Bore scoping a barrel. Cost?

doggin coyotes

doggin coyotes

Well-known member
Any of you guys ever had a smith bore scope a rifle barrel for you?

If ya have, what, if anything, did the guy charge you for doing it?
 
If interested in such I'd call a local smith & ask if they do it & how much. Maybe just try to find a guy close that has one & look yourself? You just want a magnified look, correct?
 
Interesting. Suspect kind of like reading an x-ray, not everyone can do it well.

Have heard that many barrels [and their rifling] look like a MOONSCAPE but shoot well.

Probably like looking at a drop of drinking water under a high power microscope, might turn you off drinking from that source.

Share what you learn.
 
In my experiences, not all "Gunsmiths" even have bore scopes...one expensive tool, at least the good ones are. A local Gunsmith here has scoped one of my barrels for free. My regular Gunsmith just got one after 40 years of Gunsmithing and he build custom rigs. He also did another of my rifles for free and is now putting on a Match Grade barrel for which I'm paying him.
 
I charge $10 per gun when I scope other guns. The going price is about $15 I am told.
I dont charge anyone I know though of course.
 
I would say the vast majority of smiths do not have borescopes.

I can't see them charging anything to do it, personally, as a bad barrel means more work/money for them.

Although, people will try to make a buck any way they can, and the borescope does have to pay for itself somehow......
 
The several full custom rifle smiths that I know who have one don't charge for using it as most factory barrels will by themself scare a guy into buying a new custom barrel.

I also know a couple of "handy man" smiths who don't do their own rifle barrel work. One charges $10 and the other does it for free. Both of these smiths specialize in hand guns.
 
I found a smith that has a scope and after talking a bit on the phone we had a time worked out I was to be at his place.

I got there and we lied to each other for several minutes and got down to business. He looked, I looked and his dog wanted to look. I gotta tell ya, if'n I was a gunsmith and was trying to make a living at it, I WOULD, WITHOUT A DOUBT, have a good bore scope! You would be crazy not to. It would be the absolute best piece of equipment you could possibly have for convincing almost every shmuck that came in the shop that their factory barrel will never be anything but a copper grabbing, powder fouling, POS.

I had never had the opportunity to peek inside a barrel with a scope before. But I had heard, read and seen enough pictures to know what an ordinary run of the mill, mass produced, factory barrel would likely look like. And the one I wanted looked at DID look just like the pictures I had seen. UGLY, with a capital U!

He said my barrel actually looked BETTER than most factory barrels.
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He pulled a half dozen factory barrels from various manufacturers out from under the bench and let me look at them while I was there. They were all UGLY.

Anyways, I found out what I wanted to know, it didn't cost me a dime and I made a new friend. He also told me I did a dang good job of cleaning it. It was one of the cleanest barrels anybody had ever brought in. lol...He said there was not a speck of copper or powder residue anywhere in the entire length. Maybe that's why the scope made it look so ugly.
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If you ever get a chance to look in a barrel with a scope, jump on it. It's interesting. Ugly, but interesting.
 
Like you said, "most factory barrels look like crap anyway", so the best thing a scope can tell ya is how the throat area looks. Barrels seldom get "shot out" but the heat does a number on the chambers.

Glad he didn't charge you. Few "real" smiths do.
 
A borescope tells the truth, without one you are just guessing.
They are not that expensive. About the price of a mid-level rifle and can be used for many things.

Jack
 
While I have not looked down a large number of barrels the only factory barrel that I looked at that was as good as a custom barrel was an Oly SUM AR barrel after about 50 rounds had been fired down it and cleaned. It was slick as glass.
I have a Savage that looks like railroad tracks the chatter marks are so bad BUT it shoots so good I can't get rid of it.
 
Originally Posted By: pyscodogPeople claim that Savage barrels look like sewer pipe! Shoot good though.

Some of them look pretty awful.

This is the throat of a take off barrel from a brand new .308 PC never fired other than whatever the factory did.

Throat-1-C-RS-1.jpg


And some of them look really good, like this throat in my Model 112BVSS in 7mmMAG after a 30 break in rounds:

Throat-1.jpg


I don't own a borescope but I have the use of one any time I need it. I made up some adaptors to be able to take pictures with it. This is the adaptor that couples the borescope to my old Nikon 990:

CameraAdaptor-3-C-RS.jpg


This is the sled I made to hold the camera and slide the borescope into a barrel blocked level. I didn't want to take any chance of the camera weight leaning on the very fragile borescope:

Finished-2-C-RS.jpg


I take the borescope with me to the range and have looked at bores and crowns for folks now and then. They are nearly always rather surprised when they see what's in there.

Fitch
 
I have never charged anyone to scope their bore. The scope is expensive but it is a definate calling card for business. There is a lot of things you can tell with one....throat condition {not just burned}, crown condition, manufacturing imperfections, and probably the most useful, fouling {both actual and cause.} As above, without one you are guessing. Which gunsmith would you want to go to, the one that knows or the one that guesses??? A lot of time, effort and aggravation has been spent on accuracy issues because the bore was fouled with copper but believed clean. I know of many scopes replaced and stocks re-bedded for lack of a borescope. No serious shooter/hunter that wants the most accuracy or performance from his barrel should be without one. All that being said, yes I have seen a few moderately pitted bores or pretty burned throats that shot respectably.
 
Originally Posted By: venaticWhile I have not looked down a large number of barrels the only factory barrel that I looked at that was as good as a custom barrel was an Oly SUM AR barrel after about 50 rounds had been fired down it and cleaned. It was slick as glass.


Because the rifling in that is broached. There shouldn't be any chatter marks and the dimensions should be very accurate end-to-end. It's almost a sure thing they'll shoot well and not copper foul badly.
 
I think borescopes make a lot of people worry about things they needn't worry about.

Factory barrels are rough, hand lapped barrels are smooth. No surprise there.

Checking throat erosion would be my only use for one........
 
I`m a little surprised we have not seen a cheaper borescope available, I mean with all the other cheap import crap one can get nowadays....some cheap import crap has worked ok for me.
good laugh about what doggin said about the dog wanting to have a look see too, I know I sure would like to check mine all out.
 
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