About five years ago I had a Remington 700 built with a shilen chrome moly barrel. I sighted it in and did some load development and put it in the safe since along with several other rifles. This fall I took it out to shoot the same loads and the bolt stuck closed. I got the case out and cleaned the barrel well. Followed with a round of factory ammo to make sure it wasnt the reload and the bolt stuck again. I brought it to the local gunsmith, he bore scoped it and he said the chamber is corroded and the barrel is ruined. The other guns in my safe do not show signs of rust or corrosion. Anyone else ever had anything like this happen?

Can you wrench the barrel off yourself and look yourself?

The thing you need to look for is pitting. Were there "bright" scrape marks on the case you extracted? If so, that chamber is definitely done. You can't have a pit that concentrates pressure or has a stress point. Chambers need to have a smooth surface to keep pressure tension consistent through the steel. Maybe get some long Q tips or cotton swaps and see if the fuzz gets snagged, indicating a sharp edge, which is super bad.

As for the cause, hard to say. Could have been some leftover Sweets that cooked for all that time in the safe, some other cleaner where they warn you not to leave it. Or a spider.

There's a possibility you might be able to set back and re-chamber, but I'd not count on it if the pitting is bad enough to snag cases.

Look up BRUSH RESEARCH.
they make flexiable hones in every size.
Honing the chamber might fix it.
Amazon has them.

Before I wrenched off a barrel or took full stock in the smith, I would spend 50-60 bucks for a teslong bore scope and look for myself.

Pull the barrel and you don't need a Teslong. If it is only the chamber which is pitted, it will probably be possible to set the barrel back and rechamber. This is dependent, to a degree, on the cartridge. A 270 Win., for instance, has enough body taper to clean up with just a little set-back. An AI cartridge, with minimal body taper, has to be set back much more. GD

Its a 300 Winchester Mag, thoughts on rechambering?

I would do a lot of cleaning on the barrel and chamber with brass brushes wrapped with steel wool or Big 45 strands along with Kroil before I gave up on the barrel. If the chamber is pitted beyond recovery, which I doubt, the minimal taper on the 300 Win Mag will complicate the set back option. I would consider going to 300 Ultra Mag. It will definitely clean the Win Mag chamber and the bolt face is right.

Did the 'smith say how the bore looks? If the bore looks acceptable and it's confined to the chamber, you might be able to get acceptable results with some work on your own. Or not. Hard to say in advance.

Did your local 'smith that looked at it do the barrel work originally?

Good shootin' -Al

The 300 Win Mag does not have a lot of taper. If the pitting is significant, it might not be possible to set it back enough to clean up. As far as other remedial work is concerned, there are a lot of factors which influence what will or will not work. If the chamber is a minimum one (dimensionally), you can probably hone a couple thou or so and still be OK. If the rust has not seriously pitted the surface, you might get away with polishing with some 400 grit cloth.
You can reach a point where there may be a fix, but it is not economically feasible. GD

Teslong bore scopes are awesome.

Glad I never spent $1K on a conventional gunsmith scope.

On the bore scope topic - which Teslong do you guys use? Rigid or flexible? and why? Looking at getting one and not sure which would work better for rifle barrels.

And do you have the one with the monitor or do you use your iPhone?

Thanks!

NEVER.

May qualify as a red flag offense if you didn't clean it before storage.

I got the flex, easier to store/transport. I use the monitor version, works great.

Rigid plugged into my Mac.

60+ year old 722 244 shot so liittle you can still see the drill marks.

Thanks for the info!

^^^^I would try throwing $50 at a flexhone and lightly polishing the chamber before junking the rifle. Unless you really want to rebarrel it.