• Watch Out for Scammers!

    We've now added a color code for all accounts. Orange accounts are new members, Blue are full members, and Green are Supporters. If you get a message about a sale from an orange account, make sure you pay attention before sending any money!

Gunsmithing Bore scope

Foul Mike

Foul Mike

Gunny Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Apr 18, 2001
3,090
4,920
Eastern Colorado
I want to get a bore scope but don't want to break the bank.

What would you recommend? FM

I know about "search" but tech. often over runs the search. That is why I am here. FM
 
I have the Lyman for the barrel and use one of the cheap 'flexible' bore cameras from Amazon for inspecting the parts of the chamber that cannot be picked up by the Lyman. The thing about looking inside your barrel is you immediately want to clean the hell out if is, which is the opposite reaction that you should have. I am pretty sure I wasted a lot of ammo that way.

The Lyman does have a few things that need to be handled to make it viable. The joints in the wand need to be filed. Very easy to do, and if you have a small round file you can slightly recess them to make sure they never become a problem. You also need to use a cone bore guide when inspecting from the muzzle. The white guide that comes on the unit is really not intended to slide up and down the wand. Use compressed air to keep the mirror clean. Don't clean the mirror with anything other than the cleanest, softest cloth should you need to wipe it off. The mirror needs to be close to the point of inspection so a little pressure/tilt is needed when using it. The barrel needs to be dry to keep the glare down and to keep the mirror cleaner.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Foul Mike
I used a friend’s Hawkey till the Lyman came out. The Hawkeye has higher resolution, but the Lyman is adequate to check a throat for erosion or the bore for copper fouling. For the price it rocks.
$200 vs $1,500 for a similar, ridged Hawkeye? IMHO this is diminishing returns ad absurdum. It’s nowhere near 7x better. It IS camera and electronics made in the USA.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LG65CM and Foul Mike
Foul Mike said:
I want to get a bore scope but don't want to break the bank.

What would you recommend? FM

I know about "search" but tech. often over runs the search. That is why I am here. FM
Click to expand...


I would buy the one shaped like a box of targets and a few dollars in gas to go to the range.

Bullets and paper always tells the truth. Bore scopes have a habit of just creating reality TV shows on gun forums.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Aaron47pb, Nodakplowboy, timesublime and 4 others
Well, it is clear as mud to me now.
In the OP I stated I didn't want to break the bank.
I have targets, ammo and enough diesel fuel to get to the range and do so 3 to 5 times a week so I have that part covered and I am sure I can look at that paper and tell exactly how much throat erosion I have going on right? Says so right on the back of the target right?
I am not a gunsmith, just an Old Retired Fart who would like to know how my barrels are doing so I am not going to drop a Grand on "buy once, cry once."
At my age I doubt I could justify that in the years I have left. My old eyes don't let me see as well as I once did so I guess I will just keep an eye out as best I can and maybe have a new barrel coming when I need it.

Thank you all for your input. FM
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: LG65CM
I bought a Lyman because it was reduced in price on Midway. I'm not overly impressed with the image quality using the "capture" mode. Anyone have pictures they've taken with the Hawkeye for a comparison?

These are pictures of the muzzle on a rifle I just built. These images help me get an idea as to what's going on internally BUT they aren't the greatest of quality.... IMG110101-013355F.JPGIMG110101-013402F.JPG
 
  • Like
Reactions: Foul Mike
I'm happy with my Lyman. I like the camera feature. When I got it, I had a new rifle and therefore barrel. A rifle with a few hundred rounds fired and a rifle with 1000+. So, I immediately scoped all three barrels and took photos to see the comparative differences. And for my own record keeping purposes. It showed carbon build up, copper fouling and firecracking. Plus I had pics of what a new barrel looks like for reference. Good enough by my standards. And not being a pro in any facet of what we do, did not feel I could justify the Hawkeye.
 
I have the Lyman and then later bought a Hawkeye for $532 on Bruno’s. The pictures on the Hawkeye are much crisper with more detail and clarity then the Lyman. More information can be picked up as a result of the better images. I’m not obsessive about staring down my barrels but its a lifetime purchase tool. Can also use for looking down cases for potential case head separation. Or reloading dies to check for burs or scratches in the finish. And I’m sure a few other things I haven’t discovered yet.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Praeger and 98Vandal
BullzeyeNJ said:
I have the Lyman and then later bought a Hawkeye for $532 on Bruno’s. The pictures on the Hawkeye are much crisper with more detail and clarity then the Lyman. More information can be picked up as a result of the better images. I’m not obsessive about staring down my barrels but its a lifetime purchase tool. Can also use for looking down cases for potential case head separation. Or reloading dies to check for burs or scratches in the finish. And I’m sure a few other things I haven’t discovered yet.
Click to expand...
Any pictures to share?
 
