Polishing A Chamber With A Fired Case?

[tombogan03884]

Whenever you lap something with a dissimilar material, the lapping, polishing, or grinding compound will always embed itself into the softer of the two materials. This is often referred to as "charging". The early settlers learned of this in the cross country wagon trains. They would grease the wooden hubs of their wagon wheels where they attached to the iron axle. They soon found out as the grease picked up dust from the trail it literally became grinding compound that quickly became embedded into the wooden hubs of the wagon. After a time this combination had no trouble cutting right through a solid iron wagon axle. They had no good way back then of sealing the hub from outside contaminants.

This is the reason you always lap or polish something with a softer material than the surface you are trying to polish. Conventional brass barrel laps wear at a ratio of over 10 to 1 when hard materials are being lapped or polished. My guess is the sacrificial cartridge case would wear long before it managed to polish a chamber out of round, or even change the dimensions of it. Most people have no idea how long it takes to remove even .001 from a diameter using a ultra fine polishing compound like Flitz. Your drills batteries would die long before you damaged anything. I spent close to an hour polishing the barrel throat on my Baby Desert Eagle .45 ACP with a felt wheel and Flitz before I got the desired result.   Bill T.

That's absolutely true, but I've been paying the bills for 25 years by  shaping, forming, deburring and polishing metal, I've got a pretty good idea.
Another thing you want to be careful of is gauging the bore with the end of what ever you use.

[texcaliber]

Do you use a regular bore solvent like Hoppes? The bores on both of mine look really good. There is a fair amount of Cosmoline in the action. As soon as it cools down some I'll get out the kerosene and a brush and go to work. My Enfield was much the same way. After I got out all of the Cosmoline it was good to go.  Bill T.

Have you ever tried the "Polymer-Safe-GunScrubber" on the Cosmoline before your outing?

tex

[billt]

Have you ever tried the "Polymer-Safe-GunScrubber" on the Cosmoline before your outing?

tex

No, never have. About the only thing I never cared for about "Gun Scrubber" was how cold it made the metal it came in contact with. It caused condensation on the metal itself. This I felt could cause rust so one can was all I ever bought.   Bill T.