Best Practice for using Iosso Bore Cleaner?

[FrankG]

Google "death of a barrel" i may stand corrected, but consensus was it was the result of an abrasive cleaner used on a brush, with a cleaning rod that might not have turned as well as it should

Yes that is the thread on the OZ F class forums. Last I looked a long time ago it hit 7 pages! I only hit some of the highlights here.

To back up what Dave Tooley and others have said....and I will say again here. You use a bronze brush and an abrasive cleaner. Not just paste but even things like Witch's Brew....I will guarantee bore damage. You cannot hold the barrel maker accountable for how and what is done to the barrel during cleaning and when it gets wrecked.

Take a look at the attached picture. That's the barrel from that thread. It's a 7mm (284win) barrel. At 100 rounds it started having accuracy issues. Picture is at 800 rounds. Bore should measure .277" and the groove at .284. It now measures .279" x .2855"! The lands stick up so they take the brunt of the beating. A full .002" was polished off the bore and and .0015" out of the grooves!!! The gouges on the lands is from the brush/bristles trying to rotate and follow the rifling. Not every bristle will be able to do that. That's where the gouges come from. The brush in connenction with the abrasive cleaner.

I had another customer that with 3 barrels and in as little as a 110 rounds those gouges started to show and polished a .001" out of the barrel. Last one was a 6mm. This was with a liquid abrasive cleaner and a brush.

Another customer using Iosso and a brush in a 308win barrel and I think it was 500 rounds fired also polished a full .001" out of the bore and grooves!

I've seen where guys just using a patch and an abrasive cleaner get carried away with it and basically polished the bore so smooth that the barrel fouled like a prick with in only 15 rounds being fired. It would start out shooting 1/4moa groups and by 15 to 20 rounds would only hold a 1moa group. I was there and seen it myself shooting the gun with the customer.

And....it wasn't bad steel!!!! Back to the 284win F class barrel....that was an order for 10 barrels. The other guys that got barrels from that same order didn't have a single issue. All the barrels where made out of the same lot of steel, same drill, same bore reamer, same rifling tooling etc...

I'll say this...just because the guy next to you is cleaning his rifle differently....doesn't mean he is doing it better! If you have a cleaning technique that you use and your not wrecking the barrels...I've got nothing to say! When I see guys wreck stuff this way and or clean a barrel like they are trying to clear a clogged kitchen sing....I've got something to say!

Later, Frank
Bartlein Barrels

 

[HTSmith]

Egads. Frank, how would your recommend dealing with the carbon build up? Is there a regular cleaning regimen that will keep it at bay? Thanks much!

 

[FrankG]

Egads. Frank, how would your recommend dealing with the carbon build up? Is there a regular cleaning regimen that will keep it at bay? Thanks much!

Tooley said it the best.....and I'll quote....

"I'm a firm believer in keeping up with cleaning. That means cleaning intervals are caliber specific and round count specific. And I use chemicals to start the process. Soak for a few hours, maybe over night then work on carbon and heat checking. Then address copper if it's there."

I'll add to this...I tell guys pay attention to the rifle/barrel. It will tell you what is going on. You just have to learn how to read it.

I have a slow method of cleaning and a fast method of cleaning.

I will also say that at times you have no way around it. If you have heavy carbon build up and it's causing a problem and or copper. You will have to get aggressive (as much as I don't want to use that word) with the cleaning. Sometimes there is no way around it. Just be careful of what you do.

I'll use JB borecompound at times (not the bore brite) and or Rem.40x cleaner (use to be called Gold Medallion years ago). Patch only and I'll only stroke the barrel 10x and short stroke the throat area. Clean it completely out.

That's another cause of concern. I think at times guys use and abrasive cleaner and they do not get it completely out of the bore. Then the first rounds fired down the bore you might as well have gravel poured down the barrel. Those abrasive particles get trapped between the bore and the bullet and causes damage as well.

 

[FrankG]

If I remember correctly Mid Tompkins told me like 20 years ago on his Palma rifle that about every 250 or so rounds fired he would also use JB especially in the throat area. To keep up with carbon and the heat checking in the throat.

If I was wrong on that (Mid) don't beat me up to bad!

 

[Martin52]

Martin for a bronze brush even with ISSO on it the barrel steel would have had to be soft to have that sort of damage done to it.
I use stainless steel brushes and never have seen that sort of damage ever.

The conclusion in that particular case was that the bronze brush in conjunction with an abrasive paste caused the damage.

And likely to be a lot worse if the cleaning rod is damaged and is not turning, the bronze brush with the abrasive paste skips over the lands/grooves in a straight line.

 

[Bindi2]

I can trace any barrel I've ever chambered back to the mill that made the steel. That means chemical analysis and hardness. It's called Certs in the business. Very obvious YMMV

As a smith you probably can. Here no way particularly if you are the end user.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

Please dont use a stainless brush on ANY barrel. Just puttin that out there. Im sure @FrankG or @DaveTooley can give plenty of examples. I even remember @Stan Taylor having a thread over a stainless brush not long ago

 

[Bindi2]

What Rockwell hardness are those barrels that groove out. What was the Rockwell reading for that Aussie barrel. There are barrels that don't groove.

