Flex honing

[Drcemento]

I just acquired a beautiful carter offset comp here on MCB. its my first carter - always wanted one. to say that I was a little surprised at the workmanship on what should be the cadillac of markers would be an understatement. The undercocking guide rail is rough as hell, and the inside of the body tube feels like its threaded all the way through its so rough. that said the exterior body work is carter through and through and really nicely done - it shoots darts....the stroke is really smooth till you twist the pump a little then it wants to bind up. A little time spent with a couple really good swiss files and some sandpaper got the guide rail so much smoother and really helped the stroke.

my question is about dealing with the inside of the body tube. I picked up a range of flex hones and some oil - I have some experience with them. looking for some tips and guidance.
like I said - the tube is ROUGH and you can feel the bolt and hammer catching on them and not moving smoothly. how quick could I make it to big inside? Do i even want to try? what could I scew up?

[Hellion360]

piiiiiics.
And pics of the tube.

Early comp? Curious

[WORR13]

pics would help but you may want to start with something less abrasive than a hone. you may remove to much and ruin your gun. maybe some brushes first to see if it will clean up. nylon,brass, steel -depending on body material. if its aluminum i would start with brushes

[Loophole]

I would recommend polishing the internals before going down a drastic route like that.. Carters are also very temperamental when it comes to alignment. My Comp used to autotrigger on a forward pump stroke and feel extremely choppy if anything was slightly off.

Edit: After seeing the photos... scratch polishing the internals. Yikes! That is pretty rough

[Ecapnation]

The post retirement Carter's are.... Crappy, putting it bluntly. I had his prototype sterling like pump and it was ROUGH!

I've seen several others that are just terrible workmanship.

[Siress]

Huh. I was going to chalk it up to corrosion. You're saying it was the original condition?

[BlindFaith429]

I would just be careful with the grit size. With the body being aluminum, it won't take much to make that bore oversized if you go too aggressively.

Though, I'm sure you already knew that if you have experience with them. But it is worth stating again.

[Drcemento]

Some pics. Pretty sure from the weight the body tube is stainless. I’d say the photo exagerates it a little. It’s worse toward the back. When you slide the bolt back and forth in there it’s awful. I feel like if i could just smooth it out a little it would go a long way

[Siress]

That is some low quality machining. Might be best to bore it larger and sleeve it. Since it's SS, you could probably sleeve it in something like UHMW. It'd be slick as oiled butter.

edit: oh, and unless you have some 20 grit and up flex hones, I think you're just going to waste some expensive flex hones trying to smooth that out.

[Drcemento]

they make something like that? a uhmw sleeve - I've seen the tape, but a google doesnt show anything

[Siress]

No. It would be custom.

[Drcemento]

This Is the gun. Might recognize it from the FS section. Absolutely fell in love with it instantly. But definitely have to say pisspoor execution on some of the internals. Not sure if this is post retirement or just post dye? So much stupid little stuff. Spent an enjoyable day fixing up a bunch of odds and ends and fine tuning so i don’t mind to much, but for the price these command i would expect allot more.

[Ecapnation]

Typical cool looking but terribly made later Carter.

[Drcemento]

It’s interesting - even with this level of workmanship this thing fired up out of the box that the USPS looked like it had run over three times in the month it took to get to me and shot darts with a smoother pump stroke than any Nelson - or Sheridan based pump I’ve ever shot. the “roughness” is really just nitpicking and disappointment

Still Trying to figure out what to make of it. Will tune it up and tinker because that’s who I am and I can’t help myself. Will play with it for sure as i love the feel and weight and see what I think then.

[WORR13]

wonder if you could do a light cut with a boring bar?

[Siress]

The trick is not to use a boring bar... use a spade drill if taking off a lot of material, but for this application I think a reamer is a better option. Having more points of contact during the cutting operation helps to maintain straightness of the resultant cylindrical feature.

[Drcemento]

looking at it more I think the pics a little misleading. up toward the bolt and breach area its better, but you can feel the resistance at a couple points. I would not be trying to take down huge ridges that the photo makes it look like, which made me think flex hone. i have 120, 240 400 and 600. I'll give it a go tomorrow when they show up and take it slow i think it will make a big difference. worst case I'll call doc and have him make me a new one!

the bolt is almost as bad! spent some quality time with some 3M wet dry and got it nice and shiny

[BlindFaith429]

I wonder if you could do a burnish instead. Put it in a rotary tumbler with steel media and water. Smoth out some of the roughness but not remove any material (or at least not much).

[Drcemento]

my hones finally showed up today and I got to work. 15 minutes later - what a difference! I treaded pretty lightly and still it really took the ridges and roughness down big time but also did not feel like id expanded the ID at all. started with 120 grit and lots of honing oil ( motor oil - which would have been good to know before i paid to ship it) and worked through to 600 grit. still plenty of hone left on them as well

finally got it cleaned and put back together with all the other "fixes" and man its smooth as silk now. just the slightest friction when you really twist the pump arm but thats to be expected.

now to clean up the giant oil mess!

[SETHZILLA!]

We need an after pic!

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