The answer to whether or not it will help, the amount it helps, and if it was actually needed come AFTER you do it...and the amount of firelapping or just plain lapping. Everytime you fire of a round you are "firelapping" a little slower than with the use of the lapping compoud.
Barsness did a very informative article in one of the gunrags...there are photos of different stages of the process, but you have to do the searching.
EVERY barrel that comes from a high dollar barrel maker is lead lapped the old fashioned way...so it MUST be of some value otherwise NO ONE would put in the time and effort to lap a barrel.
BUT...there is no guarantee it will help or that you won't make a bad barrel even worse...you only know IF you do it and what the results are.
It's like girls/boys...some will and some won't...you don't know unless you try...and YOUR RESULTS are not necessarily the same as mine.
Never mind the nay-sayers and don't let them know the real skinny...all they want to do is whiz in the wind and wonder why they get wet.
I've had to lap every NEF barrel I've had...AND a few Rugers, Rems, douglas barrels, A&B barrels, etc, you never know if a barrel requires lapping until you start shooting it...I do it with a tight fitting patch starting with a few strokes of 320 grit, then 600, then 800...the 320 does the bulk of the job and is the same grit I use to knock the gloss off of new chambers, and the other two just polish....I also use Flitz but is it more of a polish. I get my grits from Brownells and mix them in a dab of grease(any kind will work) then add a little MKarvel Mystery oil, Kroil or gun oil(whatever happens to be close at hand) to the patch when I start swabbing.
I do it by feel now...you can feel how the barrel starts to smooth up...just don't go nutz with the number of strokes.
Luck
Your 100% correct in this NFG,and what is unfortunate is that many here never have even tried it and yet condemn it to BS by those that do use the various methods with good results.
The problem is many here don't even bother cleaning their rifles, and would never go to the trouble of doing this. Instead, some choose to berate folks who have done this and have elected to pass this information on or they try to dissuade those who are interested in trying something that may improve their rifles performance just because they feel it isn't a valid procedure.
There is a reason for this,and you will see it told several times when people complain that they can't get their new rifles to shoot accurate enough for them. They are told that the general consensus of all who own and shoot them is that these rifles shoot better dirty than clean. For many (
not all) this answer is the easiest to accept about these little rifles..and after all..who in their right mind would want to go to all of the trouble to lap their rifles bores or throats when they shoot minute of deer at 100 yards with out ever as much as cleaning their rifle......why heck..it's so much easier just to shoot the things than to actual invest any extra effort in fixing what ails most of these rifles to begin with..
What ails their rifles is that is just how rough their barrels are to begin with coming straight from the factory..
and the only real reason their's shoots better dirty is that that their entire bore is coated in carbon and copper fouling and is smoothing out all of those crags and crevices. They think this is normal..and all barrels are designed to be this way which is why they never clean theirs...
While certainly this a valid reason for their assumption on what to do with the barrels.. The real problem with this way of thinking is while their's and some others can shoot very good this way, more of them
could shoot much better..and some of them will never reach their true potential. The real problem is the barrels themselves (not the method of correcting a problem)..some of these rifles aren't produced as some of the others..and there are times whole batches are the same way in which many are over sized and rough,and the only way they will ever shoot good is to be fouled..so some of these guys are correct about theirs..but..not all barrels are like theirs...and they just make general assumptions,and you know what happens when they assume anything.
The only way anyone will ever know
which they have is to slug them or run a dry snug fitting patch down the bore before they ever shoot it once,
and all traces of the copper and carbon has been removed from the first factory firing. I know it's breaking "old Habits " of not cleaning and many won't do this...If they did and if the patch comes out with snags loose on it or if they can "feel" very tight spots along the bore or in the throat by patching or slugging it..then they can decide if they want to go to the trouble to lap them then..If many of these guys here ever shot one that wasn't rough as a corn cob that had a good spec'd bore and throat that been lapped properly,they would understand why those of us that have done this and have as good of bores in our rifles know how much easier they are to clean and how much more accurate they are to shoot. A clean smooth bore and throated rifle only takes a few minutes to clean properly..a rough one takes hours..This is
one of the biggest advantages to doing this,at least to me since I hate cleaning dirty rifles..The other is sometimes accuracy will improve..sometimes it gets worse..sometimes it will show you other problems that need to be corrected..Sometimes velocity will improve..and sometimes velocity will improve a-lot..not always a-lot..and a few times it won't or lessen some..(this is where reloading properly and tuning a action comes in..and is a whole different chapter )
There is enough of us here that actually have done some form of polishing or lapping that know the real benefits,to the others here who just want to slam others for suggesting a proven method of improving some folks rifles... give it a rest...cause you are the ones who don't understand enough about your own rifles..let alone some one else.
Mac
