Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Rehab on a drilling

Buddy has an old drilling from his dad that he may or may not keep. I checked it out and it has beautiful wood on the butt though the checkering is worn smooth. It has a cartridge trap in the butt stock as well. Forearm looks nice. The receiver is lacking any bluing but has beautiful engraving on both sides. The downer is that the outside of the barrel has heavy pitting and the insides of the shotgun barrels are also heavily pitted.

So would you turn it into a wall hanger or is it possible to somehow repair that kind of pitting? If repairable, he may want to use it, or I guess he could always just shoot it as is. Hoping to get pictures of it to post.

not sure on the pitting.....on the bluing, i know some receivers were finished "in the white" so unless you see obvious bluing wear it may not of had any......interested in hearing what others say on the pitting cause i want a drilling and have passed on a number cause i wasnt sure about what to do about pitting....

Pitting inside shotgun barrels can often be polished out if the barrel walls are thick enough. Even pitted chambers can be polished some.

Rifle bore are something else--though with pits that aren't too deep I suspect Dyna Bore Coat would help a lot. I am doing some experimentation along that line, but haven't come to any firm conclusions yet. And of course with jacketed bullets many pitted bore shoot just fine. One of my drillings is a 100+ year old Sauer hammer gun with a .30-30 (sorry, 7.62x51R) barrel that is somewhat pitted, no doubt due to mercuric priming. It shoots fine.

What's the rifle chambering?

Thanks Mule Deer. I am going to try and get my hands on it for pics later today. At first glance it looked to me to be a 16 ga and perhaps a 7mm or 8mm of some type. Will post pics as soon as I can. Appreciate the insights.

John, This reminds me--do you still have the 375H&H with the fiber optic NECG open winged rear sight and fiber front? That combination sounds like a very fast sight acquisition for critters that come at you--quickly. Is the open blade of the rear sight a distraction? I know that since you and I wear glasses(me farsighted=short arm disease),does the glow of the fiber optic help the fuzzy sight problem. I wish NECGs made a green fiber front sight, I usedone on a Smith & Wesson and it stands out great against almost any background.
Murf

Yeah, I still have that .375. The open design of the rear sight is supposedly so the rear sight won't blot out part of the target. Evidently it's designed for people who don't shoot irons with both eyes open. It doesn't bother me one way or the other.

D'Arcy Echols fitted the sights and I asked him to put the rear sight well forward so even my older eyes could focus on it reasonably well. It's still a little blurry but that really isn't a handicap if you're used to irons, and the fiber-optic dots do seem to help.

You could always get a set of subguage tubes for it.

I would really look it over before shooting it. If the pitting is deep and covers a larger area it might be best to hang it on a wall.

Drilling barrels were struck pretty thin, relative to a standard SXS shotgun as a rule. Everything they could do to save weight without compromising safety was done, and the walls can be marginally thin. If they're pitted inside and out, that makes spots awfully thin sometimes.

I've had several guns go out for barrel honing. It sure made them shine, and they shot MUCH better with our modern ammo afterward. I would have someone competent measure the wall thickness before plunging headlong into a rehab.

I do hope the pitting is shallow, and you get a great old hunting machine. Guns without three or more barrels are just incomplete.