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

I posted this on the 'Teslong' thread but thought it might be interesting enough to follow on it's own. Or maybe not. Anyway.....

This is a barrel with some hard powder/carbon that's accumulated in the space between the end of the chamber neck portion and the end of the case mouth that needs to be removed.

The first pic is the area after being cleaned normally. The hard powder is the dark band on the lower right. The grey area ahead of it is the 45 degree bevel as the chamber neck transitions to the throat/free bore/leade area. You can see that that bevel has been well cleaned by the normal cleaning process. The angle makes that bevel appear quite a bit wider than it really is.



To get after the hard powder, I use a bronze brush that's one caliber larger that the bore size. This is a .30, so a .338 brush is used. The brush goes on a short pistol cleaning rod and the leading edge of the brush is loaded with JB Bore Paste. The brush is gently inserted until you feel it stop at the end of the neck. Mark the cleaning rod to keep it in this spot. Make 10-12 complete turns of the brush in a clockwise direction. Watch the mark you made and make sure you're not shoving the brush into the bore. Remove the brush using a clockwise rotation. Clean the chamber with a bore mop and push a wet patch down the barrel followed by a dry one. Check your progress via the Teslong. Depending on what you see, you can adjust how many rotations of the brush you give it. About 30 is where the JB breaks down and gets less effective. Clean the brush with some spray brake cleaner, etc. Repeat as needed until it's gone.

Second pic is done as described. After 12 turns, the hard powder is already about half gone.



How much a barrel is going to need depends on a lot of things. The amount of gap between the end of the case neck and the end of the chamber is the primary factor followed by neck clearance. Obviously a chamber with .008 neck clearance is going to load the area quite a bit more than a chamber with .003 neck clearance. Add in case volume and powder characteristics and it's easy how some combinations can get to be a mess in this area. The combination of big case volume, large neck clearance, necks way to short for the chamber and bunch of slower burning power and lower charge weights is about the worst.

Good shootin' -Al

Al,

Is there any difference in accuracy, pre vs post treatment?

My question, is this strictly a borescope issue or a functional issue?

Asking for a friend, don’t ya know.

DF

Al,
Do you use any of the carbon remover products prior to the JB Compound?

Good info Al, thanks for posting.

It can be both...depends.

I load for a buddy that has a sporter barrel M77 in 25-06. He's a hunter...not a range guy except to sight it in before hunting season. He's horrible about cleaning so once a year, it finds it's way to my place for a good cleaning and reloading of ammo. The last time, I stuck a new Nosler 100 gr. BTip in the neck of a fired case...and it wouldn't go in. With a 10X loupe, you could see the neck was pulled in right at the very end. The Hawkeye bore scope confirmed a huge amount of hard powder at the very end of the neck area of the case...enough to prevent complete expansion of the neck when firing. I treated it with a 6.5 brush and after some effort it was clean. Fired cases would then let a bullet drop right in.

Good shootin' -Al

Awesome info!!! I do this every 300 rounds. Would it be more beneficial to do this everytime?

Thanks Al

No, I don't. I end up going in there with JB or a brush, anyway. Iosso also works. It's a bit more aggressive than JB but it does a nice job. The beauty of JB is that it breaks down and you can't really do any harm.

Good shootin' -Al

It really depends on the individual situation.

Interestingly, I've found that if there's any left at all, the resulting accumulation happens much faster than when it's cleaned to bare steel. I think the burned powder 'grabs' on to the remnants of the hard powder and builds on top of it. That's not to say that hard powder accumulates in a nice even thickness once the metal is completely clean to start with...far from it. But it's worse when any remaining bits aren't completely removed.

Putting a case in the chamber and observing what's going on right at the end of the neck area can be most revealing.

Good shootin' -Al

Al- what is your take on the Sinclair Chamber Length Gages and potentially letting cases exceed book max lengths in? Thank you.

Just treated it again with 20 spins. This is the same area...coming along nicely.



Good shootin' -Al

Good info, Al.

Thanks for posting.

DF

I use them all the time....every hand loader should have them. Finding your chambers actually length, is very important. Once you know that, the case can be trimmed accordingly. For example, I have a Savage single shot 112J in 25-06 with the factory barrel. The actual chamber length is .040 longer than the max. length per SAMMI. When I got it, there was so much hard powder in the end of the chamber....didn't think I'd ever get it all out! I just let the necks grow to fit the chamber. Even on a custom chamber, it's good to know and not trust the chamber length to the reamer specs. Jot down the length after checking it and toss it in the die box or your ammo box for reference.

