One of my neighbors, an old time gun enthusiast who has never sold or gotten rid of a gun in his whole life, called me up the other day, saying he wanted to give me two old rifles he had been having problems with, and was tired of messing with them.
Went to his house and examined the rifles, the first was a Remington 541T the guy has had since he was 15 years old, the guy is probably 65 now. He said the bore was obstructed, maybe bulged, he couldn't get a cleaning patch or brush through the bore. I took a look at the bore, and noted it was heavily leaded, for at least eight inches forward of the chamber. I took first a worn .22 brush and solvent and started scrubbing, then a fresh brush and about 50 passes later the leading was gone. The guy allowed as he would probably keep that rifle, but gave me the other rifle, a Norinco .22 semi-auto copy of a Browning ATD .22, said "Fix it and don't tell me what was wrong with it".
This rifle won't chamber the first round when loading the tube magazine. If you hand chamber a round, then load the tube magazine, the rifle will work fine. I think the loading tube follower spring is broken, I'll try to get one from Numrich. Failing that, the rifle will take a trip to the gunsmith. The iron sights are gone, but it had a scope base, so I put a cheap Bushnell scope on it. Shoots pretty good, yesterday while shooting it I shot a five shot group at 50 yards with cheap mexican .22 "Centurian" ammo, all five rounds touching. Today, not so good, best group I could attain was about 1 1/2 inches at 50 yards.
Here's some pics: