So what does relining a smoothbore actually mean? It sounds straight foward, but my questions are these:
The walls on a smoothbore, particularly an original, are pretty thin. To keep the gun skirmish legal, it has to be more or less the original caliber, with a few exceptions (lining a potsdam to 69 for instance). Now, if someone has a cut down gun, lining and stretching is easy enough, as the bolster/rear area of the barrel is thick enough to ream out and install a liner, that is stepped to allow restoration to full length. But what of an untrimmed gun that just has a lot of pitting in the bore, that someone wants to have relined? Does the barrel have to be chopped down to be lined? Or is there some way to put a liner into that thin bore that I'm not seeing?
My H&P has a lot of pitting. More outside than inside, but enough that it is a lot harder to clean up than my Potsdam or 42. I'd love to rectify that situation, but if it means cutting the barrel down I wouldn't.
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