Broughton barrels very fair response re 6 x 47 Lapua

[ecomeat]

I have shuffled this over to its own thread. As mentioned on 6 x 47 Ladder test thread, Phil Jones copied my email straight to Broughton, and i am very pleased to report that Tim North came straight back to Phil, and asked him to have a look and give an opinion, but made it clear that if Phil thinks its a Warranty issue then they will replace or credit the barrel costs on the spot and without hesitation.
I sure cant ask for any more than that !!

Following are some photos, but basically in the "dirty barrel" photos you can see that the land is white and clean leading up to the little "crater", and that copper starts right at the crater and goes forward.

There might be too many graphics on here for everything to open, so if you just click on any unopened Jpeg "thingammy jig", the photo should open by itself.




Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Copper starts at the edge of the hole


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Heavy copper continues towards muzzle


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Then a different view with 90degree adaptor removed. This is about 4" forward of the hole, where dirty land is now on roof of barrel, and you can see the extra streaked copper compared to the other 4 lands



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

After cleaning the barrel when i had finished with the camera, I then discovered a 2nd hole/crater thats not too far in front of the chamber.
The following 3 photos give a different view of the same, single hole.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Second view


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Finally a third view of the hole/crater discovered after cleaning


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I am greatly satisfied with both the speed of the response and the attitude displayed by Broughton barrels and am confident that this will be resolved satisfactorily.
Regards
Tony

[RDavies]

Tony, the reason Broughtons are my favourite barrels isnt because I have never had a bad one. It is because I had one bad one, which they replaced without fuss. All the rest have been great.

Any barrel maker can get a porous section of bar stock from their supplier, no fault of theirs, its how they respond to it that matters.

When I told a local maker a while back about a barrel of mine which had bad pitting from 1/2 to 2/3rds way down the barrel, he said it was from the caliber I was using and that I should just learn to shoot.

[Norm]

I have a barrel from another maker that shot like a dog.
Then after 300 rounds down the tube a large chunk fell out of the lands about two inches in front of the chamber.
After this chunk fell out, the barrel started to shoot mush better! Seems that the metal in this area was bulged out and was effecting accuracy. Once it was gone the barrel was much more uniform and shot well.
With a bit of pollishing in the effected area it shot even better.

I couldn't be bothered going through all the delays of getting the barrel replaced under warrantee and think I made the right descission given its performance.

So maybe you don't need to get it replaced?

[ecomeat]

Good point, Norm.
That's a very interesting story.
I will get it out to Phil this week and let him have a good long look at it and will be happy to accept whatever his position is.
If he was able to polish both holes with some sort of special grinding gear that I sure don't have (ie old cow cocky isn't likely to be able to polish anything as well as a qualified gunsmith with all of the fancy gear can) I would be quite happy to give it a good fair trial.
We shot at 500 yds today in fairly terrible wind at Beaudesert, and I took the 6 x 47 Lapua for a run. In my first detail I scored 51.2 or something out of 60.............and thinking "yep, it's really buggered". Then in kinder conditions an hour or so later, it shot 66-3 or so out of 66 .
The only scarey part in trying to keep it shooting is that both holes are in the very bottom of the switch barrel, as it sits right now, so they couldn't possibly be in a worse position as far as rust goes, which could quickly lead to major pitting.
But like I said, I am prepared to trust Phil Jones' judgement on it, and just maybe he can do some magical repair job. I will know later in the week. Like I said, if he has some way of lapping just the holes and smoothing them over, without opening up the rest of the barrel, I would certainly be happy to give it a good fair second attempt.
The good part is that he is only an easy two hour drive away from me, out in the fresh air country of the Granite Belt
Tony

[aaronraad]

Looks like pitting corrosion.

cuprammonium hydroxide pitting

You did mention you used a bronze brush with the sweets after the nylon brush.

Borden doesn't seem to fussed on ammonia cleaning of 416R barrels.
http://www.bordenrifles.com/Barrel_cleaning_edited.pdf

[ecomeat]

Looks like pitting corrosion.

cuprammonium hydroxide pitting

You did mention you used a bronze brush with the sweets after the nylon brush.

Borden doesn't seem to fussed on ammonia cleaning of 416R barrels.
http://www.bordenrifles.com/Barrel_cleaning_edited.pdf

Aaron,
Yes I used a bronze brush with the sweets, but straight after the "up & back once per shot", each and every time i flushed the sweets out and neutralized it by pushing 4-6 patches through that were saturated with Shellite. Phil said to use two shellite-soaked patches, but i regularly use 4-6 just to be certain that its totally cleaned.
Then straight away with 4-6 dry patches to be certain that it was clean.
The strange thing about this, is that every time i cleaned it up to the point of discovery, i used the borescope both before and after each and cleaning (even the 3 x single shots, 3 x two shot sequences etc) and there was simply nothing there but barrel metal.
Rgds
Tony

[aaronraad]

Alternatively hydrogen blistering (different to hydrogen cracking) or fretting corrosion.

If the ammonia has penetrated the pores of the steel, which get worked as you change the temperature, it won't rinse out. Copper from the bronze brush smeared into a pore and left with ammonia could compound the blistering.

Either way, it will show up as a heat treatment batch issue for Broughton or a one off.

[Norm]

Aaron, can't say I agree with the Borden method of barrel cleaning 100%.
I do however think that he is dead right with saying that a barrel that is too dry on the first shot after cleaning will produce extra copper fouling.

I use a thin layer of oil in the barrel for the first shot and this reduces copper fouling. This is esspecially inportant when running in a barrel.