Remington 510 fix on headspace

by Catoosa, Sunday, December 08, 2013, 20:00 (3946 days ago) @ Murphy

I have one of those old Remington single shots with an interisting story. It belonged to my wife's late father. The sear was worn and he had bought another rifle and stashed the old Remington in the attic many years ago. When I came along I dug the thing out and recut the sear notch so it was safe to shoot, but somewhere along the way about 8 inches in the middle of the barrel had rusted and pitted and it would not stay on a 5-gallon bucket at 50 feet.

A couple of years ago I got a wild hair and decided to make a smoothbore out of it to shoot .22 shot shells. I glued sandpaper around a mild steel rod and went to work on the bore. After an hour or so of sanding I had removed the rust and quite a bit of the remaining rifling. While resting my arm I decided to try a few rounds out of curiosity. Long story short, that rifle will now shoot about as well as I can shoot an iron-sighted rifle with my old eyes. I guess it doesn't take a lot of rifling to stabilize a .22LR bullet.