Fixing the inside of a barrel

[StygShore]

OK... just cuz I can't let it die off so easily...


For those that know anodizing, what can I do to get my barrel back to the shine it used to have? or is this finish ruined? This is what it looked like after trying to clean it up with massive amounts of gun oil, squeegies, and lint free cloths - and a little bit of work with some 00 steel wool.




Any idea what I can do to clean it up, or should I just buy a new barrel?


Styg

[MANN]

what happened. It looks like it rusted, but alum doesnt rust.

[StygShore]

this happened

Ricks skillz at Precision Paintball happened.


I was thinking it was just sediment, but, guessing that is not the case after trying to clean it up.


Its basically pooled oxidation in the barrel as far as I can figure.

Fool or GBA - one of you around to chime in? you would know better than me.

Styg

[ta2maki]

Id say you will need to rehone the barrel with a lathe. maybe send it off to get milled for freak inserts?

if you want to do something with simple tools, you could tape sand paper on a dowel, put the dowel on a drill and 'hone' it youself. go with different grits and finish off with metal polish on a battle swab.

[athomas]

Go get a honing bit that is used for doing brake cylinders. Make sure you get one that fits the barrel. Use a drill and run it back and forth until the inner surface is smooth. We used to hone our barrels back in the late 80' and early 90's. It worked quite well.

[BigEvil]

here's the cheap easy way to do it...
get some 0000 steel wool, the rod from a shotgun cleaning kit or long wooden dowel, some Mothers Metal polish and some autolube.

Take a piece of the steel wool and tape an end of it to the rod. make sure it fits snug inside the barrel. If you are using a metal rod, be careful that it is not touching the barrel itself or it ill mar it further. Attach the rod/dowel to an electric drill. Add some autolube to the steel wool and go. keep it moving inside the barrel at all times the drill is on. It will only remove a very slight amount of material from the finish with the 0000 steel wool. Keep doing it to your satisfaction.

Next, thoroughly clean the barrel.

Repeat the first step using the Mothers metal polish instead of the lube. Clean well again when done.

I have use this method about 20 times on those old crappy brass barrels and it works fine. It should take out whatever mess is in there.

[StygShore]

Thanks, I;ll give that a shot, I used 00 steel wool on it a little, but just in the end of a squeegie, not on a drill.


In other forums I am being told - This always happens when a gun is re-annodized - I'm kinda confused - every barrel I have ever gotten from a manufacturer is polished and shiny inside after it was anodized, whats different in the process of getting it reannodized?


This is actually a barrel tip, so the freak insert is not neccessary. I was just concerned that the barrel being so rough would cause accuracy issues if the ball rattled around a little before it exits the barrel.


Thanks


Styg

[BigEvil]

A good anno job shouldnt be like that. So read into it that there are alot of bad annoed barrels out there.

About 10 years ago, Carter Machine made a barrel for me, and even back then they asked me how I wanted the inside bore.. polished anno or just polished.


If the method I described doesnt work you would need to try stronger solvent type solutions on the steel wool. That would probably take the anno off so dont unless you have to.

[Jaan]

Take a piece of the steel wool and tape an end of it to the rod.

Everything else you wrote is fine, but Scotch Brite is better than steel wool for this. Reason being is that if you polish aluminum with steel wool, very small bits of steel could end up in the aluminum and because they're dissimilar metals you get some kind of corrosive reaction. You won't notice it now but later on it might be a problem. It's much more of a big deal if you were polishing a $2000 set of car rims. Still.

I do pretty much the same, except of course with Scotch Brite, aluminum mag wheel polish, and a .30 cal cleaning kit with strips of Scotch Brite inserted instead of patches. Cordless drill yadda yadda. I found .30 cal kits to fit better than 12 gauge shotgun kits.

If worse comes to worse, you can always home the barrel with a 12 gauge shotgun hone. 12 gauge being approximately .70 caliber. These work very well with brass barrels, especially getting the black gunk out of PGP's and the like.

[Chaos_Theory!]

That happens to just about every barrel thats re anodized, its common so get over it. I know what Rick did with your Xmag is pretty messed up but thats not why your barrel is like that. The only way to really get around that problem is plug the barrel when its being anodized and the only company i know to do that is GBA. Not only that but the dulling doesnt effect anything.

