Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Extremely filthy barrel

Hello, i have an early, serial number 10.9xx savage 1899b 303 with an extremely dirty barrel that i am trying to clean up. I used hoppers, soaked in kroil for days and patches still come out black. Any suggestions would be appreciated or am I just pissing up a rope? Thanks

I have a 1920 that was/is similarly dirty. I went through a bulk pack of patches as well as several bronze brushes and a lot of cleaners. I found the best means of cleaning was to plug the muzzle with a cork and then poor enough Hoppe's in to fill the entire barrel. I would let it sit like that for a couple of days before removing the cork and dumping out the Hoppe's.

Take a patches to the bore to get out the loose stuff, then a wire brush followed by more patches. Then start all over. I found this to be better than the foaming cleaners for getting out carbon as the foam would eventually flow to the lowest level and leave the higher areas less clean. A couple rounds of this and I would work on copper removal with Wipe Out or other copper removing solvent. Then back to the cork and Hoppe's for another go. I took JB Bore Paste to it a couple of times too, it seemed to pull out junk that the other methods couldn't handle.

I eventually got to the point patches came out dark grey rather than pitch black. I'm guessing the bore is fairly pitted and getting a truly clean barrel is a pipe dream. A bore scope could give me a good idea what is going on but I don't have one and don't know someone with one to borrow.

I loaded up some loads with IMR 4166 to try and get rid of any difficult copper deposits. These powders aren't designed to do this but it seems to perform as a copper remover in other rifles I've tried it in.

This reminds me, getting the barrel warm to hot and then immediately clean seemed to pull junk out better than when cold. If nothing else, it helped kill time until the barrel of that gun as well as of others brought with cooled down.

Thanks for all the info. I will try the barrel full of hopper next. I am sure I have pitting also. Do you think all this crud? came from the powders and primers they used back in the day or just from lack of maintenance. Also, i havent shot for groups yet, have you got yours to shot decent

I've did similar in the past and had good results. Though I used nothing more aggressive than a bore brush. I'd also stay away from anything with ammonia in it. Best of luck.

Wipeout is a gamechanger... not only cleans the barrels but leaves a protective film on it. I thought my barrels were clean before I used this stuff.

There are a lot of effective bore cleaners on the market today. No longer any reason to put one's faith in "hoppers" (Hoppe's?) to perform as anything more than a casual powder fouling solvent (and there are even better solutions for that- give Ed's Red a shot).

Jeff, I'll debate you on the dangers of ammonia-based cleaners. Yes, if used imprudently (ie: by not rigorously following instructions) they might injure a bore, maybe. If used the way one should they are no more dangerous than anything else. You have to look long and hard to find a common chemical that attacks copper better than ammonia does. I started using Sweet's 7.62 solvent 30+ years ago and never had an issue, until I switched to Barne's CR-10 a couple years ago that has an even higher ammonia content and life got even better. Simple rule of thumb: just don't let the stuff in the bore more than 5-10 minutes at a time and life is good.

As an aside, I often wondered about the veracity of using bronze bore brushes to scrub copper fouling out of bores when using copper-attacking solvents. I guess others had the same thoughts regarding that counter-intuitive protocol, and so stainless steel brushes appeared on the market (no way, nope, not for me), and nylon bristle brushes (a fart in a wind storm). I persist in using nothing more aggressive than cotton flannel patches (unless I get a wayward streak of lead in a pistol or rifle barrel and then the bronze brush comes out, in conjunction with Ed's Red solvent).

Bore polishing pastes? Everyone forgets what the word polishing implies: the removal of molecular layers to expose fresh un-oxidized material, which means do it enough and the integrity of the structure's dimensions becomes compromised. A bore has to be pretty bad before I would resort to anything with abrasives in it no matter how fine those abrasives are. (And yes, I keep a vial of J-B Bore paste in my kit. Been there for maybe 30 years and is about 80% still full.)

Yeah, I've heard a lot of good stuff about that too. I bought a bottle but am waiting until my last bottle of CR-10 is used up before switching to it.

The thing is, the OP's barrel was made when mercuric primers were still common, and their replacements weren't a heckuva lot easier on barrel steel. The chances that his barrel's bore surface is compromised such that it acts like a rasp on the bullets that pass through it is pretty good. A barrel from those early years that's still pristine can be guaranteed not to have been shot much or else it had an anal-retentive owner who cleaned it thoroughly and properly, promptly after every time he shot it. That's pretty much why the first thing I always look at is the bore on a rifle from that era- it not only offers a clue about how well I may expect it to shoot, but also is strong evidence of how well the gun was maintained during its life.

