Probing the barrel on my Maverick.

Peashooter

Member
Apr 9, 2021
2,758
1,663
Denmark
So my Maverick have not been the best of ball players with me, and i have tried a range of pellets and speeds kind words and loving strokes of the rifle, ASO.

So today as darkness fell and i got a sudden rare burst of energy i figured why not feel up my barrel ( pushing a pellet thru it ) and maybe polish it.

So i clean the barrel vigorously and then put a JSB heavy pellet in the breech end and gently pushed it forward, and to my surprise the first 50% of the 600 mm long barrel there was hardly any resistance, so little in fact that i wondered if the pellet was able to free fall with that little friction.

Then the pellet got a little tighter for the rest of the way sort of like half of the barrel is choked, and there was no added friction towards the end where i would expect a choke to be.

So i folded over some of the little cleaning patches i have 2 times to a little square 1/4 the size of the original patch, the applied a little polishing paste to the mount of the barrel and then pushed the patch in with a tight fit, i repeated this 2 more times so i had a total of 3 patches in there + polishing compound in between, and all this i then proceeded to push back and forth a number of times focusing on the front 1/2 of the barrel, using my trusty old 3 mm solid carbon fiber rod i like better than the steel / brass cleaning rod i also have.

The feel of it all ( pushing a pellet thru ) are now more uniform with a slight tightening / increased friction at the last 1/2 inch or so ( under 1 " for sure )

As weather seem to be manageable on Sunday at least in regard to temperatures, so i will have to go test a little to see if this helped, and i will also see if i can get my M8 to print out this months AGN shooting challenge and give that a try for the first time.

On a airgun addict side note, it seem like AGT Vulcan 3 rifles will land in Denmark in a couple of weeks, by then my piggy bank are not 100 % ready to carry such a load but it is damn close and the remainder can be picked up by my not too bad ( at the moment ) bank account. :)
 
Shot the gun today, and at first i was even having good luck with the MRD, but as barrel settled in,,,,, 4 MAGS they began to drift at random again even if there was a little wind coming from the left.

Lowering speed a little helped some,,,, i have regained some hope in regard to be able to shoot MRD, i now want a dead calm day and then i am going to bolt my Mavrick down to rule out all other factors but gun and pellet + speed.

This also screwed up my monthly AGN challenge paper to a degree i forgot to shoot all the marks on it,,,,,,,, sigh

So ! i called SLUG TIME, and wouldn't you know my gun like the 12.5gr NSA and it just love the 15 gr ones, and the +13 gr JSB KO slugs shooting around 900 FPS

I shot a few of those 5 target papers, and the grouping was generally tight and on the first paper after shooting 6 slugs at each target i had to walk the 50 Meters to the target CUZ one of the targets just had 2 holes in it, so 4 slugs made a .25 sized hole, and then 1 "flier" 1/3 inch away
 
As I was reading the first post I was pretty sure that the bore polishing (after you discovered the large diameter bore and no choke, and subsequent making a slight choke), was going to result in you making the barrel a decent slug shooter. Now, after reading the second post, I am convinced that you have successfully polished the bore to shoot slugs! Congrats. Because of the larger diameter bore, you may want to try the NSA larger diameter slugs for even better accuracy.
 
Indeed but not much on offer in the slug department in .177, but i am on constant alert for any chance to pick up any relevant slug as really shooting slugs was what i wanted to do from the onset.

Now i have tried the ones i have, and know the light KO slugs i can stop buying.

I will try and push a slug or two thru the gun in the days to come to see how that feel, using a heavy pellet might not have been the better choice