Does Hoppes 9 contain any rust preventer in it and is there any problem with letting it sit in a bore for any length of time? It seems to me if it contains a oil that prevents rust why not just leave a light coat of it in the bore and patch it out before you shot the same as you do to a oiled barrel.

Yes, it does provide rust protection.

No, you can leave it in forever.

Yes. Run a clean patch through the bore before shooting, whether the rifle has sat for a month or five years. If the patch comes out dirty or green, I would run another wet patch followed by a dry patch or two to clear any residue. Then go shooting.

Many people have used nothing but Hoppes #9, just as you describe, for decades with no problems.

Rifle loonys like to make things more complicated than they need to be.

Thanks...Hoppes 9 protects and cleans while your rifle sits. I do not think I would put A rifle in to long time storage with just Hoppes in the bore for that I like to clean down to bare steal and oil heavy. I stand the rifle muzzle down for a day or so to let the oil drain out then put it in the far dark corner of the safe.

For long-term storage, remember that synthetic oils maintain a film nearly forever, whereas mineral oils don't maintain that sort of film strength and eventually strip off. I am a big fan of Mobil-1.

Ditto the thought that sometimes we overthink stuff. While I never rely on Hoppes for long term protection (RIG gets my nod), there have been occasional lapses of memory when the stuff stayed in the bore forever. Tight patches revealed nice shiny steel with no discernible issues. Certainly not a replacement for more effective protocols in the area of bore cleaning, but for most of what we do it's plenty good enough IMO.

Actually, in recent years I've been using Ed's Red as a Hoppes substitute. Not because it's that much better but mainly because I know Ed Harris, the inventor, plus the stuff cuts plastic fouling in shotgun bores better than Hoppes. I wouldn't lose any sleep if Hoppes was the only bore solvent to be had. (It even works as an aftershave for those rugged outdoors types who want to impress the women. )

NO...you don't say!!


Yeah, I'd say so.

IMHO Hoppes #9 is not nearly as good as many other choices out there for cleaning or protecting. But I sure do like the smell!

I agree on the smell although they changed it a while back to
remove some cancer causing substance. Hooppes is a hangover from
the days that it was believed that nitro based powders left
nitric acid that ate up the barrel.

I clean with Hoppes and leave it in the barrel indefinitely. Never had a rust problem. I don't remove it before I shoot either. I've never had the first shot go to a noticeably different point of aim, including 600 yard target shooting.

I have read that the distinctive smell of #9 originally came from Banana oil. Muddy

I am an Ed's Red fan. What I find is that it tends to keep working longer on any residual grime. When I put my deer rifles away after season ends, I usually run Ed's through, wait two weeks and run it through again and clean until the patches are clean. When I pull them out in the summer, the Ed's Red has loosened up additional dirt. Using Hoppes, I never saw that long term action.

This will be my first year using Dyna Bore Coat. We'll see if there is a difference come summer.

BTW: Bob, my old fart retired gun editor buddy, used to have his wife, Esther, put a dab of Hoppes #9 behind each ear, especially when they were out partying with the gun glitterati.

"glitterati"

Sometime back in the late sixty's or early seventy's Elmer Keith recommended Hoppes 9 for for 2 reasons. First a light coating would protect a bore from corrosion and second the first shot out of the bore would land where the rifle was sighted for. I've been following his advise for more than 40 years because he was dead on.
Doc

Hoppes #9 is all I use, no need for this fancy bore cleaning stuff, I use so much of it I buy it 5 gallons at a time.

I was told the old #9 contained Benezene. After the formula changed I worked where I had access to Benezene and always added a couple of ounces to mine. This was before it would hurt you. Hasbeen

It also had a little ammonia, as I recall. They changed the formula after bringing out the No. 9 Bench Rest Copper Gun Bore Cleaner, apparently because they wanted shooters to buy the "old" No. 9 for powder fouling, and the Bench Rest for copper fouling.

The old formula wasn't bad for getting copper out. It took a while (like some of today's slower formulas) but it did the job. Now it's basically a powder fouling solvent and perfume.

