I wouldn't worry about taking it down to bare metal. The roughness will quickly abrade copper. Seems a little carbon/copper filling in the roughness is better than cleaning it to death each time. But be sure to do something to remove all of the corrosive resiude if you shoot milsurp ammo. As long as the chamber is not too far gone and the lands are reasonably sharp it should shoot OK. BTW it sounds like yours is counterbored (lands stop an inch before the muzzle).Well I took it out and shot it and you guys were right, shooting it cleaned it. I put 10 rounds through it quickly, enough to get my handguard hot, then used a brush and more patches to clean it out. Shot another 10 rounds through it and repeated.
The barrel isnt a super shiny match looking barrel but for a Mosin it looks pretty good now. Thanks for the help!
By the way, not all Mosins are rough. I have a small collection of around 25 various models and have managed to find pristine mirror bores on all that I have kept. The ones that I shoot I hand load for and only need to push a couple of tight patches with Kroil on a jag for routine cleaning. I'm too lazy to clean up after milsurp, especially when shot through a frosty bore.
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