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5R Rifling Horrible Accuracy After Cleaning and Fouling, Help Needed

Danale147

Danale147

Oregon Native
Minuteman
Jan 30, 2019
63
29
I have a Savage 10 with a 5r Rifling barrel. After just under 400 rounds through it, I did a deep clean on it last weekend down to bare metal. Only used hoppes and cr-10 for cleaning. I'm at about 50 rounds trying to re foul it and the accuracy is absolute garbage. The last eight rounds I put through it last night looked like it was finally starting to come back to the POI I had before cleaning it, but still not as tight as it should be. Velocities are also showing higher than I had before hand. The optic is good and tight, no movement, the barrel is clear and looks fine as close as I can tell without a borescope.
Do these barrels just take forever to foul? Does anyone have any experience with this sort of issue? I'm relatively new to this discipline of shooting, so I'm open to any suggestions.
I'll be taking it out again tonight to see if it tightens up any more with more rounds down the tube. The load I am using was a proven load that was sub MOA before this all started.

Thanks for the help
 
Welcome to the Hide.

It's possible something else could have come loose or been inadvertently affected by the physical cleaning process itself, but based on what you're saying it sure sounds like the "deep clean" might need time to re-foul and establish some consistency. There are stories out there about bore concentricity issues that are resolved by heavy copper fouling, some of which takes 75 - 100 (or more) rounds to re-establish when completely blasted clean.

Only other possibility would be as mentioned: something physical during the process of cleaning, like maybe a rail screw knocked loose, ring mount shift, or action screw loosening, or even a nick in the muzzle crown from cleaning rod, that type of thing...
 
I'm kind of thinking along the same lines of the first item you said. It has slowly been coming closer, but I know from my experience rifles foul in ten shots or less most the time. I checked all the optics and screws, it is just taking time, a lot of time to come back to where it was. Probabaly the best coarse of action would be keep going and if I don't see POI where it should be after 100 rounds, the. Start looking at more drastic options. I was curious if anybody had an experience with taking This many rounds to foul back up or 5r rifling.
Thanks for the input, much appreciated
 
Tough to say but you could try to send it back. I have seen some factory savage barrels with horrible tooling marks still in the rifling. Some shoot lights out some didn't.
 
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I think I will give it at least a few more rounds and if that doesn't work it will be going back to the factory. It was dead nuts accurate before all this happened
 
Double check all screws and contact points, make sure it is secure in the stock. Are you shooting off the shelf ammo (changed ammo?) or reloads (changed anything with the load?)? Are you sure you have not messed the crown up cleaning? Is it that the grouping is now larger than before but is still somewhat concentrated (say withing an imaginary/arbitrary circumference) or is the grouping all over the place and inconsistent?
 
Savage uses button rifled barrel blanks. That production method can leave tool marks that fill with copper and carbon fouling.

If you want an experiment, polish the bore with JB bore paste and then do a break in style shoot and clean to try to fill and smooth out any remaining marks with carbon instead of copper fouling.

I did two JB bore paste cleanings on my Criterion button rifled barrel during a 13 round break in process and it became easy to clean, fouls quickly and the accuracy seems to last longer than I'm willing to go between cleanings.

If you let it get really really fouled (a rough bore increases this) before you cleaned, you might be able to improve the situation.
 
last savage barrels I scoped looked like a tank track cut the grooves. I'd give it some more time to settle in and only clean (if you feel you have to) the chamber/lugs with maybe 1 CLP patch and some clean ones to follow, nothing more.

Did you do remove the action from the stock? barrel from the action? scope? or just brush/clean in inside the stock? Might be worth retorquing the action screws, scope ring (both cross bolt and cap screws) and rail screws to have piece of mind.
 
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I will double check the contact points. They are handloads and nothing has changed with those. It has a brake on the end which I removed for cleaning, but the crown that was exposed during that timeframe is fine. The groups have been scattered each direction. The biggest issue was concentrated about 3-4 inches low while opening up, but randomly jumping back to where it should be vertically. Last night, my final 8 shots or so jumped back up to the correct vertical elevation on target and it may have been coming back. I'll be going back out after work to put another 15 through and see if it corrects more with more down the pipe
 
MJB13SRT8 said:
The fouling has nothing to do with 5r rifling it's a factory barrel they tend to have tool marks in them or rough throats.

Montrose
Click to expand...
This.
It’s a factory barrel.
They break in slow sometimes.
Clean more often at first.

Savage barrels are aptly named as they can be ve very rough inside, sometimes savagely so.
 
Sounds good. Looks like before any drastic measures are taken I am just going to keep shooting it for a bit longer, see if that smoothes things out and comes back to where it was before deep cleaning. After that I'll try the JB bore if necessary. Thanks for all the input, it's very much appreciated
 
You have plenty of rounds down it and it should only take 3 or so rounds to get back to shooting like it was.
I had a Savage model 12 BVSS in 308. wouldn't shoot worth a damn. Sent it off to a Savage smith, trued the
bolt and cut a inch off the barrel, still no go. Got tired of jacking and sold it..
It was a copper mine. Cleaned it down and would copper back up again.
Some people love their Savages. I think a bad one get's out once in a while, and you
have to know when to call it a day and cut your losses. I'll never own another Savage
because of that one.
 
Bummer dude. I haven't heard of a deep clean making this much difference. I'll be interested to hear what gets it back to shooting well.
 
Update-
Just got back from the range and put ten more rounds through it. So far not seeing anymore wild vertical jumps and everything was making a rough group aside from one flyer. I think it is going to come down to smoothing out tooling marks as mentioned earlier. The next step looks like re doing the load development for the barrel now that it is broken in or sped up a bit from the first go around when I bought it.
It shot just over MOA today, but I think that is due to the load not being optimized for the barrel anymore
 
Good to hear. If you can get your hands on some fgmm or black hills in 168 or 175 it should give you a bit more confidence.

Also...just to show the difference between a savage bore and a custom barrel see the attached pics. These are not my images but what I've scoped in the past of savage. Savages like to be dirty...lol.
 

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That's what it seems like I'm learning. I think it was also dirty this whole time from the beggining, it didn't have a chance to smooth out the factory tool marks and now that it was cleaned, they're showing on paper and it's calming down a bit now that they are being smoothed down. Once I burn this barrel out or I can't get it to where it's acceptable on my standards, I'll be looking at replacing it with a Mcgowen.

If I didn't mention before it is chambered for 6.5 CM
 
My 10 BA 6.5 CM barrel went to hell just after 800 rounds. Started shedding jacket - found copper in the gap of the thread protector and the muzzle. The tool marks are about as inconsistent as blind man driving in a wind storm.

The two photos with all the copper are after removing the carbon but just before I decided to pull it. The 2 cleaner ones are after I pulled it and took some JB to it to see if it was worth cutting down. Needless to say I either have a paper weight that use to be a barrel.

7038313
7038314
7038315
7038316
 
After more than a few have mentioned it, tomorrow I think I'll pick up some JB bore and run that through to clean, see if that helps that much more.
 
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