Over the last 25 years I have bought and sold a fair number of single shot 22's being conservative lets say 2 a year. In that time I have had Winchesters, Remington's, Hopkins & Allen, Stevens and a couple others.  I have never had a Stevens with a nice bore, the others run about 50/50. I wonder if for some reason shooters neglected the Stevens more than others or were they just shot a whole bunch more? To this day with the favorite that came my way last week , 85% barrel blue, 70% case, nice wood with a bubbad screw or two and a sewer pipe bore!

Marlinguy makes a good point. Low end guns tend to not be as well cared for but as always there are exceptions on both ends of the spectrum. Usually a good exterior indicates a good bore and a crappy bore would indicate a crappy bore but again not always. I have given up trying to figure out what happened in a guns history and why it happened. Same old thing. If only they could talk. I have some boys rifles with mint bores and some high end models with less than pristine bores. Go figure. Most of what I have are Stevens and I am still trying to figure it out.

Don't forget that boy's guns were owned and shot by boys. Most young kids who's parents bought them an inexpensive boy's gun didn't supervise them on cleaning. Often those guns sat in a corner so they were handy. No worries about cleaning the bores after shooting, so the old corrosive powder and primers took their toll on them. I doubt anyone back then ever imagined that over 100 years later we'd be interested in also enjoying their old .22!