Degree of abrasiveness--most to least
- Thread starter jpretle
- Start date
Ned Ludd
Silver $$ Contributor
This might be helpful:
http://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/abrasive-bore-cleaner-specifications.3957645/
http://forum.accurateshooter.com/threads/abrasive-bore-cleaner-specifications.3957645/
That’s because it’s not a bore cleaner it’s a pure metal polish.
I have a 7.6 oz plastic bottle of FLITZZ Bore Cleaner - it says Non-abrasive but why is it so gritty, just a casual evaluation would rate it more than JB & Montana Bore Polish. - "Shake well before using" could it be the abrasive needs to be in suspension? Could not find MSDS. Considerable work to clean up. As expected, scours out black crud. "For Brass Tumbling: Use 1 oz. per 1 lb media."
I would say no, it is not more abrasive than the others, I base this on using them and looking at the bore with my Hawkeye borescope. Flitz, Iosso, JB Bore Bright all leave the bore polished bright and shiny. At least they leave it shinier than JB Bore Cleaner and Remington Bore Cleaner {with the rattle ball in the bottle}. Both of those leave the bore clean bare steel, but not sparkly shining. Based on cleaning some really nasty bores with both of the last two, I have to say it seems like to me the Remington Bore Cleaner is the most aggressive I have used.
All that said, I think you would really have to work at it to damage or hurt a bore with any of the above cleaners and polishes. Many paste type bore cleaners like JB have chalk as the active ingredient, thus the "non-abrasive/non-imbedding" wording on the labels of some of them.
The problem I have had with the polish type bore treatments is that typically you will have worse copper fouling when you get done than what you had to begin with.
Edit: another polish that some folks use on bores is called "simichrome" it is like Flitz. It is probably the least abrasive and produces the highest polish. It will not take out copper. It will polish it to look like the rest of the bore and it is hard to see remaining polished copper with an LED light on your borescope....it kind of makes everything in the bore but carbon look like steel.
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Dusty Stevens
Shiner
I think that remington 40x bore cleaner from back in the day has silicon carbide in it. Same stuff on sandpaper. Man is it ruff.
Another MSDS search showed that a group of Flitz polish stuff including liquid metal polish, granite cleaner, tumbler media additive, and gun bore cleaner contain cristobalite, or SiO2. Hard stuff, same composition as quartz that has a hardness of 7; a source is diatomaceous earth, remains of tiny dead sea creatures - an abrasive.
My casual observations, if only rubbing it between fingers, warned me that the Flitz stuff was abrasive, possibly because of bigger grain sizes.
I sort of remember that my tube of Montana bore polish said it contained alumina. It does - hardness 3.4
J-B, as per MSDS contains Almandine & Pyrope Garnet, MOHS 6.5-7.5
Flitz, Cristobalite MOHS 6-7
Aluminum oxide, also used in sandpaper (big grains), other abrasives and tooth paste (tiny grains) has a mohs rating of 9.
silicon carbide has a MOHs hardness of 9-10
The following link may help:
https://www.reade.com/reade-resourc...perty-briefings/32-mohs-hardness-of-abrasives
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Prose
Silver $$ Contributor
Iosso is less abrasive than JB due to using a softer abrasive of a comparable grit.
Yep, that is the correct reason why I did not include it.
40x is Diatomaceous earth, 40x is about the same hardness and grit of JB Bore cleaning compound.
Iosso is very similar in grit to JB, but is made of softer abrasive. Iosso is softer than barrel steel, JB is harder than barrel steel. Flitz has an abrasive close in hardness to JB, but much finer grit.
Abrasives using materials that are as soft or softer than barrel steel.
IOSSO
BORETECH CHAMELEON GEL
Rottenstone (Decomposed limestone)
Thorroclean (Bulletcentral)
OF these, only IOSSO is widely adopted and accepted as a very good abrasive. The boretech really isn’t much of an abrasive at all, rottenstone is like mixing your own and only stock makers have it on hand. Thorroclean seems every bit as good as IOSSO, but the price for the “system” compared to IOSSO is not favorable.
We’ve discussed the Hardness of the abrasive as well as the grit. Taj45 made a good point about the density of the abrasive in the medium.
The density of abrasive in IOSSO is high, Thorroclean is lower, Boretech is Lowest. SDS sheets provide info about % of product.
ALL other abrasives are harder than barrel steel.
JB is pure product so the density is however you mix it (Kroil on VFG Felt Pad, Patch on jag, patch on brush etc).
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Flitz contains cristobalite (MSDS), a quartz (SiO2) like mineral (but having different crystal lattice). J-B contains garnet (MSDS) another hard mineral. Both are real close in hardness. Diatomaceous earth, from remains of tiny dead siliceous sea creatures, is another source of scratchy hard silica (SiO2). Looking at the MSDS for J-B shows all sorts of stuff including soybean oil.
Montana Bore polish contains Alumina (MSDS) MOH 3.4 and calcite (rottenstone) MOH 3 are real close.
J-B MSDS:https://www.sinclairintl.com/userdocs/MSDS/749-102-003_J-B (R) NON-EMBEDDING BORE CLEANING COMPOUND, 2 OZ. - 083_default.pdf
Would tipping over a 55 gallon drum of J-B, constitute a "large spill"?