[StygShore]

That happens to just about every barrel thats re anodized, its common so get over it. I know what Rick did with your Xmag is pretty messed up but that's not why your barrel is like that. The only way to really get around that problem is plug the barrel when its being anodized and the only company i know to do that is GBA. Not only that but the dulling doesnt effect anything.

Excuse me for looking for ways to make the screw ups better? I did not know if the dulling would affect anything or not, the surface itself is no longer smooth, that's why I posted this thread.

I guess I'm not content to live with "it happens so deal with it" when I see so many more cases where it didn't happen.



Styg


And last I knew, I could complain about PPB's work all I want - and deter as many people from sending their business to him if at all possible. Think of it as performing a public service...

[Railgun]

Anodizing is a very thin and hard layer of oxidation that was dyed. Given that and the fact that you want a shiney smooth surface I'd suggest that all the options so far are far too coarse for what you want to do. Certainly the brake hone is way too coarse.

Also the last thing you want to do is wear right through the anodizing. Once you do that the softer underlying aluminium will wear faster than the remainging ano and things will get ugly and out of round in a hurry.

I'd suggest something a little less abrasive. What you need is a stiff but slightly spongy bore lap on a stick that will let you run it in a hand drill while running it back and forth along the bore. You know that stiff but resilient sponge the hikers use for ultralight sleeping pads? Something like that with a wrap of it glued to a dowel so the overall size is a snug but managble fit in the bore. Make up two....

Charge the first one with some of the auto finish rubbing compound. That's the reddish pink looking stuff. Run the lap and compound back and forth a few times using a hand drill on medium speed. Maybe 30 seconds worth. Now clean and dry the barrel and check your progress. Keep this up until it's obviously having an effect and has an even light reflection along the entire length. This red stuff is fairly aggresive so it should not take a lot of time on this stage. It's a pain to wash it out for the checking but check often. It's hard to put it back on...

Then switch to the second lap but this time use the white auto paint polishing compound. Again you want to lap and then check by cleaning it out really well and then check for light reflected down the length and look for surface finish and dull spots.

Now I haven't used this method on a barrel or anything anodized yet but it has worked for me on some other projects where I wanted to put on a very nice and shiney finish.

The key thing is that if you just need to clean off some sort of surface gunk then it should be able to be done using a solvent. If it's actually polishing the ano itself then that involves removal of some of the ano. And if you are needing to remove anything then all the methods up to now are far too coarse to give you a mirror shine. So even if my method is not the one you need neither are any of the others if actual polishing is what the goal is.

[thefool]

2 ways that can happen, dye residue that wasn't washed off.

That one is no big deal, it may look a little funny and dye can be stubborn when your trying to remove residue but its no big deal. YOu can see if this is the case by rubbing your finger on the residue, if it changes color even a little its probably dye residue that will disappear with time. Because you've tried removing it i'd say it wasn't this.

What probably happened was it was held in a lye based stripper for a little too long. Nothing you can really due about that the barrel is corroded. If your not satisfied with the finish it has to be trashed. Its not really Ricks fault in this case, lye is a finicky beast. I've found an alternative stripper that doesn't touch the underlying aluminum that i am much more satisfied with.

That being said, its a tip, don't worry about it. All tips are oversized anyway and not having a mirror finish really doesn't change anything except for making it a little harder to identify when the barrel is clean.

As for carter and stock ano'd barrels, they are never stripped so the anodizer doesn't have to worry about stripping them with the tolerances in tact.

In this case i really couldn't say that it is his fault, its simply the nature of the beast. Your best bet is, if it not dye residue, forget about it or get a new tip color matched.

[StygShore]

tips

Thanks everyone, I will try a few of the polishing methods and see if any of them help.

My main concern was 1. will a ball touching the sides of the barrel tip be effected by the rough feeling of the barrel surface. 2. If I do break paint in the barrel, is this residue going to make it so my barrel will not clean out on it's own.


If I could ever get Snachez Machine to respond, or find a dealer that carries more than their 1 piece barrels or full kits, I will order a new tip for it if this one seems to have a problem


Styg


and again, I wasn't looking to fault - most here already know my feelings for PPB - I was just looking for a way to fix the inside of the barrel - heck, I haven't even gotten to put paint through it yet!!!

[thefool]

try putting some paint through it before you polish it. It will most likely be unnoticeable. It should also still clean its self. don't look for problems that don't exist, there are likely already many that do that you can worry about. So try it first, then try polishing.