Travis,
I can't recall reading that Carmichael theory, but had heard some early Remington barrels were rough--which was why I looked for an early 700. When I wrote an article reporting essentially no fouling problems, a guy contacted me saying that some of the early barrels were indeed very bad foulers, and that he'd had more than one. He claimed to have some sort of proof, but I can't remember what it was.
After an initial cleaning of my rifle (which didn't show any visible throat erosion through the bore-scope) I deliberately shot it without any cleaning to see when groups started opening up. It didn't happen until around round 120, and even then accuracy was still around an inch.
I cleaned the bore at that point and treated it with Dyna Bore-Coat, and after that the rifle would go 200+ rounds without cleaning and still shoot the same.
Have seen the same thing with other .17 caliber cartridges, both rimfires and the .17 Hornet and Fireball. In fact I haven't cleaned my CZ .17 Hornet at all since buying it new, and it just keeps shooting 5-shot groups around 1/2", with any load, whether factory or whatever weird handload combo I come up with. Have rarely cleaned my .17 HMR since buying it in 2003, and it just keeps shooting great.
Yet I still sometimes hear people saying they won't own any .17 caliber rifle because they're foulers.
John,
If you have an old copy of
The Modern Rifle, check out the chapter dedicated to varmint cartridges. He has a section that concerns all things .17.
He explains the rough bore problem did exist. But it existed in the 30's. Barrel makers still hadn't figured out how to drill and rifle bores that small in diameter yet. But by the time Remington was standardizing the .17 Rem, all those problems had been sorted out by O'Brien, Shilen, and others.
This is all off memory but I read that book about 5,000 times when I was a wee-little-'flave.
Travis