I load for stuff from hunting rigs to competition guns....here's a few of the ones I use. You can also have the reamer used on a custom build put into a piece of aluminum round and mill half of it away. This gives a very good visual of where the neck is at.

Good shootin' -Al

Thank you for this thread. I had this issue with a tight-chambered 300WM that I shot a lot. Erratic pressure/accuracy left be chasing my tail until I realized that the mouth of the cases were being crimped upon firing. Pushing a bullet in a fired case was a tight fit. I'm sure trimming to minimum case length was a contributing factor. At the time I thought I would be helping the problem, did not realize hard carbon build-up was a thing. Coming at the problem from a novice standpoint, it took me quite a while (and finally a Teslong borescope) to diagnose and cure. I finally fixed it by the same method after trying others. JB or Iosso and a brush one size over was the cure. I was not able to find a lot of info on this issue online - this is the first I have seen in explained well.

All better now. The line you see is a bronze brush bristle.

This one took me 10 sessions to get cleaned up....the last bits were stubborn. It's a used gun I just purchased and I doubt it's ever been done before. Hard to say how many rounds down the barrel. It's a small capacity .30 (30BR) with a .330 neck and necks that measure .328 across the pressure ring. With H4198 at around 65,000 PSI, it's about as clean burning and efficient setup that there is. It's probably the Best Case scenario...which is another reason I thought it may be of interest.

The rate of build up and amount in something like this will be quite a bit less than a big cased deal with a bunch of charcoal in there for powder and big neck clearances.

I'd add that if you do this, don't grab your cordless Dewalt and decide to spin the beejeezus out of the brush to get it done quicker. JB breaks down rapidly and all you'll do is reduce the JB on the brush to a big blop of grease and wonder why you're not making progress. The grease is the carrier for the diatomaceous earth that's the abrasive medium in JB. Can't speak to Iosso.

During this, I also tested some carbon treatment that's supposed to magically dissolve carbon. To believe the adds for this stuff, it'll make your 401K healthier, butter your toast and you'll never have to balance your checkbook again. The best I can say is that I liked the smell as I'm a citrus guy. Shooters raving about this product clearly have no means to check their work. It's on the shelf along with all the other carbon killer miracles.

Abrasives are what works for hard powder fouling. Period.

Good shootin' -Al

Now I'm going to have to pull out the Teslong and do some checking.
Thanks for posting this.

Doesn’t Lou Murdica say somewhere that he uses Iosso on a brush powered by a drill?

Tag

Yes, he does. Not sure what he's using for a brush, etc.

Thanks Al much appreciated! It's an important topic that rarely gets covered

Trystan

the chamber length gauges I think are great. it's of my opinion the more brass fills the chamber the less area there is to get carbon filled..

There are some YouTubers using CLR to remove carbon from their firearms, most that I have seen are using it on SS. I tried it on a Ruger American that I had, that I thought that I got all of it out of the barrel, but 1 drip ran down the crown and hung onto the bottom of the barrel, while it was it a cleaning cradle. Bore Tech makes a Carbon Remover that I've had no problems with, that I use with the Bore Tech Eliminator.

I've tried the CLR several times on hard powder build up. Per both Hawkeye and Teslong bore scopes, it's no more or less effective than any other liquid.

Good shootin' -Al

Welllllll, not exactly. You ever clean out a suppressor with "any other liquid?" There's nothing that I've found that will cut the baked on carbon in a suppressor better than CLR. I plug the aperture of the can and fill it up with CLR and the caked on carbon boils out of there like a volcano. It will also remove carbon deposits from the crown of the barrel quite effectively. The best, and least time consuming, way that I've found to remove the carbon ring in the chamber neck is to wet a patch with CLR and push it into the neck area and let it set for 15 minutes. You won't need to try 3 or 4 times with JB or Iosso to get it out. The CLR softens the ring to the point that one application of Iosso and it's gone.

The powder build up in a suppressor or on the crown is much different from the flame hardened deposits at the end of the neck area or the proximal portion of the throat. Slip 2000 Carbon Killer or a 4:1 solution of Simple Green Concentrate in an ultra sonic cleaner does a nice job, too. No doubt there are tons of good cleaners for that type of build up.



