Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters do you really want to CLEAN barrel..

Bronze is primarily copper.

If you’re using a copper solvent with a bronze brush, won’t that create a problem?




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Brush with Kroil, patches with copper solvent.

I have a good friend that is a pretty good rifle shot and a hand loader. He tells me that his rifles shoot better with some fouling. Doesn't want a perfectly clean barrel and will only scrub one out if accuracy falls off.

Abbreviated bronze brush life was the reason I stopped using Hoppes #9, Afterwards used a bunch of non-NH3+ solvents including Kroil, BF CLP, Ed's Red, plus several others for .22rfs. No reason to use a Cu++ solvent there, anyway.

Some years later got a Teslong and found carbon rings on a couple I was using. For no particular reason decided to look at some in "mothballs" but last cleaned with #9. None had a carbon ring. Hmmmm.

Only have about 5 glass bottle quarts of #9 left, so lately been using it on patches and/or with nylon brush for throat scrubbing. Call me crazy, but my Teslong sez #9 gets carbon out of .22 throats faster than Kroil or CLP.

Still prefer Patch-Out and Accelerator or Kroil/Paste for CFs.

thanks for all the extra ideas from everybody.

and I agree with Lilja 100%.
this was in a barrel that was not considered high quality. but was shooting a bit erratically and also extreme point of impact changes when you change types of ammo and as an extreme I mean go from being more or less sighteded in to not even hit the paper.

so I borescoped this thing to see the front half of the barrel was extremely clean. and then some some types of filing that you would expect to see in a cared for rifle but not just meticulously.

and there was a piece about an inch and a half long 2 in out of the chamber that was black I mean coal black you could still see lands and grooves so I decided to clean this thing as good as I could so I could start over and see how it shoots. and nothing I had in the solvents and I've got quite a few even with the brush hardly even touch that black area. then I remembered an old friend of mine used to swear by kroil so I let it soak overnight and brushed it out and lo and behold it worked.

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I have never seen any kind of barrel look like that ever before.

the guy I got that from said it was new unfired but obviously it wasn't.

KG1 for carbon crud followed by Wipe Out foam or patches of Pro Shot copper remover seem to work fine for me. No borescope, so ignorance is bliss.

I don't clean until accuracy falls off and like others, I'm not sold on a hospital sterile barrel/clean. That said Cortina used CLR a bit but seems to have stopped.

Here's his latest deal I could find on it. First 3 mins he goes over what he's using - rest of the vid is a how to so to speak.

He's big on cleaning every time after a rifle is used.

Seems fitting, as I've been messing with a new to me Sako that really needed some copper fouling removed. That was part of the reason I got it for so cheap. The gunshop owner knew I'd get it taken care of though, and it's been a learning experience because I've never had a rifle with that much copper in it!!!!!!



Really bad picture, but you get the idea^^^

Went as far as making my own bore guide as well:


The small action Sako has a very small diameter bolt body, and none of my bore guides would fit it.

The first thing I did was buy some products I found at the local gun shop/hardware store. That was Barnes CR-10. That stuff didn't even touch the copper in the barrel, and I used it as the directions said.

Next I said f it, and ran some sweets 7.62 down it. Making sure I did not leave that crap in the bore for too long. The rifle was not shooting horrible, but still not MOA like I thought it should:


I was waiting for the Wipe out, that I ordered online to come in. After the wipeout, the patches looked like this:


But after shooting, the rifle looked like it wanted to collect copper again. At this point, I said screw it and attacked it with some flitz metal polish. That stuff seemed to help reduce the copper fouling the next time out.

Now, I am just using my shooters choice, that I normally use on all of my rifles and getting patches that look like this:

I let the shooters choice sit in the bore for 15 minutes, then swabbed it out. This was before shooting the rifle!!

Since the groups looked like they were slightly improving:


Well, the majority of the bullets were landing in roughly the same spot, I figured It was time to glass bed the rifle:


Now it's shooting like this:


From here on out, I'll just clean it the way I do the rest of my rifles and it should be good. If it starts collecting copper, I'll hit it with that Wipe out/patch out stuff. It seems like it works well on the copper, and is not as harsh as the Sweets 7.62.

This rifle should turn in sub moa groups at 400 yards now, but will need to be rung out and checked.

The other day, I was losing daylight, so I just painted the yote real quick and fired off some shots to check how it was going to do at 400 yards.

First 3 shots hit in the neck, then I fired off 5 more at his head. Should be a yote killing machine now..

100 yards was too easy of a shot on this furry rat..

In the back of my mind, I kept thinking this would probably be the perfect candidate to try some of that dyna bore coat JB is always talking about. I'll bet if a guy were to clean the bore down to bare metal, then apply that DBC, that would solve a lot of problems...

Has anyone tried Lucas Extreme Duty Bore Solvent? Kenny Jarrett gave me a bottle to try. Great stuff!

All I can comment on is that last little bit of carbon fouling that he used the carb out wasnt really needed. If he would have followed directions on the Iosso bore cleaner and used a Iosso nylon brush after letting the bore cleaner work a couple minutes it wouldnt have been in there.

dirty is subjective.
1 round is dirtier than 100% bare metal clean. SO is 400 rounds.
How different rifles perform with different amounts of carbon and copper depends on many factors.
best bet is to clean a rifle to bare metal then watch accuracy and keep round count until you see accuracy falling off.
Then you know what your window of accuracy is and when you need to clean.

2 wet patches of butches,
patch with acetone till it comes out clean then bore scope to see copper build up.
JB to bare metal then a patch of kroil followed by a dry patch.

dirty is subjective.
1 round is dirtier than 100% bare metal clean. SO is 400 rounds.
How different rifles perform with different amounts of carbon and copper depends on many factors.
best bet is to clean a rifle to bare metal then watch accuracy and keep round count until you see accuracy falling off.
Then you know what your window of accuracy is and when you need to clean.

2 wet patches of butches,
patch with acetone till it comes out clean then bore scope to see copper build up.
JB to bare metal then a patch of kroil followed by a dry patch.

I agree key ....to not much....!!!

I'm vaguely aware of him as a shooter (PRS/F-Class isn't my interest) but he's been showing up more and more in my youtube feed as I'm looking to learn more about loading for accuracy. His video on "stop chasing the lands" makes a ton of sense to me and I had randomly seen a video where he was soaking things in CLR. Then this thread popped - all in about 72 hours. Figured I'd post.

TL/DR - I'm not a Cortina fan boi, just saw it as a data point/opinion to share.

Butch's is so old school I cant believe people still use it..........

I like Cortina but the way he cleans a rifle with 6 or 7 different things is ridiculous.....

Use Bore Tech Eliminator and be done......yes I have 2 bore scopes

For Carbon, look no further
carbon off

Butch's is a great product. It's all I use for routine cleaning.

I remember back in the day when it was told GM Top Engine Cleaner was said to be the same formula as BBS. Went to my local Chevy/GM dealer and bought a quart for $7. I thought it was indistinguishable from BBS….same smell, look, consistency, etc. And it cleaned my bore perfectly. I was turned on to that little tidbit of information by the shooters at the US Army Marksmanship Training Unit at Ft Benning,just up the road.

Using Butch's, I rinse the bronze brush off with water immediately after using. I haven't noticed a problem with the brushes deteriorating.