JB Bore Paste for accuracy?

[Archer99]

I expect my first paintball gun (GT2000) in the mail this week. I would like to play stock for a bit before I start spending lots of cash on upgrades. I understand that the stock barrel is not the best. I have had a lot of luck in firearms unsing a product called JB bore paste. It is basically a VERY fine polish/cleaner. Benchrest shooters use it to clean the barrels of their rifles. They sometimes use a technique called "fire lapping". This basically is smearing your bullet with JB compound, then firing that bullet. Each round fired laps the barrel just a tiny bit, resulting in a mirror polish in the barrel.
I wonder if this would improve a stock paintball gun barrel? You could just use a dowel with a thin section of sponge to lap a paintball barrel.
Anyone tried anything similar?

[Phaelon Veritas]

Yes I have tried using a fine abrasive compund which is about the consistency of talc w/ a little more grit and if a barrel doesn't already have a "mirror" finish to it these polishes are going to be hard pressed to achieve much the same with out alot of work.... because unlike a bullet a paintball will rather break than conform to a barrel and if it is soaked in a cleaner the paintball will more than likely disintegrate.If you use a dowel and a sponge yes it can be done yes it takes forever yes you are better off using a drill if you are going to attempt this and finally yes you would be better suited buying a new 50 dollar barrel such as a jnj ceramic or a lapco bishot

[TLplus84]

Or use one specially made for Paintball. I use the Proteam Teflon Barrel Treatment..and it works good.

[Archer99]

Hmm... This paste is made to cut steel. Since the stock barrel I will be polishing is aluminum, it shouldn't take more than an hour to put a mirror finish on it by hand. If it has an extremely bad finish on the inside (hope not!), you could always start out with toothpaste, which is a more abrasive than you might think. If i can get a long cleaning rod mounted on a baldor buffor arbor, it should be really quick. Most stock barrels are listed as a "medium" bore though, and this polishing may take away enough material to give an undesirable bore size..
Might as well play around with my stock barrel if I am gonna get a new one anyway..
Oh well thanks for you opinions guys. I'll post the before/after results.

[Joel Timberlake]

My friend used steel wool in his 98 stock barrel, and it works wicked good. ( Or so he says )

[Mad Ogre]

Firelapping should only be done to a rifle if its an older rifle and the bore is lousy with pitting inside... you lap it to smooth out the pitting.
Lapping wears the bore and rifling and each shot firelapping you reduce the life of that barrel by 1000 rounds or more!
Lapping can in fact RUIN an otherwise adaquate barrel.

If you doubt me - go to http://www.thefiringline.com and do a search in the rifle forums for posts by Gale McMillan. If you dont know who that is - He was the guy who founded McBros rifles and makes McMillan fiberglass stocks. If your not familiar with McBros or McMillan - then you know nothing about benchrest shooting, sniping, or high end rifle shooting...

[Archer99]

Mad Ogre,
As I'm sure you know, firelapping is not limited to firearm benchrest shooting. Nor is it limited to old barrels with lousy pitting. Yes it can ruin an adequate barrel, but who wants adequate? I want exceptional.
I am an avid airgun target shooter and hunter. Firelapping works to smooth out airgun barrels exactly the same as firearms. It is probably more beneficial in airguns than firearms. Airgun pellets have extremely fragile skirts. A smooth bore minimizes deformation. If you doubt me, go the funsupply.com and check out the airgun forum links. Check up on lapping advice by guys like James Maccari( http://www.delphi.com/maccari/messages), or field crowning by airsmiths like Russell Best. If you don't know who they are then you know nothing about tuning, and shooting precision airrifles. (I don't think I claimed to know anything about being a sniper.)
Airgun barrels are almost impossible to wear out given the lower friction and heat they are exposed to. Firelapping can be done without the worry of extremely shortened barrel life. The same goes for paintball guns. I dont really think a gelatin capsule is going to wear out an aluminum or stainless barrel. JB bore paste is first and foremost a cleaner. Not necessarily designed for firelapping. It just happens to be an excellent polish. This thread was started to discuss the benefits of use in a cheap paintball barrel, not to get into a whizzing contest about benchrest shooting. I'm sure you are very well versed on the subject of benchrest shooting, sniping, and high-end rifle shooting. I applaude you on your hobbies. I have pulled the trigger on my own Sako .308 enough times to know a thing or two about firearms.
Regards
Archer
P.S. Thats a wild web site you got there.






[Edited by Archer99 on 03-21-2001 at 08:42 PM]

[Mad Ogre]

Thanks for the compliment on my website... Appreciate it.

As for firelapping an airgun barrel - i'ld use the finest grades possible... and maybe moly coat the bore.
Firelapping a rifle (meaning with a rifled barrel) I'ld avoid it at all costs. Your seriously degrading the rifling:

From Gale McMillan:
Posted: 01-25-2000 05:19
I just read the Feb edition of rifleman. No wonder it has shrunk to a few pages when they print such garbage as the barrel break in. It's lucky it doesn't
have much following now. As a life member and a barrel maker of long standing be assured I will call them on this BS!!! I can say that there are enough
barrels ruined by ignorance without encouraging the masses to commit mechanical suicide with such BS