Respectfully, that just hasn't been my experience with it. Also, CLR is an acid very similar to muratic acid (hydrocloric acid)....not something I'm interested in putting into my barrels even in a very controlled situation.

Are you using a Teslong or a Hawkeye?

Good shootin' -Al

Both

Maybe your carbon is bigger and badder than my carbon. I took the carbon ring out of my .223 AI dog gun last week. It had seen 2000+ rounds in the dog towns so I doubt it gets any more stubborn or hard that that one. One patch of CLR and one patch of Iosso and it was gone. When CLR first came into the scene, I tested it on a polished neck and throat gauge to see if it would etch the steel. I left that piece in there for a week and it didn’t do anything to it at all. I’m certainly not a big fan of the stuff (I don’t use it to clean barrels) but it does work, and work very well, for certain applications.

What does "CLR" stand for?

Calcuim, Lime and Rust

A household cleaning product.

I'm going to revisit CLR again on another barrel in the next few days.

Good shootin' -Al

I made the mistake of soaking a Ruger Stainless Blackhawk cylinder that had a lot of 25 year-old carbon build-up in it in a jar of CLR. It etched the finish of the cylinder pretty badly. I would not put it in a rifle's bore. I had seen a video of a guy using it in the same manner to remove carbon from a stainless muzzle brake and figured it would be good for the cylinder. Wish I hadn't done it.

Rex

Al
I've had my issues with bronze brushes.
For hard carbon I've switched to this.
https://www.bulletcentral.com/product/thorroclean-bore-cleaning-system/.
Using the isso nylon brushes.
Dave.

I've heard some good things about Thorroclean. It's actually the Iosso abrasive suspended in a liquid carrier....not a bad idea. No doubt that when you start from clean, it's easier to keep ahead of it with some of the products out there.

I've got some coming from Chris to try.

Good shootin' -Al

I don't know how to post pictures on this site but I could show you a stainless muzzle brake / tuner that was severely etched by CLR. That stuff isn't going in any of my barrels

The stainless barrel I'm going to try it in is well over the hill for life so it's a good candidate. I'm going to test it on some new barrel muzzle cut offs first. Picked up a fresh jug of it this morning s as not to skew results with the old stuff on my shelf.

Good shootin' -Al

Has anyone here tried Witches Brew on hard carbon? It has been very effective for me.

Al, I sure do appreciate the excellent information you provide when you post here at the 'fire. You're a good man. Not to mention a South Dakotan, which is an extra notch higher. (I'm now in exile in Iowa, but the deer hunting is pretty good)

Al,
Good stuff there. Has anyone tried Free-All penetrating oil to break down carbon. Guys on other boards swear by it.

Great info AL and thanks for sharing!

I believe a blue iosso brush.

CRC GDI intake valve cleaner removes carbon very well. This stuff is sold for removing the carbon that builds up on the intake valves of direct injected engines.

This guy knows of what he speaks.

CLR is Top Dog when it comes to carbon removal.


I have soaked 17-4 SS for a week in CLR with no ill effects as have many others.

For barrel cleaning the stuff works so fast on the carbon ring I don't see how it could hurt a bore.

Those in the Know have been using CLR for years.

I've seen some gun chiefs use regular coke (soda type) to clean the carbon off their muzzle breaks on their M109A3's.

When I chamber a barrel, I run the reamer into the barrel stub for an exact copy of the chanber for that reamer/barrel.

I've been following Speedy Gonzales' process lately:

Someone mentioned simple green and an ultrasonic cleaner. I've found this to be an extremely effective method of cleaning components BUT I've also had it completely removed the finish from a few guns/components. A surplus CZ-75 looked like it was made from stainless steel once I pulled it out of the cleaner-- I ended up nitriding the entire gun. The aluminum cylinder on my father-in-law's .22 revolver was completely devoid of finish after 30 minutes in the solution. Be careful what you use it on!

I use Simple Green a lot in the ultrasonic cleaner with either a 4:1 or 5:1 water mix. Some metals and coatings do act strange, for sure. Some aluminum parts will blacken, too. I've purposely done that and clear coated afterwards.

I ran my CLR test on 4 stainless barrell stubs from 4 different barrel makers. And CLR'd a barrel with a hard carbon ring in it. Based on that, I'll stick to what I'm doing for a safe and effective way to remove hard carbon in the throat/neck area.

Normal carbon deposits in a brake, suppressor or tuner are a different matter than the hard build up being discussed. Countless cleaners will do a nice job for that.

