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

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


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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.