By Art Merrill | Contributing Editor
Lyman’s Borecam is affordable and simple to use
They say there’s greater joy in giving than in receiving, so why not give someone the opportunity of experiencing the great joy of giving you a really cool and different holiday gift this season?
The Lyman Borecam with Digital Monitor might have been my choice for Coolest New Product of the Year when I first saw it at SHOT Show 2014, but I couldn’t get one to review because they flew off of Lyman’s shelves so quickly. Incredibly, it was the same all through 2015. In mid-2016 Lyman finally shipped me a Borecam to play with – I mean, to test and evaluate – so I now present you with, “2016’s Coolest New Product of 2014.”
Curiosity simplified
One-eighth inch graduations mark the depth of the camera into the bore
What makes this borescope so interesting is that it allows us to peer where we’ve never directly peered before, at a price that isn’t prohibitive for satisfying curiosity and conducting diagnostics. Even better, in a world of ever more complex electronic devices, the digital tech Borecam is remarkably simple to operate because it’s obviously designed for those who fondly remember rotary dial phones:
Step 1. Turn Borecam on; Step 2. Insert borescope into bore; Step 3. Look at display
We might also include:
Step 4. Reread instructions on how to clean your bore
…but we’ll get to that.
What you get
The monitor permits viewing and downloading a photo onto an included SD card
The heart of the Borecam kit is the borescope and the display, interconnected with standard cables and powered by standard house current through a standard step-down power adaptor that plugs into your standard wall outlet in the standard way. The kit includes non-standard funky adaptors to plug into foreign power outlets in case you want to look at bores in France, Fiji or the Philippines.
Because the Borecam has the capability of capturing photos, an SD card and card reader that plugs into a computer’s USB port are also in the kit. Lyman thoughtfully included lens cleaning solution and cotton swabs, which are, respectively, useful and useless for cleaning the borescope’s mirror, which must be spotless to work well. The cleaning solution is fine but the swabs are A.) too large to reach the mirror and B.) leave behind bits of image-blocking cotton when you try. It’s best to use a regular lens cleaning cloth (or brush) if a squirt of “canned air” doesn’t work.
The borescope will fit into bores as small as .20 caliber, making the borescope “wand” appear necessarily fragile – that is, prone to bend if treated roughly. It apparently has a small digital camera in the handle, which picks up images via the mirror 20 inches further down the wand. Because we want to precisely locate the area of interest in the bore, the borescope wand has one-eighth inch graduation marks from the mirror to the handle/camera housing, and the latter has the legend “Lens” on one side to indicate the mirror’s orientation.
The camera lens has an infinite focus, which means that whatever we are viewing remains in focus no matter its distance from the mirror. This is a big help when using the borescope in larger bores where the slim wand has lots of room to wriggle about. A sliding synthetic collar at the handle aids somewhat in steadying the wand; it fits readily into a .50 caliber bore but really doesn’t perform well in smaller bores. Its real purpose appears to be to record or find again a specific spot in the bore by holding the area of interest in the image and sliding the collar along the wand’s graduation marks until it touched the muzzle, thus marking the spot.
A universal, tapered plastic muzzle protector from my gun cleaning kit worked better for steadying the wand and image, but it’s still a minor challenge to hold the wand still with one hand while trying to press the CAPTURE button for a photo with the other.
The display is totally adequate for viewing the bore, but photo resolution is comparatively low. This means that, while we can download photos to display on a computer, we can’t enlarge them or “zoom in” for a closure look because all we get is magnified pixels. That is perhaps picking too many nits but it warrants mention because that’s what I’m paid to do here and I like to be thorough and you don’t want any unexpected disappointments.
What you see
An integral camera light has three different settings.
The first thing you’ll do with the Borecam, of course, is to see how well you’ve been cleaning your bores. You may or may not be surprised. With one exception I’m pleased with my own examinations, and because I still possess the US Navy’s overboard obsessiveness with cleanliness, I immediately re-cleaned that offending exception – but I decline to assign myself a punitive extra midwatch for my original shortcoming.
Herein is a bonafide usefulness for the Borecam: evaluating both our cleaning methods and the claims of those who market us their bore cleaners. I discovered one solvent maker’s claims for dissolving copper bullet jacket material to be, shall we say, a wee bit exaggerated.
Similarly, we can perform a visual QA on the bores of new guns, and we can more closely evaluate those of second-hand guns. That said, we must now educate ourselves on understanding the ramifications of what we are seeing because a few imperfections don’t necessarily condemn a barrel. We’ve all seen “dark” bores shoot just fine. Therein lies the beauty of the photo capture feature, allowing us to share our questions with more knowledgeable others.
For handloaders, the Borecam can identify or eliminate the bore or leade as the source of accuracy problems. It permits an exacting examination of suspected muzzle wear and dings. We can also satisfy our curiosity regarding the interiors of empty cartridge cases and the interior condition of reloading dies. Other uses are limited only by the imagination.
Free Borecam
I found Borecam real-world retail prices spread across the economic map between $209 to $300, but you can have one for free if you play your cards right. The Borecam is an easy holiday gift for even the non-shooter to give because it isn’t caliber-specific and there’s no government red tape involved in purchasing it. To receive yours, leave this magazine page lying open in a prominent place and draw a big red circle around this:
The Lyman Borecam is available through amazon.com and at midway.com and cabelas.com. But, of course, support your local Mom & Pop store first.
Remember to act surprised when you open it.