Good shootin' -Al

I'm a fan of Seafoam in an engine with carbon build-up. I've always wondered if plugging a bore and filling it up with Seafoam would help soften/remove carbon. Anyone ever given this a try?

I use the aerosol version of seafoam for my regular carbon cleaner on patches. It works well for me.
F01

I completely etched a stainless tuner off one of my benchrest rifles using CLR. Be careful with that stuff.

Need some help with these bore scope pics, please

First two are pre pics that I felt were hard carbon. Used your method and the last two are post.

What I felt was hard carbon is gone, but what is the rough area by the arrow in the 4 th pic?

The orientation of the images changes but use the longitudinal crack to orient.

This is a Ruger 77 MKII, 7x57 that I bought used around 25 years ago and has never been a great shooter. It had a glassed pressure point at the tip of the stock. Getting back around to it and free floated the barrel, floated the mag box, tightened it up to Ruger spec and got that carbon ring out I think. Hopefully, it will shot better!

Thanks

have ruffled a lot of feathers lately with my recommendations of soaking in kroil oil and then scrubbing heartily with the bronze brush work for me.


with some people got all butt hurt about that but I also have a borescope and watch what work after I already tried many products..
yet I'm not brave or stupid enough to run CLR or other [bleep] like that through it.. a highly recommended product that I did not use or try it was Boretec eliminator.. might be worth a shot ..

Fixed pics! Old dog, new tricks…

That's just normal cracking that occurs...even with very low round count. That area is also prone to discoloration that can't be treated with an abrasive to look like new. No worries with either one.

Good shootin' -Al

Yep, I have seen that sort of cracking in as few as a couple hundred shots in a .223 used for prairie dog shooting.

That said, when groups start to open up in a PD rifle that's been cleaned, I have semi-restored 'em by firing a few bore-lapping bullets to smooth the surface of the cracks. Which is another place where a bore-scope comes in handy: You only want to fire just enough shots to smooth the cracks, no more....

John, there's a NECO lapping kit here I've used in the past in that same situation. A Ruger 77 in 25-06 really benefitted from it.

Good shootin' -Al

Thanks, wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

Yep, the NECO kit is what I've used for quite a while. David Tubbs' Final Finish bullets also work, but are more expensive--and with the NECO and a bore-scope you only have to make enough bullets to get the job done.

John

A note on hard carbon rings in the throats of some barrels:

Briefly, if you have a deposit of carbon and if you subject it to sufficiently high temperatures and pressures, you can wind up with diamond, which is pretty hard.

Google says the required temperature to create diamond is 900 to 1300C, which is less than the temperature of burning smokeless powder in a cartridge (about 1550-1850C). Required pressure to form diamonds is 650,000 - 850,000 psi. This is about 10 times greater than the pressures rifles develop as the bullet passes through the chamber throat.

So, while the hard carbon ring in a barrel throat is far from diamond, under some throat pressures and temperatures it can become really hard compared to other carbon deposits on the rifle.

I recall reports in Precision Shooting magazine in the early 1990s about the results of firing Shilen's 6mm Sabre cartridge. Along with really high velocities, there were descriptions of the formation of hard carbon deposits in the throat. In the 1993(?) report in Guns & Ammo of development of his 6mm Mach IV, Ross Seyfried told of the formation of the hard carbon ring, and of using regular cleaning with J-B abrasive cleaner to minimize it. (Note: J-B's abrasive is synthetic sapphire.)

--Bob

Doesn;t bother me none. I've got two long neglected bores hanging up soaking in Kroil overnight.

Al, being i the high performance auto business, have you seen or used the original GM TEC? I bought several cans when it was discontinued for possible cancer concerns. It was designed as a combustion chamber carbon cleaner. I mix it with white ammonia and Kroil for my barrel cleaning solvent. A fellow did an exhaustive test of several cleaners and found it to be best.
PM if you want a can.

Not true. JB uses Almadine and Pyrope Garnet sand. Commonly used in sand blasting.

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.....

Carbon Tetyracloride is also a good carbon remover but must be used with extreme care as it is highly toxic . We used it in a clean room for removing carbon from robotic welding machines . Extremely fast stuff .

That's something to think about. So bear with me while I think about why I do it that way.