Thank you Gents.
I think I will get a Lyman also. It should do what I want to do and not break the bank.
All I want to see is throat erosion mainly so I know when to start picking out the barrel blank I want to try next and have it on hand when a barrel goes shithouse and I go with a different rifle while that rifle is in the Shop.

Longrifles, I have a lot of targets that I use for checking zero at 100M and do know when a barrel is wandering out at the 1000 and beyond and have the smarts to know when to go 100M and see how it does.

I shoot at long range at least 3-5 times a week, many time 5-7 and ring the steel and have for years. Do you get to do that? or are you stuck to a range of 100-600 and paper or do you actually get to shoot long every other day or so to see what is going on and get to wondering how your barrel is doing as you have put anywhere from 2-20 rounds downrange, depending on conditions and if you hit what you aimed at?
Regards, FM
 
Fig said:
I used a friend’s Hawkey till the Lyman came out. The Hawkeye has higher resolution, but the Lyman is adequate to check a throat for erosion or the bore for copper fouling. For the price it rocks.
$200 vs $1,500 for a similar, ridged Hawkeye? IMHO this is diminishing returns ad absurdum. It’s nowhere near 7x better. It IS camera and electronics made in the USA.
Click to expand...
A hawkeye with an angled eyepiece costs nowhere near 1500 bucks.
The Lyman is limited at best, I have never heard a Hawkeye owner ask a guy with a Lyman to look at his barrel. Being able to interpret what you see helps, not raise more questions.
I understand Chad's point of view too, he chambers barrels for a darn good living. He has a point, you know you have a bad spot in the barrel, and it is causing issues. So what now are you going to do about it? Either try lap or polish it out, or rebarrel, if rebarreling is the answer, you surely did not need to spend 800 on a Hawkeye.
My Hawkeye and finally learning what is what has saved me some grief, from inclusions shedding copper, to figuring out which end of the barrel can withstand fouling and how much.
 
Foul Mike said:
Thank you Gents.
I think I will get a Lyman also. It should do what I want to do and not break the bank.
All I want to see is throat erosion mainly so I know when to start picking out the barrel blank I want to try next and have it on hand when a barrel goes shithouse and I go with a different rifle while that rifle is in the Shop.

Longrifles, I have a lot of targets that I use for checking zero at 100M and do know when a barrel is wandering out at the 1000 and beyond and have the smarts to know when to go 100M and see how it does.

I shoot at long range at least 3-5 times a week, many time 5-7 and ring the steel and have for years. Do you get to do that? or are you stuck to a range of 100-600 and paper or do you actually get to shoot long every other day or so to see what is going on and get to wondering how your barrel is doing as you have put anywhere from 2-20 rounds downrange, depending on conditions and if you hit what you aimed at?
Regards, FM
Click to expand...




The rational behind my earlier post:

Tammy Forester. Atlanta Olympics Silver Medalist. Once upon a time I chambered a couple barrels for her. Sometime in the 90's she experienced a squib load. Bullet got stuck roughly mid barrel and she didn't catch it. She smoked another one right behind it. Thankfully it was just a rimfire on a target gun so the carnage made its way down the barrel. As a result of this, that barrel developed a bulge in it.

Running patches down the bore confirmed this. It felt as though the thing went from 22 to 25, and back to 22 again.
If we took a running poll on peoples impressions, the vast majority would likely vote that its cooked and she gets to buy a new stick.
That gun held (holds? -been out of that game for a long time) national records. She's an Olympian remember.


I've catered to clients that brought there own bore scope and picked out barrels from the inventory. Rimfire guys being the absolute most superstitious about it. I'd bet (joking) more than one summoned a demon via Ouija board out in my parking lot prior to walking in. -Eyes rolling back in head as they pushed a patch down a bore and "qualified it".

Fact of the matter, not one of these good folks demonstrated a repeatable, credible process for selecting a barrel.

"The bullet always tells the truth." That is why I say that.


Being able to shoot lots of bullets whenever a guy wants is a luxury I don't have anymore. I've not personally pulled a trigger for some time now. Cost of doing business... That said, I once shot a great deal of highpower, as a Marine and as a civilian, was on the US Palma Team, and did quite a bit of the "gamer gun" stuff for a few years.

Again, when a barrel shoots like shit, it'll tell you immediately. It'll either be too clean, fouled, loose, cold, hot, or at its expiration date. A bore scope won't tell you any of these things reliably.

Bullets always do.

Enjoy and have a great week all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tomcatfan, Nodakplowboy, antithesis and 3 others
Foul Mike said:
I'm cool with that all except I want to study erosion as my eyes don't see too well.
Click to expand...
If all you want to do is monitor erosion, a honady oal tool and a modified case, and the same bullet will do. I've had a scope for 6 yrs and still cannot eyeball throat wear.
 
