doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Busted Baker

Picked out a couple of guns for a �wipedown� tonight, and one is a graded 12 bore Baker hammerless, with beautiful Damascas tubes....I looked down the bores, and discovered what I thought was a scratch, straight down the length of the left barrel, from the forcing cone to about 3� shy of the muzzle. i assumed it was a �leave behind� from tha last bore swab, so I ran a bore snake thru it about a dozen times....it looks to me like a crack, almost perfectly straight, that appears to be right on top of the bottom rib edge.

Anyone else seen a failure like this?.

Assuming 28" barrels, you are talking about a crack that would be around 22" long. It just seems highly unlikely that you could get a crack that long in pattern welded barrels without having it actually visibly open up somewhere along the way where pressures were higher. I've checked for cracks in engine blocks and heads using the poor man's Magna Flux method of wetting the suspect area with gasoline. The gas evaporates quickly on an unbroken surface, but remains wet longer where it seeps into a tiny crack. But being so close to the rib makes it likely that you would just find open areas in the solder joint. However, you might be able to plug one end of the barrel and fill it with gasoline (safely- outdoors of course!) and look for any seepage to the outside. Gasoline has a much lower viscosity than water, so it will seep through a very small hole or crack easier.

A safer way might be to plug and pressurize the suspect barrel and submerge it in water to see if any bubbles emerge from where you think you see a crack.

Plug it with a piece of alka seltzer tablet inside. you'll see bubbles before it pops the cork if there is a crack.

I have an old L C Smith damascus barrel that has numerous cracks, but none of them run straight down the tubes, like you described. They are more random, and none go through the wall to the outside. I would think it highly unlikely it cracked like that, but I'd never say never.

SRH

A straight crack in pattern welded barrels is quite unusual; the failure is usually along a weld line. It could be an impending 'split' in a thin wall



This is most certainly a circumstance in which Magnetic Particle Imaging would be helpful, if not definitive
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZIo0y746UsSRZIgRuuxwAbZjSBHitO_EanvwLYc-kGA/edit

Texas is loaded with NDT facilities serving the aerospace and petroleum industry. If you get the barrel tested PLEASE PLEASE take full size high resolution images and send them to me as jpg attachments at revdoc2@cox.net
OR ship the barrels to me (at your expense) and I'll have them tested (at my expense)
I will of course provide an attribution unless you would rather not

Possibly a scratch caused by a foreign object [probably tiny] being pushed down the bore with a cleaning rod. A long, straight crack from the thickest part of the barrels to the choke beginning seems unlikely.

Many years ago I purchased a 12 gauge twist barrel H grade Lefever. 14" from the breech the left barrel had a crack in it. The crack followed a weld line, thus spirally. Appearance was that it had likely been hit on some sharp cornered object causing the break & subsequently fired.

One side was pushed inward while the other side was flared outward, leaving a large enough gap you could look through it & see the opposite inner bore wall. Bore was very badly pitted. I put my expanding dent plug under it & closed up the gap until it was very hard to see. After taping up the badly broken stock I placed it in "Ye Old Firestone Proof Chamber" & proceeded to fire it.

Firing was done remotely from behind a "Large" tree. I began with several factory Shur Shot loads of 3 1/4 DE 1 1/8 oz shot. I then went to several Factory Express 3 3/4 DE-1 1/4 oz loads. This was followed by a couple of ! 3/8 oz handloads. None of these opened that crack at all, nor even left a sooty smear on the outside of the barrel.

Unless one knew it was there & where to look it is "Extremely Doubtful" one would see it at all if looking this old gun over. Either the Gasoline, Alka-Seltzer or Magna-Flux tests would of course reveal it.

Never mind
http://parkerguns.org/forums/showthread.php?t=23440&page=3

DUH!!! Cannot believe that I didn't try and ring the barrels first thing.....like bells! both tubes sounding identical, and that is on a gun with a forearm lug repair! I brought the barrels with me to the office today, and after ringing them, took a dental scaler and was able to scrape whatever this is, (definitely metallic) off of the surface of the tube....SO I got my cordless drill, a rod and jag, a frontier pad and some ballistol, (everyone has those in his or her office right) and went to work. The crack is gone!!!! AMAZING!! I still cannot believe that the bore snake, and it was a fresh one, with an aggressive brass brush on it, did not phase this thing!

SO my most sincere and humble apologies my sensationalism!!! But, I am so happy this gun was not ruined, it is an early gun ser. # 2254.

Thanks for all of the input, especially those that doubted a crack!
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