I have never noticed an issue with grouping being bad from a clean rifle, or better with a dirty rifle. I've always counted on the first shot from a cold clean rifle to go where I want it to. Just as I have counted on the 20th shot to go where I want it to. But somewhere along the way, it makes sense to me that it needs cleaning every so often. How often do you recommend cleaning the bore on a hunting rifle?

With modern powders and primers, I guess it doesn't really matter as much as it did back in the days of black powder and then corrosive priming. I've always had a ritual where at the end of the hunting season, I clean the bore on any rifle I fired, wipe it down with a light coat of CLP, apply some beeswax to the stock, some mink oil to the sling, and put it away until I get the opportunity to use it again. Maybe the people who taught me to do it that way - my father and grandfather - grew up in a different era? Or themselves were trained to do so by people who grew up in a different era?

A lot of the centerfire ammo I shot as a kid was cheap military surplus with corrosive primers. Obviously, you had to clean them pretty much instantly or they would rust. I got quite a lesson in that after waiting a day to clean my GEW98. The whole bore was a disgusting orange color that would have gotten me in trouble if anyone else had seen it. Otherwise, centerfire ammo was a relatively expensive item that we used carefully. I don't recall many times where I fired my .270 or .25-06 at something that wasn't living, unless it was during initial sight in or working up a new handload. In my late teens, while working as a farmhand on the family farm, I carried a rifle almost every day and used it almost every day. Many, many groundhogs died in between replacing mower teeth or fixing barbed wire fences or other routine farm work. At that time, unless I was using corrosive ammo, I didn't clean the bore that often because I knew I probably use it again the next day. But I would check it to make sure it was functionally clean. And I definitely cleaned the bore before I went back to school for the year.

My .22LR would get pretty gunky and unreliable if I didn't keep it clean, but I shot a lot more .22 LR in a sitting than I did everything else. And rimfires can get filthy fast.

The military further drilled into me to keep my weapons clean and well-maintained, but again, the volume of fire in a given day was usually much higher. My rifle started each day on the range with a clean bore and ended each day on the range with a clean bore. And that never hurt my accuracy one bit as far as I could tell. And I sure as hell didn't suffer the embarrassment of having my rifle jam up during the 300-rapid fire on qualification day and giving some [bleep] Staff Sergeant the satisfaction of pointing out how nasty and undisciplined I was... I watched that happen to more than one butter bar who had been told it was bad luck or unnecessary to clean your rifle during qualification week. In combat situations, we focused on keeping our rifles functionally clean, but we always fully cleaned them before they went into the armory. And I guess that is how I view putting my rifle away at the end of the hunting season? I guess it's that dread that I left something in or on the rifle that would result in that damning spot of red?

I am curious what harm you see in cleaning the rifle bore once a year? And again, how often do you recommend cleaning the bore?

Don't know what Rick's answer will be, but here's mine:

I suspected you might be one of the victims of older "wisdom" about having to clean bores constantly, due to corrosive primers or whatever. (Those primers have generally not been used since the 1930s.)

About the worst thing that can happen today if you don't clean your rifle after hunting season can occur in a damp climate. If so, atmospheric moisture can creep under any copper-fouling, and result in pitting the bore. This can especially occur if they're stored in a basement--which is where my safe is, but in dry Montana it doesn't matter.

But this possibility is easily prevented by using a cotton patch to apply a little "gun oil" to the bore. This can be removed the next year before hunting season by (1) shooting a round or (2) a tight cotton patch.

As for rimfires, yeah, it can help to clean .22s now and then, especially if target shooting. But in general for hunting use cleaning isn't much use, and can actually result in larger groups.

In this part of the West a lot of rimfire ammo is expended on ground squirrels for about half the year, due to the damage they do to crops and pastures. High-velocity .22 Long Rifle hollow-points were pretty much standard when I started doing this decades ago, because they were cheap. As a matter of fact even into the 1980s some farmers and ranchers would buy ammo for those folks who shot ground squirrels, usually the lowest-priced of course.

But there are far superior rimfire loads for the purpose today, especially the .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire (HMR), which gets 2650-2850 fps with a 17-grain bullet, depending on the load. Have been using it since 2002 in a CZ 452, and long ago "discovered" that any time I cleaned the barrel, groups opened up over an inch from the typical 5-shot half-inch groups the rifle shoots. After 10-15 rounds the groups shrank again--and since I saw this twice during the rifle's first 1000 rounds, I quit cleaning it. It still groups five in 1/2" 15 years later. My wife's more recent Ruger American .17 HMR does the same thing.

