i cant help with the identification, but that looks beautifull and worthy of its own thread on the forum where others who can help will see it easier.

regards

The enemy revealed!
 

Interesting development. Whilst prepping for a try at the Coca-Cola method, I put the barrel muzzle-downwards so as to unscrew the tang. In doing so, I inadvertently deposited a small heap of dirt on the floor. Realising that this looked surprisingly like the stuff that keeps coming out on the end of my tools, I hastened to pour some more onto a handy sheet of card.

Thus, for the first time, I can see exactly what it is I'm fighting - what's causing this jam in the barrel. A predominantly greyish-white, fairly coarse powder, with many varied grains of all shapes, sizes and colours, this stuff appears to be responsive more to percussive action than any attempt at cutting. My hope is that, if this stuff is just highly compacted powder, it might be possible simply to break it up and then pour the whole shebang out.

However, my key question is this: what is it? Powder fouling? The remains of a lead ball? Some odd sort of corrosion? Any and all answers will be considered. Unless they suggest it's a mango. :D

Thanks lads!

Meredydd

From the pictures it looks like sand; I figure you've ruled that out though . :confused:

What happens when you wet the stuff ?

I don't think it's sand; if it is, it's both extraordinarily fine and extremely compacted where it's in the barrel. On the other hand, when moistened, it seems to coagulate very rapidly - just like sand, but also like most other powders I've come across. Doesn't appear especially hydrophobic, in other words, but I can't tell if it's any more hygroscopic than sand. See attached picture, taken fresh in the cardboard packaging roll-cum-petri dish ;)

The gun with bone inlay is modern work from Morocco, seen them a lot.

Finally tried the Coke trick, and it didn't make much impression. It sat down the barrel for seventeen hours (!) and in the end, the obstruction remains as hard as ever. I'm starting to wonder if it's time to admit defeat and get the thing to a gunsmith, though that would feel like a defeat.

OTOH, I could simply dry the barrel out as far as possible and then go back to trying to break it up. I think exposure to any sort of moisture is encouraging that powdery stuff to congeal into a hard-to-break mass; perhaps removing as much moisture as I can would help reduce it to its more powdery form.

Meredydd