Our old friend, triethanolamine (common to many cleaners/solvents and cosmetics used by beautiful women) is also present in J-B.
Montana Bore polish contains Alumina (MSDS) MOH 3.4 and calcite (rottenstone) MOH 3 are real close.
J-B MSDS:https://www.sinclairintl.com/userdocs/MSDS/749-102-003_J-B (R) NON-EMBEDDING BORE CLEANING COMPOUND, 2 OZ. - 083_default.pdf
Would tipping over a 55 gallon drum of J-B, constitute a "large spill"?
Our old friend, triethanolamine (common to many cleaners/solvents and cosmetics used by beautiful women) is also present in J-B.
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You need to pick how you want to measure. There is no universal standard their are a couple and they are not at all the same. The USA, Europe and Asia have different standards. So you have to know which standard is being used. I like to measure in microns and cutting action. I also like to know if it is embedding or non-embedding which is partial determined by what is being lapped or polished.
Keep in mind that lapping is not a precision process and is a sign of poor machining in this day and age and really old tooling and methods of machining. You can produce a part with such a fine surface finish and such precise dimensions that lapping would only degrade the product.
Lapping is a form of accelerated wear. The idea is that the machining is so poor between two parts that must fit and move together that we are going to finish the machining process by taking those two parts coating them in an abrasive and moving them in relationship to each other to speed the break in process and to kind of control the break-in process under ideal conditions that can be controlled easily. If you let the parts wear in natural in the use their is a chance damage might occur during that process that would shorten the life of the parts especialy under warranty.
That is why so many places are switching over to Sunnen Precision CNC Honing process. You can hone with precision to the bore size you want consistently and repeatedly to any surface finish you desire all the way up to 0000 with no problem. Deep hole drilling, lapping or honing are the most important and time consuming parts of making a great barrel the rifling process. If you do not get those right nothing else matters. Button rifling is the fastest part of the process we are talking seconds to push or pull the button it is much faster than cold hammer forging and much cheaper. The deep hole drilling and honing or lapping process can not be speed up much. Also each step in the process is another opportunity to have tolerance stacking work it's way into the process and each step add's machine time and manpower time to the process and cost.
What no one will tell us is what surface finish is ideal and worth pursuing and what is just a waste of time and money. Since we do not know this as a customer we are at the mercy of our barrel maker. On top of that the people in the industry will not tell us what they know about their competitors product because of chance of litigation so the people in a position to steer people clear of bad products and marketing hype keep their knowledge to themselves. What we need is facts and knowledge but what we get is voodoo!
What we need is engineering facts relating to gun barrels, university or government research.
If a barrel is accurate any form of accelerated wear is too much. If the lapping is done before the rifling is imparted to the bore then I am ok with it even though it is not the best way to arrive at a uniform interior finish and dimension!
Keep in mind that lapping is not a precision process and is a sign of poor machining in this day and age and really old tooling and methods of machining. You can produce a part with such a fine surface finish and such precise dimensions that lapping would only degrade the product.
Lapping is a form of accelerated wear. The idea is that the machining is so poor between two parts that must fit and move together that we are going to finish the machining process by taking those two parts coating them in an abrasive and moving them in relationship to each other to speed the break in process and to kind of control the break-in process under ideal conditions that can be controlled easily. If you let the parts wear in natural in the use their is a chance damage might occur during that process that would shorten the life of the parts especialy under warranty.
That is why so many places are switching over to Sunnen Precision CNC Honing process. You can hone with precision to the bore size you want consistently and repeatedly to any surface finish you desire all the way up to 0000 with no problem. Deep hole drilling, lapping or honing are the most important and time consuming parts of making a great barrel the rifling process. If you do not get those right nothing else matters. Button rifling is the fastest part of the process we are talking seconds to push or pull the button it is much faster than cold hammer forging and much cheaper. The deep hole drilling and honing or lapping process can not be speed up much. Also each step in the process is another opportunity to have tolerance stacking work it's way into the process and each step add's machine time and manpower time to the process and cost.
What no one will tell us is what surface finish is ideal and worth pursuing and what is just a waste of time and money. Since we do not know this as a customer we are at the mercy of our barrel maker. On top of that the people in the industry will not tell us what they know about their competitors product because of chance of litigation so the people in a position to steer people clear of bad products and marketing hype keep their knowledge to themselves. What we need is facts and knowledge but what we get is voodoo!
What we need is engineering facts relating to gun barrels, university or government research.
If a barrel is accurate any form of accelerated wear is too much. If the lapping is done before the rifling is imparted to the bore then I am ok with it even though it is not the best way to arrive at a uniform interior finish and dimension!
I would expect that the feldspar mineral would be included in the source of barrel cleaning abrasives. Feldspar is very common mineral being a constituent of granite and have a MOH hardness of 6, just below that of the common bore abrasives containing silica (Flitz) and garnet(J-B). Possibly grain size has something to do with that. A common household cleaner, Bon Ami (has not scratched yet) uses feldspar as its abrasive. Keeping in mind that a MOH of 6 is harder than steel and that Bon Ami feldspar grain sizes might be large I don't use it as a bore cleaner. Pots & pans yes.
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