Which should be dealt with first, powder fouling or copper?

Well, normally powder fouling's on top of copper fouling, though I have encountered a few bores so fouled powder and copper were in alternating layers--which I have called "geologic" bore fouling, partly because it takes so long to dig the stuff out.

But unless that happens, I generally deal with both at once, with Montana X-Treme Bore Solvent, which seems to be pretty good at dealing with both.

Why not mix the #9 and the #9 Copper Cleaner 1/2 & 1/2 and have something closer to the original?

I don't know if it will harm a barrel or not, but I love the smell and wear it like cologne. The women always ask what fragrance I have on. LOL

Mule Deer if it is just A powder remover what up with all the green on the patches after it sits in the barrel for awhile.I also have used the bench rest stuff and it seems to be almost less aggressive. I like bench rest cleaner because it is one that you can let it sit over night but it sounds like there are others out there to they just do not say it on the bottle.Does Hoppes 9 not play well with any other bore cleaner? Thanks...

Why don't they just invent a bore cleaning cartridge, so you can just shoot your gun clean?

Hoppe's #9 is Aftershave, right?

I've used it as a scent trailer on muskie baits...........

This is an update of a post I made about 20 months ago in this gunwriter's forum.

The original formulations of Hoppe's No. 9 from about a century ago contained nitrobenzene as one of the solvents. It had an odor the chemists call "almond-like". Certainly the odor of Hoppe's changed when the nitrobenzene was eliminated (in the 1960s?). The change is pretty obvious if you can find an old bottle to sniff alongside a current bottle. I don't know whether the change occurred when the original Philadelphia company was bought out by Penguin Industries of Coatesville, PA. Don't inhale the earlier product too deeply, because nitrobenzene can cause real respiratory problems by messing with your blood hemoglobin. As noted above, it's also carcinogenic to humans.

No. 9 is made and bottled in by Tri Pak Inc (www.tri-pak.us), in Vandalia in south-westeren Michigan. Hoppe's is a part of Bushnell, with main offices in Overland Park, Kansas.

The current MSDS posted on hoppes.com is dated 2012. The listed components are:

• Ethanol
• Kerosine
• Oleic Acid
• Amyl Acetate
• Ammonium Hydroxide

The MSDS dated 2010 had the same list, except that the first listed ingredient used the alternate and more common spelling "kerosene".

The oleic acid almost certainly reacts quickly with the ammonium hydroxide, producing ammonium oleate, which is a common component of many household soaps and cleaners. The ammonium ion reacts with copper fouling to produce the greenish goo that can be patched out of the barrel. I recall having read that earlier formulations used ammonium stearate. Both are 18-carbon compounds, with the oleate being a mono-unsaturated carboxylic ion, and the stearate being saturated. Both are somewhat soluble in kerosene. I've observed the ammonium salts precipitating in Hoppe's Benchrest No. 9 when my basement cleaning area gets chilly. I presume the Benchrest product has in it the maxium dissolvable amount of the ammonium compound.

Amyl acetate is banana oil, and combined with the kerosene constitutes much of the familiar Hoppe's odor, as noted in a post above,.

In 2003, when Hoppe's was made in Idaho by Michael's of Oregon, the MSDS showed some secret ingredients:

• Ethyl Alcohol
• Kerosene
• Trade Secret Ingredient(s)
• Organic Ester Trade Secret
• Ammonia, aqueous

Whether the more recent forumulation of Hoppe's No. 9 is as effective as those that preceded it is an open question. Nothing in it will harm steel, unlike the solvents that contain aqueous ammonia.
--Bob

I thought you were supposed to put it on your cereal.

I use hoppe's 9 just for the smell

Bob,

Thanks for running all that down. I basically quit using Hoppe's for anything except powder fouling back when the major changes were first made, which as I recall was in the 1970's. Before then it worked OK for copper removal, but at that point other products worked far better--and since then even better products have appeared.

I can remember that same smell back when I was 4yrs old. It reminds me of the good ole dayz. Luv that stuff.