Thanks for all the advice. I am going to try the soaking with hoppes for awhile then just load some ammo and see how it shoots. I don't think I will ever get it "clean" but hopefully I can get it suitable for close range deer hunting.

You could always try outers foul out system

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1014811888/outers-foul-out-3-bore-cleaning-system

A couple points in no particular order.

The 1920 was not shot before the cleaning but it was a couple times during the process. It grouped poorly but that could easily be attributed to using factory 100 gr ammo or the Lyman Alaskan scope or maybe the Echo mounts were funky. The dot is pretty faded which probably doesn't help either. Tried the irons but the front is kind of fine for my eyes and I can't see it well enough when buried into the Vee. In any case, my best groups were around 4" at 25 yards. I have some 75 gr bullets loaded up and a different old scope set up, now I am just waiting for a chance to go to the range.

I use Hoppe's to remove carbon because I seem to get a lot of it for free. It is effective enough for my simple purposes and I have to do nothing more than open a jar and pour. Hoppe's odor is less objectionable to my wife and its flashpoint is much lower than Ed's Red which is an important factor when cleaning inside.

Wipe Out, Sweets, CR-10 all have a place on my cleaning shelf but there are times even they seem to be weak. It is then I break out a vial of 75% Kroil and 25% industrial strength ammonia for removing bad copper and carbon. When using copper cleaners, I use worn out brushes of the next higher diameter or maybe two. After that cleaning session the brushes get tossed. When that seemed to be less effective than I thought, out came the JB.

Not everyone forgot what polish means. It's the third time I used JB. I used it as it seemed the gunk in the barrel was hardened/slick/baked and the solvent and brushes were not having much affect. The JB did seem to break the crust as the patches looked pretty tarry again. Probably opened up some of the pitting but the barrel did seem cleaner, eventually.

Gary, I'll defer to you. You know more about this stuff (as well as many other things) than do I. Like many here, I am but a mere student in the classroom of your posts.

PS - I now have a new way to think about nylon brushes, "a fart in the wind." That about made the coffee come out of my nose as I read it. Thanks for the good chuckle!

I’m cornfused. At the top it says a 303. They were made to shoot 190 trainers. Now it says shooting 100 and 75 gr. Did we switch over to a 250-3000?

Reread and I see it’s two different posts.

As with most things in this man's world, there are always many ways to skin this particular cat.

As for the comment about bore paste, I should have clarified that it was directed at guys who use it vigorously and often.

As a last ditch effort (and I mean last ditch) one can always plug the chamber and fill the bore full of Stronger Ammonia, then plug the muzzle and let it sit for 1/2 hour, dump and flush the heck out of it with water, swab and oil. As I understand it ammonia itself won't attack steel when in an oxygen deprived environment (hence the plugging) but you don't want to waste any time getting it flushed out afterwards- someone correct me if I'm wrong. I actually did that trick once, on the advice of Phil Sharpe in one of his books. It worked marvelously to get rid of the cupro-nickel fouling in an old '03 Springfield barrel-- but OMG the scarey/humorous(in hindsight) effects on yours truly put me off of ever doing it again. There's a reason you can't buy Stronger Ammonia over the counter anymore...

That jogged something in my brain. I wonder now if the OP's fouling might be cupro-nickel instead of copper (gilding metal) and as such resisting the efforts to remove it. As old as the gun is, it surely got its start digesting cupro-nickel jacketed bullets (which remained in general use up until the 1920's). A "base layer" of that stuff present for nigh onto 100 years with subsequent deposits of copper fouling would indeed make for an unholy mess.

Gary, Do you recommend doing this indoors, say in the bathroom?

Well, that's where I did it! (And passed out cold.) So, yes, do it outdoors, with a respirator. Better yet, get volunteers from among the neighborhood kids.

One of the ways of darkening bamboo if your into fly rods made of such stuff is with ammonia vapor. It also darkens oak. But instructions on doing so always read with a sense caution that would be second only to what you would expect on the warning label for a canister of mustard gas..

I've cleaned some pretty nasty bores with Hoppes and a piece of Big 45 Frontier pad on a jag. Has done a good job for what I've thrown at it.

Thanks for all the replies, God only knows what's in this barrel, I've never even heard of cupro nickel and dont have a clue on how to remove it. I have some sweets and montana extreme also, do you guys thinks these products would be better than hoppes and i will use according to direction. Thanks