How to strike the barrels on a shotgun

Striking the barrels is the name for a process of filing and sanding shotgun barrels to remove heavy pitting and scratching. This is done before the final polishing process. In this GunTec demonstration, Larry Potterfield of MidwayUSA strikes the barrels on an old Parker Brothers shotgun. It is important to use a variety of backers during this process so that the curves and lines of the metal are unchanged. The use of shaped backers also help to maintain a large amount of contact area between the abrasive and the metal. Heavy pitting or nicks are removed using a smooth, chalked file and then followed with another pass from the cloth backed abrasive.