I just kind of want to look at it and see how it is going. Round count etc.
Something to do when I can't be at the range. FM

I have a few hours I can spare out of my busy schedule.
 
  • Like
Reactions: antithesis
Foul Mike said:
I just kind of want to look at it and see how it is going. Round count etc.
Something to do when I can't be at the range. FM

I have a few hours I can spare out of my busy schedule.
Click to expand...

Inquiring minds. Kind of looking up a chick's skirt. You pretty much know, or hope you know anyway (how times have changed), what you are going to see but you're still going to do it.
 
My only regret in the Lyman was my new barrel didn't get looked at before I shot it. I looked at one or two rifles and haven't really used it again. Life getting in the way.
 
Chad,

First time I have disagreed with one of your post.

I do agree that some folks go overboard with borescopes. Just as with everything else in life.

Good information paired with sound judgment leads to good decisions. Ignorance of facts only improves the lot of a fool.

As the folks of India said about the British, they wear monocles so they don’t see more than they can understand.

A bullet tells you how a rifle shoots today. A bore scope gives a wise man an idea how a rifle will shoot next week. It gives a fool something to worry about.

No offense intended.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: LRI
Foul Mike said:
I want to get a bore scope but don't want to break the bank.

What would you recommend? FM
Click to expand...

IF you are going to get a bore scope and IF you are intending to get images you can interpret anything from, the Hawkeye will be the way to go.

The Lyman is a neat tool but you are trying to resolve very small details on very small geometries and the Lyman will just tease you enough to make you guess about the details. It will show basic details but that is not what I think you are trying to settle for.

My 2 cents is don't get one at all but if you do, get the Hawkeye through Brunos or similar. It is not a bargain if you buy a ticket for a ride that "almost" gets you where you wanted to go.



If you have tired old eyes and they don't see too well, all the more reason to get the damned Hawkeye because the images are brighter and have better resolution of features.

If you are retired and are counting what years you have left, .... treat yourself to something nice ! For fucks sake, you can't take anything with you when they throw your ass in the ground. Live your life!

I mean the last 2 paragraphs with greatest respect and it is meant as encouragement.
We are attending too damned many funerals, seeing too many friends get cancer or have a fucking stroke.

If you buy one, get the Hawkeye and then take some close up pics of your naughty divorced neighbor's tits and post them in the Maggies Bar and Grill section of the forum.

Be safe,


./
 
  • Like
Reactions: MysizeisMAGNUM, LRI, Bradu and 1 other person
rth1800 said:
Chad,

First time I have disagreed with one of your post.

I do agree that some folks go overboard with borescopes. Just as with everything else in life.

Good information paired with sound judgment leads to good decisions. Ignorance of facts only improves the lot of a fool.

As the folks of India said about the British, they wear monocles so they don’t see more than they can understand.

A bullet tells you how a rifle shoots today. A bore scope gives a wise man an idea how a rifle will shoot next week. It gives a fool something to worry about.

No offense intended.
Click to expand...


None taken. Not in the least. This is high minded discussion and entertainment for me. I'll save the emotion for when I get to start dictating foreign policy. :)


Kidding aside, I would counter your thoughtful argument with this:

Round counts check a whole lotta boxes in this category. Take Mr. Jake Vibbert as a good example. Jake poisons the earth with a lot of lead. A LOT of it. When we built his stuff he'd send us typically 5-6 barrels for a single caliber. We'd bang em out truck and trailer style and ship the "mater stake" pile back to him. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Keep track of the mileage. If your close on a barrel and a big (national) event is looming, swap it out with a fresh stick, go thaw it out, confirm a zero, then keep on truckin. Save the take off for practice, fire form, or local club matches where the barrier of entry to the prize table is generally lower.

I've just witnessed far too many people who've traveled across the country to come to Camp Perry and have a gun tank on em due to mileage. Maybe a BS would have solved that. I know for a fact a pencil and a small pocket note book does.

$900 vs $1.20.

I guess I'm cheap. :)

Going home. We do this again in the am.

PS.

Terry, I'm with you on the losses. A change of the guard is starting to happen. Almost all of my mentors are gone now. It sucks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Terry Cross and RTH1800
Chad,

You are correct in many ways.

My view is this

First, I bought my BS about 10-15 years ago and it was not 1200. More like 500 IIRC.
Secondly, I shoot a lot of calibers in a number of different ways. My barrels life are not predictable by round count alone.

I like checking my cleaning to see what if anything I missed. And when real clean, the darn things don't shoot so well at times. :)

I also buy and sell rifles. I have purchased some real nice looking rifles that had very bad bores. A lot of very clean pre '64 model 70 Win. rifles were shot a little in the '40's and put away. They have a copper coated bore that does not look bad to the eye. Clean it and use bore scope and you wonder how to get that copper back in.

