pitted shotgun barrel question

[imyomama]

my dad passed this last year.. he had an old 410 single shot (sears).

i ended up with it and looked at the bore ... it has a few pits inside the barrel...

question is ... will it hurt shooting it that way ?

the barrel is super thick so it's not like it's going to blow up or anything..

thoughts ?

[Artos]

Enjoy it...will be fine.

You can take an undersized bronze brush & wrap with 0000 steel wool if you want to clean it up a bit first.

[Bigfootwolff]

As Artos said, you will be fine, and his recommendation with the brush and steel wool is a good one. You also might want to run an oiled patch down the barrel and let it sit for a day or 2 before polishing the bore, just to make sure there is no active rust in those pits. I would use a copper .410 bore brush to scrub the bore after soaking to loosen up any rust that might be hiding in those pits. I would run a few patches of oil/solvent down the bore, and when the patch is clean and shows no sign of rust, then polish the bore in the manner Artos described. I would then shoot and enjoy. Normal cleaning after that should give you many more years of shooting.

[muzzlebrake]

4/0 steel wool wrapped around a cleaning brush for a good snug fit and scrub hail out of it with solvent. patches and oil and go shoot some standard shells.