I wasn't trying to rain on anyone's parade Stan. I was merely giving my opinion from the perspective of a lifetime of fixing things, and my knowledge and experience with epoxies. I'm glad Ted mentioned the thermal insulating properties of the space shuttle thermal tiles.
I'm also glad you provided the temperature and pressure tolerance data on the Belzona epoxy, which I have never used. You will note that the pressures are well below what would be encountered in the rear portion of a shotgun barrel, even though the duration would be as brief as the temperature extremes of hot powder gasses. Then you also have the added component of friction from the shot column and wad moving across your epoxy repair at 1000 fps or more, and powder residue from previous shots scoring the epoxy, which is much softer than steel. You would not encounter this in any centrifugal pump, and even those temporary repairs are not intended to equal normal pump life expectancy.
I also considered the repeated thermal expansion and contraction, and the very real possibility of separation or delamination causing a partial barrel obstruction, and resulting in a bulge or burst. Of couse, if that happened, we could always have one of those fun entertaining barrel burst analysis Threads!
Even if this experiment worked OK in the beginning, would you want to be the unsuspecting buyer of this gun several years down the road.. not knowing that you'd better check the bores after each and every shot??? And that brings me to the same thought I share with Bill Shodlatz. How many unscrupulous individuals might try to do a Bondo job on pitted barrels to sell a gun that has questionable pitted barrels?
At work, we are constantly tossing out and debating ideas. Many are shot down after a little debate and consideration of the ramifications. Some sound very good on paper, but are not at all good in practice. Some end up creating worse problems that they were intended to solve, and some are downright dangerous. Then we have the winners that make us keep trying. I think this idea is just dangerous, and best shelved permanently. In the final analysis, many guys simply worry way too much about minor pits that look much worse than they are. And some barrels reach a point where they need to be removed from service.
