same all the way down, but if you stop anywhere and turn around the pellet should go loose in a couple inches. if you have a barrel like this it will most surely shoot.

Mike
Thanks Mike,
An interesting case was made regarding the LW Polygon barrel. I had a personal experience with lapping these barrels and comparing them to Thomas rifle barrels.
 
In regards to the op that specifically asked about a LW poly...I can tell you this. There is a fairly high probability that the first 2-4 inches of your barrel is tight. You can find this out by simply pushing a pellet through the barrel. If you feel the pellet go suddenly loose after the first few inches....go a little further and then push the pellet back toward the breech and you should feel it tighten up again at the offending spot.

Theoretically the tight spot should have swaged the pellet down rendering you unable to feel the spot on the way back....but in practice it's quite easy to feel. Remove this area and you will have a very different shooting barrel.

If you push a pellet down a barrel ... tension should ideally feel the same all the way down, but if you stop anywhere and turn around the pellet should go loose in a couple inches. if you have a barrel like this it will most surely shoot.

Mike
Why not chamber the muzzle and crown the breech in this instance, designate breech to loose end? Youll be that much further ahead.
 
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I polish every air gun barrel I get. Some need very little work. Some take a lot
Me too. And I also re-polish after some times - My FX Crowns - Liners, My Redwolfs and Delta Wolfs Polygon barrel.
It also seems to take longer time to get dirty again after a good polish.

And Accuracy is absolute in the top after a polish.
 
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I would imagine if you did a good job of polishing the barrel it would not increase friction. But it could marginally increase the inner diameter of the barrel and cause more air to blow-by your projectile. . . leading to slightly slower shots.

A way to test this would be to fire some slightly larger-diameter projectiles before and after the polishing. If those slow down, as well, then yes you added friction. If no, it would be more of a bore-diameter issue.

I almost rarely ever clean my airguns, and never polish. But I don't have as high standards as many here. As long as I keep knocking down my prey, I'm fine.
 
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In regards to the op that specifically asked about a LW poly...I can tell you this. There is a fairly high probability that the first 2-4 inches of your barrel is tight. You can find this out by simply pushing a pellet through the barrel. If you feel the pellet go suddenly loose after the first few inches....go a little further and then push the pellet back toward the breech and you should feel it tighten up again at the offending spot.

Theoretically the tight spot should have swaged the pellet down rendering you unable to feel the spot on the way back....but in practice it's quite easy to feel. Remove this area and you will have a very different shooting barrel.

If you push a pellet down a barrel ... tension should ideally feel the same all the way down, but if you stop anywhere and turn around the pellet should go loose in a couple inches. if you have a barrel like this it will most surely shoot.

Mike
Hi Mike, Thank you for sharing this information. This is something that gunsmiths in my country will never share to anyone ;)
I have 2 LW Poly SS and 1 LW Poly steel for my 25m benchrest units. All of it has choke. And I can confirm that all of it has tight line few inchs at the loading.
Currently I'm experiencing flyer every 5-7 shoots on one of my HR unit that love hard heavy pellet. So my plan is try to lap it to see if there is improvement after the lap.

BTW, Should I do the same check on the choke to find the offending spot?
And will JB paste do the job on Poly SS ?

Thank you very much.

Aldhy
 
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