Posted: 01-27-2000 08:57
I will make one last post on this subject and appeal to logic on this subject I think it is the height of arrogance to believe a novice can improve a barrel
using a cleaning rod more than that a barrel maker can do with 30 years of experience and a * million dollars in equipment . The barrel is a relatively
precise bit of machining and to imagine that it can be improved on with a bit of abrasive smeared on a patch or embedded in a bullet. The surface finish
of a barrel is a delicate thing with more of them being ruined with a cleaning rod in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to use one. I would
never in a million years buy a used rifle now because you well may buy one that has been improved. First give a little thought to what you think you
are accomplishing with any of the break in methods. Do you really believe that if what you are doing would help a barrel that the barrel maker wouldn't
have already done it. The best marketing advantage he can have is for his barrels to out perform his competitors! Of coarse he is happy to see you
poking things in your barrel . Its only going to improve his sales. Get real!!!! I am not saying the following to brag because the record speak for it' self
McMillan barrels won the gold at 4 straight Olympics. Won the Leach Cup eight years running. Had more barrels in the Wimbledon shoot off every year
for 4 straight yearsthan any other make. Set the national 1000 yard record 17 times in one year. Held 7 world records at the same time in the NBRSA .
Won the national silhouette matches 5 straight times and set 3 world records while doing that . Shot the only two 6400 scores in the history of small
bore and holds a 100 yard world record that will stand for ever at .009 of one inch. All with barrels the shooter didn't have to improve on by breaking
them in.
Posted: 09-27-1999 09:48 PM
Look at it this way, A barrel starts out with nice sharp areas of the corners of the rifling . Along the way you build a big fire in it a few thousand times
and it burns the corners off. Now take a barrel that to break in you put an abrasive on a patch and run it in and out. The result is that you take the
corners off the rifling so that all that fire which would have started with sharp rifling is now starting with rifling that is thousands of rounds old. Which
means that a lot of the life is gone. A lap always cuts more on each end where the compound reverses direction as it starts back through the barrel
which means that it is enlarging the bore at each ends of the barrel. And last picture a patch riding along the barrel with abrasive on it. It is removing
material at a given rate. It comes to a place where there is copper fouling and it rides over it cutting the same amount that it was cutting before it came
to the copper. You continue until all the fouling is gone and what have you done? You have put the came contour in the barrel steel that was in it when
it was metal fouled. It would not be as bad if it were used on a lead lap but I ask why would you want to abuse the barrel when you can accomplish
the same thing without the bad side effects. There is Sweats, Otters foul out or just a good daily cleaning with a good bore cleaner till the fouling is
gone. To top this off I will relate a true happening. I built a bench rest rifle for a customer and as usual I fired 5 groups of 5 shots and calculated the
aggregate. It was good enough to see that the rifle was capable of winning the Nationals so I shipped it. I got a call from the new owner saying how
happy he was with it the way it shot. About 4 weeks later the rifle showed up with a note saying it wouldn't shoot. Sure enough when I tested it it
was shooting groups three times the size if the ones I had shot before I shipped it. When I bore scoped it the barrel looked like a mirror and the rifling
wasn't square it was half round. From that time on I put a flyer in each gun saying if any abrasive was use in it voided the Warrantee.
Now I am not trying to stop you from doing what you want but just inform you what is happening when you use JB. Brass brushes are softer than
barrel steel and does no harm. S/S brushes are harder than barrel steel is definetly a no no. Nylon may surprise you to know is very abrasive If you
doubt this look at the carbide eye on yout fishing rod where nylon line has worn groves into it.



http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=60102

Gale was a good friend of mine... That man forgot more about rifle shooting than I will ever know. BTW - at that link posted above - I'm George Hill.

[Archer99]

Mad Ogre,
I have been reading about a moly treatment benchrest shooters are using calle msmoly. It is apparently some type of spray that can be applied to metal while it is hot. Shooters are warming up their bullets with hair dryers and spraying the lube on. Some are doing the same with their barrels. It evidently, doesn't improve accuracy that much, but rather lets shooters fire lots more shots without a dirty bore degrading accuracy.
Have you had any experience with this stuff? I'm sure it would work on a paintball barrel also. It drys to a dry film and if nothing else should help with cleaning.
Archer
Oh yeah, I see you are a rogue spear player. You need to try the counterstrike mod for half-life also. Similar but better in my opinion. Half-Life also has a paintball mod out. Its in beta but not bad.

[Edited by Archer99 on 03-21-2001 at 08:50 PM]

[Mad Ogre]

Oh - and your right about this not having anything to due with real rifles - its just a knee jerk reaction to advise against lapping a barrel. Polishing a smooth bore is a different subject all together - BUT - Some PB barrels and air rifle barrels are indeed rifled. If you have a rifled barrel - dont lap it unless you absolutely have to.

[Archer99]

You're allright Ogre. Sorry if I got a little "attitude" in my posting. I haven't had a lot of luck posting on sites dominated by teens. Most of them are great, some, however have absolutely no respect for anyone. I am a high school teacher and constantly see the effects of present day America on our young people. Its no wonder they have such a hard time becoming adults with all the bad influences they have to wade through.
Nice to see a post by someone using their head for something besides a place to hang their mask.

[TLplus84]

that's why i'm telling you guys, get Proteam barrel treatment..it has teflon in it so it makes the barrel really smooth inside, and you don't have to worry about wearing the bore down or anything..

[Archer99]

TLPlus84
Is the Proteam a dry lube or does it stay a liquid?

[TLplus84]

when i put it on, i wait for it to dry up, which takes a while..