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Chamber cast
I have recently bought a BSA Martini .310 Cadet rifle and would like to slug the bore and do a chamber cast.
Slugging is no problem but the chamber is as I have never done it before..............
In an article in New Zealand Guns & Hunting Magazine Issue 132 Sep/Oct 2012 by Jeff Brown, this is offered.
Chamber casts are
very straight forward and I like to use plain
old sulphur with a bit of graphite powder
thrown in for good measure. Sulphur is
cheap and available from the garden section
of all hardware stores. Start by lightly oiling
the chamber and barrel, then plug the
barrel with a cleaning patch just ahead of
the throat. Out of doors, carefully melt the
sulphur, being sure to avoid getting a lung
full of SO2 gas; a most unpleasant business
that is.
Once melted, pour the liquid into the
chamber where it will set in about 30
seconds, then gently remove the casting by
pushing it out with a cleaning rod – measure
it immediately as the sulphur will shrink.
Finding sulphur here is a little difficult to say the lease but I found some powder on line. I also have some graphite powder.
What are peoples thoughts on this idea, or for that matter any other inexpensive method in achieving the same result?
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I have had best luck with Cerrosafe, the low melting point metal alloy. You can melt and pour it indoors, no nasty fumes. No matter what you cast with, timing of your measurements is critical and different for each material you can use. The instructions for Cerrosafe come with it and it's very easy to use. I don't know about availability there, but it can be shipped internationally without problems as it is not toxic. YouTube has videos about it, but even without them (most of us learned to use it before there was an internet from the written instructions) it is not a "rocket science" sort of operation.
IMO, and it is only my opinion, the only times I cast a chamber is when either the chambering is unknown, I suspect the throat is cooked and I can't get access to a borescope, or I suspect that the chamber has been damaged. Still, it is a useful skill to learn in and of itself. Bore slugging on the other hand is something that has to be done fairly often if one is into old milsurps, or old rifles in general.
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