Did I ruin my rifled barrel with a 4 rifled lead slugs?

[erudite]

Hi, first post, I'm kind of new to guns. I have a Browning A5 Magnum Twelve with a Hastings Paradox rifled barrel. As I said in the topic, I ran 4 winchester rifled slugs through it without thinking and I can clearly see lead built up inside the barrel now patterned after the slugs. Is the barrel effectively ruined, or can it be cleaned and safely used with sabot slugs? I've googled but gotten conflicting answers, I think that since it's a steel barrel of fairly high quality (from what I understand) firing lead it should be okay when cleaned, but I wanted to ask anyway.

 

[PT1911]

get yourself some good bore brushes and get to scrubbing... that is about all I can suggest outside of some good chemical bore cleaner as well... your barrel shoud be just fine.. just needs some patience and a bit of muscle.

 

[janobles14]

your barrel is fine. just use your cleaner to get the lead out. that barrel is so much tougher than any lead you will shoot through it.

 

[erudite]

Thanks! Here's a gratuitous pic of my guns.

The three in the front are the ones I enjoy the most - Browning A5s, a Sweet 16, a Light 12, and a Magnum 12. All Belgian made, not sure of the exact years. The 16 and Light 12 and some of the other rifles were my grandfather's, and I bought the Magnum 12 along with a rifled barrel to round out the set.

 

[Jim_100]

I shot 35 good old Remington sluggers from my fully rifled 870. I did not clean it. Two weeks later I fired a Winchester sabot 65 yards, frozen rope, kill shot on a deer.
I do not think your barrel is ruined.

 

[janobles14]

gotta love the A5! good looking collection.

 

[DPris]

There's no damage whatever to your barrel.
Rifled slugs are soft lead, and when you shoot them through rifling they tend to leave lead behind.
As long as you don't allow the buildup to go too far between cleaning, you can shoot them through your rifled barrel indefinitely.

If your local store doesn't carry good cleaning supplies you can order high quality 12-gauge bore & chamber brushes from Brownells, along with liquid cleaning products specifically designed for removing lead and plastic accumulation from shotgun bores.

People were shooting lead rifled slugs through rifled barrels long before the sabots came along.

Sabots will also leave residues in your rifling, same advice applies on the cleaning products if you use them.

Denis

 

[roo_ster]

If the leading is super-thick, an Outers FOul Out or a home-made contraption will do the trick.

 

[Marty183]

You might also want to let that solvent sit in the barrel for a while before scrubbing...It can only make the job easier. I do that with my rifled barreled shotguns...Rem 870 and H&R 1871 Ultraslugger...I remove the barrels, place them over the garbage can in me workshop and spray some Remington bore cleaner down the barrels...Let sit and hit them with the cleaning rod...Works every time.

 

[Al LaVodka]

Your barrel s/be just fine. Give it a single cleaning but don't oil and ensure its dry at the end. Try Hoppe's 9 Benchrest Copper Sovent per instructions (which includes letting it stand overnight). Gets rid of copper, lead, powder and plastic fowling. I clean my antiques with this amazing stuff as I procure them and it always produces results!
Al

 

[erudite]

So as long as I regularly and thoroughly clean the barrel, I can run any sort of lead shot through this barrel safely with no problems? That'd be very cool.

I understand the pattern will be different and all, but I've gotten used to the way the gun handles with the shorter and lighter barrel and I really enjoy it. It's probably well within a pound of my sweet sixteen (both empty), a hair lighter than my light 12, and a full 2 inches shorter than either of them. I ran about a dozen sabot slugs through it earlier this morning and I'm very happy with the setup. My only regret is that I didn't get a scoped barrel - the gun is quite a bit more accurate than I am with iron sights, and I think it'd be sickeningly fun to shoot with a decent 2x scope.

 

[Yo Mama]

So as long as I regularly and thoroughly clean the barrel, I can run any sort of lead shot through this barrel safely with no problems? That'd be very cool.

:banghead:

No, use the sabots from now on in this barrel please.

 

[DPris]

You CAN shoot lead shot through a rifled barrel without damaging it, BUT you'll pick up plastic shot cup residue in the rifling and the rifling will destroy patterning to the point of uselessness beyond 15 or so yards. The rifling will spin the shot column as it exits the muzzle, spreading it out through centrifugal force. The farther it goes the faster it spreads. You won't be able to get useful patterns out of it for hunting, the shot will be spread too wide at any normal hunting distance.

Same problem with buckshot.

You have the ability to go with either lead slugs or sabots with a rifled barrel, but rifled barrels are not intended AT ALL for use with shot.
You can SAFELY do it, if you keep it clean, but there's no point performance-wise.

Denis

 

[1KPerDay]

Stupid question: why will the plastic from shot cups foul the rifling but the plastic from the sabot not foul the rifling?

 

[DPris]

You'll get plastic residue from both, to at least some degree.

In a normal rifle barrel, some form of metal (copper jacket or lead bullet) will contact the rifling and eventually reduce metal-residue/trace fouling in a new barrel as friction wears and polishes the usually relatively sharp lands.
New rifling is more prone to accumulate trace metals, older rifling less so.

In a rifled shotgun barrel, although there are still many who use lead slugs, probably the majority of shooters nowdays are using sabots. Sabots are a "conventional" bullet encased in a plastic drop-away sleeve. The jacketing on those bullets never contacts the rifling, it's always the plastic, and plastic has a far lower ability to polish out the rough spots on the rifling.
The sabot will leave a plastic buildup in the rifling, so will the plastic shot wad or cup in a shotshell.

Neither will polish the rifling like a normal bullet would, or even a steady diet of soft Foster-style lead slugs or harder Brennecke slugs. You have to watch for plastic buildup in the rifling with either sabots or shotshells and clean accordingly.
This is not saying you have to scrub the bore after every shot with a sabot or a shotshell, or after every ten shots, or after every 50 shots. Your bore and your loads will vary from other guns & loads.
Plastic composition also varies between sabots (designed for rifling) and shot cups (not designed for rifling).

I even get plastic and lead buildup in my smoothbores that have to be aggressively removed. Rifling gets it too.

Short answer (I know- too late) is that both will foul the rifling at some point.

Denis

 

[Mr. T]

Use Nitro solvent while cleaning the barrel....follow the instructions on the solvent bottle...you usually have to let it soak for awhile; this should help loosen the lead deposits in the barrel. I think your barrel will be ok, but I wouldn't do it again. The bigger questions is why did you remove the smooth bore barrel. Those A-5's will throw slugs 150 to 200 yards with pretty good accuracy. Any damn fool that tells you a shotgun is only good for fifty yards unless you have a rifled barrel on it is nuts. I've seen these A-5's take numerous whitetail at 150 yards or more. My dad made a 200+ yard shot with a 16 guage A-5 a couple years ago....damn nice buck. I've seen him do it three times personally and heard about numerous other exploits from uncles. I watched my Grandfather at the age of 90 shoot a doe out from under me when he was at least 150 yards away. Personally if you had to go back to the smooth bore barrel it wouldn't be the end of the world...as long as it was a Belgium barrel. I'm not disparraging the Japenese barrels, but my family swore by the Belgium barrels and I know they hold their value better with the Belgium barrels.

 

[Al LaVodka]

LOL

NO, don't shoot lead shot and try to use sabots in that gun, not rifled slugs though they will work too...

You've got me thinking: I want to take my Belgian Sweet 16 out.

Al