Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Hard powder/carbon removal

The crown of my 17 fireball has been covered with hard carbon, it’s all ways been shot suppressed and has seen close to 2000 rounds. I normally use wipe out patch out and leave it for a couple overnight soaks each cleaning. The muzzle usually stays wet the whole time with it. It’s never come off. Till yesterday I put some clr on the muzzle and with some light brushing after 5 minutes it ate all of it off. Further I came back after letting it soak with patch out and the clr that soaked down my barrel adapter was shiny brand new looking and I never touched it.

I don’t care what some say CLR attacks carbon with ruthless power. While maybe not for barrels. It’s does have a place for carbon cleaning. Maybe an ar 15 bolt?

so cleaning my 22-250 my opinion on CLR is altered a little bit. I did my regular cleaning which is patch out and accelerator left over night. I did 3 different patch out reapply soaks after totaling 3 days. upon inspection the bore was cleaned of copper pretty good, but quite a bit of carbon still there. this barrel copper fouls the worst of any barrel I have. next I cleaned all the patch out with dry patches. I then soaked a brush in CLR and gave a few passes making sure the bore was pretty wet with it. bore still had some carbon but a little less. this time I let it soak for 15 minute's. did it again and let it sit for 30 minutes. a little less carbon this time.

then I broke out the kroil and JB. 25 in and out trips. pull patches,reapply JB and kroil then another 25. boom bore is shiny and pristine! I think the CLR works great for non hard carbon, like suppressors or things that aren't in the bore. backed on fire hardened carbon. quit dinking around and just grab the freakin JB!!!

The only downside to JB Compound is that continued use it can "smooth" some bores so much that they become too smooth, which can actually cause bores to copper-foul quicker. Which is why Dan Lilja recommends sparing use in his barrels.

I encountered this with a Sako .338 Winchester barrel, which copper-fouled so much that I started using JB to clean it, rather than some chemical cleaner. (Sako barrels tend to be pretty smooth, which can sometimes increase fouling, due to more bullet/bore contact.) That barrel would only group well for about 20 rounds before groups opened up, at which point the bore looked copper-plated.

I was about to rebarrel the rifle, but luckily DBC appeared about then, and that was the first barrel I used it in. Which reduced the cleaning interval from 20 to 75-80 rounds.

Here’s a pic of my KIDD .22 chamber area. It gets a fair amount of rounds and I’d estimate it’s been maybe 5k since I last paid attention to the carbon ring.

In the past I’ve just used a bronze brush bent to a 90 degree angle to attack the chamber with some hoppes, but maybe this time I’ll try a soak in kroil first.

The nature of the action doesn’t really allow for many scrubbing options

let us know what you find that gets rid of that. everytime I clean a rimfire other than just for function, mainly action cleaning. I normally regret it. my 10-22 has a kid barrel and the chamber is pretty tight and usually leads to quite a few stuck cases unless its pretty clean which is very annoying to me, as a result I seldom shoot the gun. I am more likely to grab my 94/22 because I know its going to feed, fire and shoot with no fanfare.

Naptha is a good cleaner for removing carbon . I used it for cleaning all the crud out of weld guns and it really works well by applying it and letting it soak for a hour or so . All carbon and weld boogers come off easily with out brushing . You have to use it in a well vented area and use rubber gloves and eye protection . Stuff is highly flammable so you have to be careful with its use but beats the hell out working your ass off to do a simple job .

played around with some carb out today, blaser r8 barrel and my 243 ai. did my regular overnight soak with foaming wipe out. dry patched all that this morning, then applied carb about, couple wet patches then some wet bronze brush strokes about 5 or 6. let barrel soak for an hour or so. it doesn't help to soak too long because the carb out flashes off with the solvent carrier. came back again bronze brush, then dry patches. noticed some pretty darn black shat. repeated again with another hour soak. I found that using a very oversized bronze brush seemed to really help big time, however not a forced brush push. after the second soak. patched out, and the bores came out almost as good as JB bore paste. Certainly way way better than just soaking with wipeout.

in the future I will probably add a carb out soak after using wipeout. however probably just 1 soak. Then use JB probably every other clean instead of the carb out. basically just alternate. the carb out is pretty dang messy and hard to keep from getting the cleaning area dirty.