Yet I ran into a retired guy a few months ago who cleans his .17 HMR after every time he fires it. I commented that I don't clean rifles until they need cleaning, which resulted in a slight contracting of his eyebrows--apparently because he also apparently grew up under the influence of older hunters who believe what you do.

Exactly.

Some are infatuated with cleaning rifles to the point of ruining the barrel

A clean, cold bore shot rarely goes into the group

IME, it takes a few shots after cleaning for the rifle to consistently group.

As far as the member who asked, I recommend cleaning to bare metal then firing at least 5 rounds before hunting

I shot 15 after JB-ing. It grouped after one round. I made one sight adjustment after 8 rounds and called it good then went to 1000 yards and made a first round impact in 20mph wind. 2 1/4 mils of wind

BTW, don’t clean again until you notice groups opening up


👍🏼

The cleaning mania is most often produced by a disassociation from, or fear of, the elements of fire and brimstone that are the non-socially subjugated animus of the firearm

Thank you for the thoughtful replies.

I will note that there is still a fair amount of cheap military surplus ammo out there with corrosive priming. Many countries used it well into the 1950s and that ammo is still available. My brothers and I got Egyptian surplus 8mm Mauser for about $.01 per round in 1998. Last time I checked we still had ~400 rounds of it. I don’t shoot it anymore, but I assume there are those who do. There are also huge quantities of corrosively-primed Russian 7.62x54R and 7.62x39 still around. I remember getting a Mosin-Nagant and 200-rounds of ammo for $29.99 ca. 1998. I was super excited about that until I had the clean the damn thing every time we went out to shoot rocks with it.

I’ll also add that in a place that has 80-100% humidity at least half the year, cleaning and lightly lubricating the bore once a year is hardly going to do more harm than good. Obviously, one can overdo it, but there cannot be any positive effect for the gun to have a dirty vs clean (and lightly oiled) bore while it is in storage.

I also remain skeptical about the effects of a clean barrel on first round accuracy. I have heard it used as an excuse for why someone missed, but I guess I should test that scientifically. Or maybe I’ll look for some reliable data on it and try to understand the science behind it.

But, again, I appreciate the thoughtful replies.

For corrosive primers a couple patches of Windex takes care of the priming salts and finished with an oily patch is all I have done with my M/S 91/30.

That’s one I have never heard or tried! Thanks!

John, an older friend of mine used to shoot for the military team. He explained to me that rimfires become more accurate when they are allowed to build up a carbon ring. The nice thing about a carbon ring on a rimfire is they never seem to cause a problem but always seem to enhance accuracy. When I stopped cleaning my 22, groups eventually tightened back up considerably, it's been exactly the same now for over 15 years.

Yep! I have owned several rifles that were apparently possessed by demons....

I bought a used rifle a few weeks ago and hadn't taken a look down the bore yet. It's a WinLight in 270Win and I just wasn't that worried about it being "shot-out" as the condition of the outside of the rifle and the bolt face suggested very little shooting had taken place.

So yesterday I stuffed the Teslong down the bore to see what's-what. It's got a LOT of caked-on alligator-skin carbon fouling. So I sprayed in some wipe-out and gave it about an 8hr soak while I was doing other things. The 1st 2 patches came out a beautiful Indigo blue. I wet a bronze brush w/Butche's, gave it 20-swipes, patched out w/butches wetted patches, still lots of black-and-blue. I wrapped a clean patch around the slightly used brush, spread on a a layer of Iosso bore paste, and gave it 20-strokes. 4-5 patches of Kroil to mop-up the bore-paste. Couple patches of Butche's, then a couple patches w/rubbing alcohol, finally 2-dry patches.

The bore is now for the most part, mirror-finish clean. There are a few very small streaks of copper in the last 5-6" towards the muzzle, and if I was going to DBC, I'd get them out, but, I'm not going to DBC so I'll just shoot right over them. The Iosso sure seemed to make the process easy and straightforward.

Yeah, Iosso is pretty good stuff, though in my experience not quite as quick at getting stuff out as JB Compound.

When Iosso first appeared I used it for in-the-field cleaning while prairie dog shooting. That was back in the day when the typical .223 Remington load used H335, which left considerable powder-fouling, which tends to also result in more copper-fouling. Iosso was very good at that job--though eventually I transitioned to TAC and DBC, which eliminated the need to clean in the field.