Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Do you clean your 22RF bores?

One of the all time controversies in shooting.

I don't shoot my 22 rifles much anymore but handguns regularly.

Some say you gotta season a 22 bore like a cast iron skillet to get it to shoot it's best.(I might agree with this one)
Some say shooting different ammo with different plating and lubes changes things
Some say they never or seldom clean their 22 bores.

I don't know if I shoot well enough (mostly handguns) to tell much but what do you guys think?

MAGA!

Carbon only.

Only if accuracy drops off.

Not much need to clean, really. Now the action and chamber if prone to powder fouling, I clean pretty good.

Depends. Precision shooters like benchresters are at one end of the spectrum, and they clean their bores carefully. I saw an interview with Lones Wigger from back in the 80's , and he said he cleaned his rifles after every 50 rounds or so.

Based on your last sentence it seems you don't need to overdo it or sweat it much. Clean once in awhile with a decent rod and clean patches, maybe a bronze brush, especially the chamber and leade, and you should be GTG. Any of the common "juices" on the market, except ammonia based solvents meant for centerfires and copper jacketed bullets. Hoppe's No. 9 is cheap and still works well.

And remember- a brush will wipe-out the rifling on a 22lr.
And if you pull a brush back into the muzzle- the barrel is ruined- bye-bye crown.
So throw them away if they've ever had a brush in the barrel- even a perfect fitting plastic brush.

I've shot with world champions who didn't clean their barrels. My personal opinion is that you can do more harm than good cleaning them and shouldn't unless accuracy has left, which I've never seen happen personally.

I shoot, I clean. Cleaning now and then back in the day led to two barrels being replaced due to significant pitting in the bore of one, the chamber of another.

I brush the chamber often. The bore much less often.

Nylon brush chucked in a drill for the chamber and lots of cleaner solution. I shoot lots of shorts in a LR chamber.

The bore gets a soak and pull a few tight patches through.

I clean the chamber and just past to knock out the carbon ring on mine. Every 1000 rounds or so I'll run a wet patch with Butch's Bore Shine and 3-4 dry patches down the bore. Mine seems to stay the most consistent cleaning this way.

Plain lead bullets lap, or polish the barrel. A good thing that never wears out a barrel. Copper coated bullets copper foul eventually bad enough to require removal by strong chemicals. Plain lead is most accurate anyway. Not everybody knows. The wax on some can gum things up and jam automatics.

Allow me to try to unpack this.

Never clean, especially in a damp or salt climate, and you may eventually ruin the barrel. See Dan's post above. Build up of gunk may impede action functioning. You might get away with it.

Clean too aggressively, with the wrong equipment, and you will eventually ruin the barrel. No cleaning is better than bad cleaning.

If you really want to go down this rabbit hole, which I wouldn't recommend, check out Rimfire Central or the websites of barrel manufacturers. Heeding the recommendations in the owner's manual is a good idea.

FWIW, I have a custom .22 target rifle on order and I will damned well clean it. Very carefully.

I'll add that it also depends on your gun and your ammo choices.

I have a Glock G44 that leads with most ammo. I clean it more often than I'd like.

Remington Thunderbolts, AKA Thunderturds among other things, will deposit strips of lead in a bore. I had to see for myself, proved it. To be fair, this was some time ago and more recent production may have changed things. I can't say, but if I'm buying cheap .22 ammo I prefer CCI Blazer. YMMV.

Competition shooters shoot premium ammo. Different ballgame entirely.

I often wondered if daily use with high end Eley ammo negated the need to clean for those who advised against it.

Don't know what the manufacturing landscape looks like today, but there was a time when I purchased some ammo made in Europe that had corrosive priming mix. It led to the demise of a Rem 513S barrel due to severe pitting in the chamber. I still have some of it, and use it now and then for eradicating 'dillos and other pests. Shoot and clean. Dynamit Nobel BB and CB caps it is.

On another minor point, cleaning pump and auto .22's requires cleaning from the muzzle for the most part. Using metal rods for this is a non-starter for me. Plastic coated rods work, but in the case of the 10/22 there is another option. Disassemble, put a rod in and measure the contact point in the rear of the receiver. 1/4-5/16" hole drilled there, and then clean from the breech end. Requires a bit of care when doing so, but it works very well.

I firmly believe that a .22RF bore becomes "seasoned" to a particular kind of ammo. If you have shot one kind for a good amount of time and then shoot something else, you may notice that accuracy goes to pot until you've fired 30 to 50 of the new stuff, after which accuracy returns. Guys who shoot a box of this and a box of that may never discover the true potential of a given rifle.

That leads me to opine that if you plan to change ammo, clean the bore first. Then stick with the new stuff unless and until it proves to be poor in that gun. Minimum of 100 rounds or so.

I have heard this as well - due to the different lubricants various makers use. The lubricant changes from brand to brand, creating variability in the shot poi until seasoned with the new stuff.
There might be something to this as Eley does smell different than CCI to me - and Eley says they're lubricated with beeswax tallow or paraffin.

I'd have to be physically restrained from cleaning a firearm after shooting. My dad always drilled that into my head.
Maybe it's not really necessary after all.

With a sincere apology to the OP whose thread has gone well beyond his question.

Seasoning. My son is a very serious shooter, well beyond his old man who taught and mentored him. Now the roles are reversed. He recently looked into the Lapua test program, where they run your rifle on an indoor test range with different lots of ammo, to determine which lot it prefers. The idea is for the shooter to purchase a case or more of the lot that tests best.

He learned that they currently have a 10 month backlog, and no longer accept shipped rifles. You have to go to their facility in Ohio.

They told him that they recommend at least 750 rounds through a new rifle before testing.

Yes occasionally.

Here's a thorough article from RFC. Rimfire cleaning.

You'll have to click on the link on their site. Written by Steve Boelter