Dunno if you're referring to using JB Compound as "working your ass off," but I did a lot of experimenting with various cleaning methods when Dyna-Tek Bore Coat appeared, to find what was the easiest, surest way to get a bore down to bare steel--required for DBC installation. Very few shooters owned a bore-scope back then....

Turned out 20 back-and-forth strokes with a bronze brush wrapped in a cotton patch and slathered with JB Compound did the trick more consistently than several other methods tried. And that doesn't require working your ass off....

Cleaned a factory 7 Mag today. Started yesterday with my normal process and patches were still coming out dirty today. Decided to scope it.

Lots of carbon in the barrel and there was a really black ring at the end of the chamber right in front of the case mouth. Didn’t take “before” pics.

JB’d the carbon ring first with a bronze brush and patch on a drill. It worked well. Then went at the barrel with a brush wrapped in a JB’d patch.


End of the chamber




Still some carbon a couple of inches in front of the chamber, but not too bad




Most of the barrel looks like this, so I called it good

I agree on the JB being the fool proof way. I find that I need to do that twice to get it all out, after the first 20-30 in and outs I have about 80% of it clean, the last 20% comes out with the second treatment. I use JB and kroil. maybe they named that stuff after you mule deer?

so if you said f' it and just did JB everytime you cleaned, say after every 100 rounds. is that going to damage the barrel over its life of say 2500 rounds? I think a JB clean is something everyone should do and really has to do at some point during a barrels life, I typically do it after 300ish rounds and do the wipe out foam cleans in between on average with my custom barrels.

I use JB every single time I clean my guns, whether they have 20 or 200 rounds down the bore, including my match barrels. My last 6 Dasher barrel had over 2600 rounds on it before it got retired.

I've shot moly plated bullets in absolutely everything I shoot, and I can clean a barrel in 10-15 minutes tops, no matter the round count. I use nothing more than Bore Tech Eliminator on a nylon brush, and JB on an undersized brush wrapped with a patch. I haven't used a brass brush in the bore in years.

The gyrations and calisthenics guys go through to clean their barrels boggles my mind.......

I have always cleaned rifles by the adage that you never want more brushes than bullets to go through the bore. If I shoot a rifle three-five times during hunting season (counting checking the zero before opening day), then I am going to put a drop of clp on the brush, run it through 2-3 times, and then push tight-wadded paper towel pellets through it 5-6 times. Most rifle bores will come out clean after that.

For black powder or corrosive military ammo, warm soap and water always did the trick. Then let it dry and run a lightly oiled patch through it a couple of times.

For my service rifle, it took a bit longer because I normally fired more rounds in a sitting and my officer-ass had to get it past a Lance Corporal with a tiny bit of power, but even then the bore was the easiest part to clean.

I’ve never even considered soaking a rifle overnight.

Listen at 4:30 in the first video about Methyl Isobutyl Ketone. The second link is JB vs CLR vs Free All.

If you’re cleaning your rifles after 3 to 5 rounds, please get a therapist

🤣

I'm not going to leave the rifle dirty for 11 months after hunting season.

freeall works very similar to guess what Kriol ..
um.... and the bronze brush well well

3 to 5 rounds barely gets enough fouling back into a barrel for it to start grouping well after cleaning

If you shoot a clean barrel 5 times and put it away for 11 months, what bad do you think happens?

Q_Sertorious,


I'm also interested in your answer to this question....

You know , I just thought I would pass along a tip to make cleaning easy . I did not refer to JB or anything else .

I hear 'ya.....