Long to short is some folks have use for bore scope and others not so much. I like mine.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Milo 2.5
Personally I think how good of a scope you need depends on what your intentions are. If the purpose is to determine how the barrel is impacting accuracy in a manner that requires the ability to read the barrel, then you are simply wasting your money no matter what you buy unless you know how to interpret the images. If the purpose is to look for heat cracking, leading (yes, some of us shoot lead out of things), unusual carbon fowling, etc., a Lymann does just fine.
 
I have considered one for a few years but it is a lot of money for something that doesn't get much use. I want one to check for carbon rings and to make sure i get it cleaned out. I recently fought one I'm one of my rifles and am not sure if i got it clean enough or not. I will find out next time i shoot it because it caused an overpressure issue. Few shots were warm and the last one blew the primer out of the case. The pocket was getting loose I had plenty of other signs on that case.
 
I bought the Lyman and it works but as someone said in another post they all look like they won't shoot. It works great lining up gas blocks and making sure there are no burrs around the port.
 
I’ll flat out admit to being a tool whore. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the shop or kitchen, I want the best.
That said, when the Lyman first came out, it was a cheap enough gamble. I picked one up with the intention of seeing if I could cut it down to 5”-6” to use as an in-machine inspection tool to check chambers before removing from the lathe. Like most of my personal projects, that’s as far as I went with it.
Now I do still use it on every barrel, and true, it’s not Hawkeye quality, but it does everything I need a bore scope to do.
I look for the evenness of the leade and freebore (I know that’s good because I’ve already verified with a DTI in the machine) and cut quality of the of the leade more checking reamer condition.
Once, I did find something I was glad I found on inspection, rather than customer complaint. A new, customer supplied reamer didn’t have enough undercut at the bushing shank/leade junction. Rather, it was a radius, which in turn was actually cutting the bushing while it was in the bore. The bushing swarf did a nice number on the bore just ahead of the chamber. I would have never known unless I scoped it, be it a Lyman or better.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ugsly308 and antithesis
Do you guys, that chamber barrels, not inspect the bore of the blanks before you chamber and thread them?
 
Last edited:
Foul Mike said:
I just kind of want to look at it and see how it is going. Round count etc.
Something to do when I can't be at the range. FM

I have a few hours I can spare out of my busy schedule.
Click to expand...
I'll bring a bigger bottle, those 12 ouncers are tiny!?
 
pbatesaz said:
For you guys who have the Hawkeye, how do you take pics or videos? Or do you? Thanks.
Click to expand...
95% of the time, I don't need/want photos - I'm just checking. That 5% I use my iPhone. Usually a three handed operation, but can provide satisfactory results.
 
abn31c, those bottles are small but fun.
Don't forget that YOU brought out your bullet launcher with the new barrel and took careful aim and cut the wire hanging the bottle just to show we OLD FARTS how it was done. We were impressed.

When I was looking around for a deal on a bore scope I had a few unexpected expenses show up so back burnered the scope.
I don't like those expenses but it did time out my purchase of something expensive to where I will now buy one of these $50 units.

Do I need it? NO but it will give me something to do during my free time.

I do believe the results downrange let you know when it is time to re-barrel, so I am now looking at a new barrel for my 6.5/06. but hey, I want to be able to see what is going on in there.
I also wish I could order new eyes as the ones I was issued have a lot of miles on them. FM
 
  • Like
Reactions: abn31c
Just for the record here is a $50.00 borescope pic of my Garand gas port on a Blue Sky that has a ‘57 barrel
Still working on focus and lighting
 

Attachments

  • 1827CAAE-8E3A-4C7B-9507-CC27732B85A3.jpeg
    1827CAAE-8E3A-4C7B-9507-CC27732B85A3.jpeg
    50.4 KB · Views: 72
That's a good pic Lngrngshtr, unlike the Lyman with its fixed focalpoint. The Teslong is really sensitive on the mirror placement. Per the instructions 223 was with the mirror screwed all the way down. This is my new 223 Wylde but I also need to work with it some more.

Lyman
Brl 2.jpg


Teslong

Snap_004.jpg


Snap_012.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: JFR and LngRngShtr
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

S
Go To No Frills Scope Rings?
Replies
34
Views
601
carbonbased
carbonbased
K
Precision Rifle Gear Anybody making a bag rider for the ACC Elite?
Replies
28
Views
916
Secant
Secant
B
What’s a good bore scope?
Replies
11
Views
427
Jabberjaw
Jabberjaw
Rolltide
Suppressor Cover for KGM R30K
Replies
9
Views
267
Inline6
I
M
Precision Rifle Gear Bore Guide
Replies
7
Views
266
Nik H
Nik H
Top Bottom
Back