How about getting test copies in school that were still cool and wet with ditto fluid?

I run foaming bore cleaner now but will always run a patch of hoppe's 9 dwn the bore for good luck.

Yes, but doesn't come close to sniffin hoppe's 9

Odd man out -- Hoppe's stinks to this nose.

I'll test it out as a marinade on an elk steak - sometime in the future.

John,

I love your term, "geologic bore fouling". I have certainly encountered that on a few used rifles that had been shot quite a bit and probably never cleaned well, if at all.

For the benefit of newer shooters, or anyone who has never tackled badly layered fouling before, here is the procedure I have used many times to improve or even save used rifles coming into my possession:

Some rifles get sold because they have lost their accuracy, when the problem is just serious fouling. After a good cleaning the accuracy returns.

For geologic fouling the best cure I have found is JB Bore Paste. Even so, it still takes dozens of strokes each, with several repetitions of a smeared patch wrapped around an undersized bore brush to get it all out. About 30 double strokes per patch, repeated with anywhere from three or four patches, to a dozen or more depending on how bad the bore is.

When you think you might have all the fouling out, switch to something like Sweets 7.62 copper solvent to get the JB paste and mud out, with about three patches, and then see if you are getting blue on the patch. If so, copper is still present and I would go back to the JB paste for a while longer.

Once the Sweet's patch comes out grey, but no blue, dry patch it out and then finish with Montana Extreme, or any other solvent to make sure all the ammonia from the Sweets is eliminated.

For anyone facing a case of geologic layered fouling who isn't familiar with the product, here it is. Nothing I know of works better.

J-B® NON-EMBEDDING BORE CLEANING COMPOUND;

http://www.brownells.com/gun-cleani...ing-bore-cleaning-compound-prod1160.aspx ,

When acquiring a used rifle, it is pointless to start load testing if you don't know that the barrel is free of any serious fouling. Unless I can see with my borescope that a barrel is really free of fouling and copper, I will always run at least an abbreviated version of the above proceedure, to make the rifle "mine" and to know what I am starting with.

This is also the thorough cleaning proceedure that I use before applying Dyna Bore Coat to one of my rifle barrels.

As our Canadian friend says, I hope this information is of some use to someone, and to all, an enjoyable week ahead.

Even for the in-betweens of a JB compound cleaning session, I'll take Montana Xtreme over the old school stuff that isn't safe to leave in a bore.

The one advantage of Sweets for the in-between check for copper, is that if any copper is still present, the surface has been exposed bright and fresh (as viewed with the borescope), and the patch comes out of the bore very bright blue.

The Sweets leaves no doubt if there is still copper in the barrel, where many other solvents are sometimes too subtle to tell.

If the barrel is quite pitted there is no point trying to get all the copper out of the pits. The rest of the barrel surface may be bright and shiny, but the copper in the pits still turns the Sweets patch bright blue.

This is where the bore scope is a great aid to knowing when to quit and call it good enough.

I agree that the Montana Extreme solvent is very good stuff and the fact that it can be safely left in the bore indefinitely is a great advantage over products like Sweets which must be used with care.

This isn't subtle:

Mathman,

I use Montana Extreme solvent, but honestly haven't yet tried the "Copper Killer", as I have partial bottles of several other copper solvents on my bench.

Does "Copper Killer" turn bright blue like Sweets? And is it safe to leave in the bore indefinitely, also?

If so, it is the best of both worlds and I will get some and just throw out my old bottle of Sweets. Thanks.

Both the Montanas show me clear blue indications when there's copper. Has the regular one not done that for you?

I should say I don't have as much experience with the copper killer as with the regular. But when I bummed some it was pretty good.

The Sweets seems more obvious to me than the Montana Extreme solvent as far as showing the blue color. I just went and played with some, but couldn't get a very good test because all the rifles I shoot with any regularity have been treated with Dyna Bore Coat (now officially called DYNA-TEK Bore Coat), and I just don't see very much copper any more.

I will do some more comparison testing next time I get my hands on a badly copper-fouled bore. Thanks for your inputs.