That area where the lead has settled usually indicates either an undersized bullet or one that is cast very hard and the lube failed. There are several casting companies that use very very hard mixture along with lube that resembles crayons! This practice is done to insure that the bullets can be simply placed in a bag and not loose their lube and bullets don't get dents and nicks during shipment. The down side to this practice is that one often gets lead in the leading portion of their bore.
After getting all the lead out of your bore, you may find that this restriction was after all, lead buildup. Remember this; once lead forms in the bore, it will attract more lead to itself. Left unchecked, lead buildup can really play havoc in your accuracy, increase pressure, and generally make you an unhappy shooter...
Often weapons, regardless of age, will more than likely require a bit of break in of the bore. This is most prevalent in rifles, but handguns do require some break in as well. A good method that has been used by many benchrest shooters, and myself, is to start with a clean, dry bore. Fire ONE round of jacketed ammo and then do a FULL cleaning of the bore. I mean a complete cleaning and start again with another jacketed round. After about 10 to 12 of these "shoot. clean. shoot" sessions, you will have effectively polished the bore to the point that it should be broken in. Some folks try to skip this by firing 10 or more Jacketed rounds then clean, but all they're doing is placing copper fouling atop copper fouling. This accomplishes nothing toward polishing the bore. I know this is a real pain if you go to a public range and there are folks waiting for your bench to shoot too, but if one has access to a more private location, it goes easier.
Case in point. Last month I bought a new 629 4". Nice weapon to say the least. But I didn't just load up and shoot a bunch of rounds when I got it to my range.I fired one round of JHP and then cleaned the bore fully removing all traces of the copper fouling. And so on until I had fired 15 rounds of JHP's with complete cleaning in between each shot. I can now drive lead cast bullets made up of alloy even 30:1 at modest speed without a trace of leading in the bore. Taking a 240 SWCGC round well into the 1300 plus range will show no leading at all. I'm quite sure that if I had not broke this bore in prior to shooting these cast rounds I'd be mining lead from my bore...
Due to the heavy constructin of the the barrel of the 29 type weapon, I doubt that the barrel had crushed to the point that it caused a restriction in your bore. It can happen, but is not that common really. I'm willing to bet that your bore is just plugged up a bit with lead in the leading end of the bore and will be fine after cleaning and a few of the break in sessions mentioned above. Time consuming? Sure. Worth the effort? You bet!
So get you a sloppy wet patch of Kroil and soak that bore for a day. Then get it shinny clean and slug that bore. If, in fact, the leading area of the bore is slightly tighter than the rest, we can discuss lapping the bore to even things out. But first get 'er all clean and all first ok?
Our Lt. that ran the range and armory use to give me all the basket case weapons as he did not have the patience to deal with them. So in addition to the time spent in training on weapons, I got to see my share of some real messed up pistols and shotguns! What joy huh? LOL! Oh well it was fun, I guess...
I look forward to your progress and your report on how it went.
Wade
