The thought has occurred to me as well. I don't have access to a bore scope. But I checked out the serial numbers of the disaster rifles and compared it to mine, and mine is a much newer rifle with a far greater serial number. You'd think that for $1800 CDN, you'd get a rifle with a decent barrel, wouldn't you?
I have tested the rifle again, after fire lapping the bore yesterday morning. I loaded 50 rounds with 14 gr. Trail Boss and BACo's 459300 bullet: 15 rounds in pure lead, left over from the lapping exercise, and 35 bullets in B 12.1 alloy, about wheel weight hardness. After the first est with pure lead, I ran a dry patch through, and got no lead, then a patch wet with lead removing solution, and got the finest little dust of lead, but nothing like I had got previously. I then fired 15 more rounds at a new target, using the harder lead, and got a pretty decent target at 50 meters...less than 2" and in the black. So I continued to fire the rifle with these loads at 100 meters until I had shot off the entire 50 rounds without cleaning thoroughly. when I got home, I cleaned the bore, and again came up with some very fine lead dust, but nothing to write home about. The fire lapping certainly did polish the bore, and made a profound difference in both the accuracy, and the ease of cleaning.
More testing to follow...