Love the Montana bore solvent but it seems a 6 oz bottle will lose all of its ammonia in just a few months, even if the bottle is only opened briefly 4-5 times during that period - i.e., open it, wet a patch, immediately close it.
Montana's FAQ recommends against decanting it into a plastic bottle but I've been putting it in a 1 oz medicinal quality brown glass jar "UV protected amber glass surface". However, that still seems to lose the ammonia before the bottle is even half empty. The remaining solvent works okay for powder fouling so I've been using it to clean my revolvers that only see cast bullets.
Does even some light degrade the ammonia or is the only method of evaporation exposure to air? Anyone else decanting their Montana solvent and what are you using?
P.S. I sent this question in an email to Montana about five minutes before posting this but suspect I'll get a canned answer, no pun intended, so am widening my query parameters to the cognoscenti here.
Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery. Hit the target, all else is twaddle!
I have been using Montana X-Treme Bore Solvent for a few years. Have always transferred a little to a plastic squeeze bottle - maybe about 1/2 full which is probably two or three ounces - and keep the bulk in the original bottle. I was totally unaware of their recommendation to not do that! It does seem the ammonia smell is always stronger when I open the original container, but never put two and two together my method of use was an issue. I have been satisfied with the cleaning ability, even with my decanted plastic bottle, and like the fact it is safe to leave in the barrel for a while.
Interesting topic - makes me wonder if what I have been doing is working against me? I also quite often start with the Montana X-Treme Bore Solvent for a few cycles then patch out the barrel good and shift over to Wipeout and run it through a couple of cycles. Usually there's not much fouling left when I get to the Wipeout stage - at least based on the appearance of the patches. I mostly have well broken in barrels so getting them clean is not so difficult, but I reached a point where I don't clean barrels to the N'th degree like I used to do.
Great question, Jim - will be interesting to see what others have experienced.
Have never "decanted" Montana X-Treme into a plastic container, so dunno.
Got small-bottle samples years ago to try, and it worked very well, so I bought bigger bottles. I decant a little from the bigger bottles into the smaller bottles as needed, and have never noticed what you describe.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
I checked the bottles for air tightness by dunking a dry one in very hot water to see if it leaked bubbles and it passed the test. The larger 6 oz factory bottle I used to fill the current small glass jar was maybe a year or two old at the time and it's been in the small jar since January of this year so maybe that's an unfair test.
Just opened a new 6 oz factory bottle and one whiff about knocked me down. I'm going to half fill a fresh 1 oz glass jar and leave it, just try to check it on the first of each month. Can only go by the Mk I nasal analyzer to measure ammonia content but will see if/how much it degrades inside the bottle over time.
Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery. Hit the target, all else is twaddle!
I checked the bottles for air tightness by dunking a dry one in very hot water to see if it leaked bubbles and it passed the test. The larger 6 oz factory bottle I used to fill the current small glass jar was maybe a year or two old at the time and it's been in the small jar since January of this year so maybe that's an unfair test.
Just opened a new 6 oz factory bottle and one whiff about knocked me down. I'm going to half fill a fresh 1 oz glass jar and leave it, just try to check it on the first of each month. Can only go by the Mk I nasal analyzer to measure ammonia content but will see if/how much it degrades inside the bottle over time.
lol......I work around solvents often enough they don't normally bother me much. When I bought my first bottle of Extreme the label said "Caution Strong Oder". How bad can it be, I'm thinking to myself. Naturally I took a big whiff. Geeezuz H Khrist it 'bout knocked me down......
I "decant" Extreme 28 oz bottle into the empty Extreme 6 oz bottles, and when I use it I fill a little 3 oz plastic squeeze bottle. The stuff comes in spun aluminum bottles which tells me the solvent may be tough on plastic over time and besides most plastics allows moisture to pass through. Dealing with ethanol gasoline stored in plastic gas cans will demonstrate that.
So I wonder if in a high humidity environment it's not water that's diluting the Extreme?
I've never noticed a lesser pungency to Extreme that's been stored in a partly filled bottle here in Colorado.
Casey
Not being married to any particular political party sure makes it a lot easier to look at the world more objectively... Having said that, MAGA.
Dumb question: could a guy "refresh" an old bottle of ammonia-based solvent with a dab of Stronger Ammonia (if you can even buy the stuff anymore), or conversely, "hot rod" one's solvent by doing the same thing?
"You can lead a man to logic, but you cannot make him think." Joe Harz "Always certain, often right." Keith McCafferty
Thinking maybe my initial conclusions may have been skewed due to an old and already tainted sample.
Put some relatively fresh solvent in a new bottle last night and will look in on it every 30 days or so to see how it holds up. Can still use up the de-ammoniated stuff for the handguns - waste not, want not. Not much left of it anyway.
Gunnery, gunnery, gunnery. Hit the target, all else is twaddle!
After reading this thread I was curious so I just checked a half-full 6 oz. bottle of X-treme that I have had for at least 3 years, probably longer. I unscrewed the cap and took a whiff. Felt like fire shot up my nose and into my sinuses. So I'm going to go ahead and say that my sample has not deteriorated in the least.
I use both Bore Tech Eliminator and KG-12, but in my tests Copper Killer does it quicker and more thoroughly when I really, truly need to get rid of copper fouling quickly.
However, I have also mentioned in several places that I also firmly believe that bore cleaners can vary in effectiveness due to local environments, whether due to humidity, elevation, or whatever. They might even vary from batch to batch, perhaps as formulas evolve.
But those are my results--so far.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
For every day barrel cleaning I have found it tough to beat Bore Tech Eliminator, for badly copper fouled barrels Bore Tech CU+2 works a bit better but then I finish off with Eliminator. For a copper mine of a barrel I use a product that is no longer available called Copper Melt. To me ammonia based products no longer are useful either for gun cleaner or glass cleaner..........
Actually, what I have been doing more and more is not cleaning rifles at all, due to using decoppering powders, and so many of my rifles being treated with DBC Am trying to remember the last time I used any sort of copper solvent in a bore. Know I did sometime in the past year, but can't remember what rifle it was.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