 

[INTJ]

All right you knuckleheads................I just order $100 of nylon brushes. Iosso brand in the calibers they had, Sinclair brand for 375, 416, and 458. While as an INTJ I am loathe to accept argument from authority, @DaveTooley and @FrankG make a good case. I won't use bronze brushes with JB any more, will rely on chemicals first, and take more time. KG-1 and KG-12 work exceptionally well anyway. When I need to be quick I'll use Iosso on a nylon brush.

 

[BoydAllen]

I try to scope barrels fairly often, frequency based on what I know about the hard carbon building characteristics of the powders being used. From that, I get an idea of how often I will need to clean for carbon, not powder fouling, hard carbon. At one extreme is 133 where I have never seen hard carbon, as long as I clean every 30 rounds or so. Other powders, both ball and stick vary. When I see just a start of hard carbon, I use a soft nylon brush fully loaded with IOSSO short stroked only where there is carbon. I do this after a regular cleaning, and after the IOSSO I take pains to get it all out, including off the coated rod and out of the rod guide. At my suggestion, a friend who shoots LT32 does this, initially monitored with a bore scope, every 100 rounds on a PPC, with eye towards doing the absolute minimum to get rid of the carbon, and no more. So far he has gone through a couple of barrels that way, with the expected accuracy life from both, and no unusual accuracy issue, other than improvement he saw when he did it the first time on a barrel that had 600 rounds on it. I use guides with close fitting bushings on the rods and pay attention to keeping my rod straight, and not letting the brush or jag go any farther out the muzzle than absolutely necessary. In the past I have ordered the brushes that I like from Dewey.

 

[FrankG]

As a smith you probably can. Here no way particularly if you are the end user.

Not true. A good barrel maker marks/stamps his barrels with proper information. Our barrels have the s/n stamped on the end of the barrel before it get’s threaded and chambered. It’s also on your invoice when the barrel ships. That s/n you should record. If you call me and give me that s/n I can tell when it was made, lot of steel, caliber and who in the shop even rifled it.

Not all barrel makers do this.

 

[FrankG]

What Rockwell hardness are those barrels that groove out. What was the Rockwell reading for that Aussie barrel. There are barrels that don't groove.

Rc was 31.

That barrel is a good show and tell piece and I keep it in my office!

Also his cleaning process was replicated in another brand new barrel.....same damage result happened!

 

[Bindi2]

Not true. A good barrel maker marks/stamps his barrels with proper information. Our barrels have the s/n stamped on the end of the barrel before it get’s threaded and chambered. It’s also on your invoice when the barrel ships. That s/n you should record. If you call me and give me that s/n I can tell when it was made, lot of steel, caliber and who in the shop even rifled it.

Not all barrel makers do this.

As I said that info is not always available to the end user the shooter. Aussie. Can you tell me the Rockwell for each barrel shipped not the batch number Rockwell.

 

[FrankG]

Also think of this.....when someone claims they had a bad barrel or in particular supposedly bad steel.

If that is true......I’m going to hear it from a ammunition/bullet maker that we make test barrels for, the Gov’t that we make test barrels for etc....or a manufacturer that we make a 1000+ barrels a year or a gunsmith like Tooley who fits up a ton of barrels a year as well. Ask Dave...he will tell you....over the last several years he as an individual has probably worked on several thousand of our barrels. If there is a problem I’m more apt to hear it from one of these places way before the individual that buys one or a handful barrels a year.

These places burn up/go thru barrels on a monthly basis and in quantity.

As an example I know one ammunition maker that has at any one given time just in 308win. Over a dozen barrels on ammunition test receivers and they burn up one to two barrels a month just in that caliber alone.

Another ammo maker in 300wm they also have a over a dozen in service when running that ammo for the Gov’t sniper ammo.

The number of rounds they fire in pressure and accuracy testing is staggering.

 

[Bindi2]

You still haven't said what the Rockwell is or should be

 

[Bindi2]

The distribution of product can be managed very carefully.

 

[Bindi2]

There was another barrel in Ozz that was scrapped at 340 rounds. With no use of isso etc or Bronze brushes. The owner got banned from Ozfclass when he raised the issue.

 

[FrankG]

You still haven't said what the Rockwell is or should be

We buy directly from the mill. If I recall correctly the mill wants a 6pt range. Might be 4pt. Anyways we spec. a nominal range of 30Rc. The vast majority of the time it is 28-30. The lowest we've had has been 26 and the highest we have had has been 32. We have worked with special lots of steel in testing as high as 34.

That being said I've seen spec's on barrel prints as low as 21. Not our spec! We've never worked with anything even like that. Who wrote that spec and why is anyone's guess.

 

[FrankG]

Think of this everyone......one time a guy pointed out that the bronze brush was 80 on the Brinell hardness scale and the barrel was 300. His argument was the brush is softer than the steel and won't damage the steel.

OK....but now throw in an abrasive and mechanical action. Guaranteed bore damage.

As the old saying goes, "Why can water erode rocks!".

 

[Joe Salt]

FrankG I like what you said about guys not getting the abrasive completely out of the barrel, This has got to be were a lot of the damage is coming from. Any time I use JB. I keep going with a patch till there is hardly anything on my patches, then I use Kroil. When you put Kroil in the majority of the abrasive comes out, and when the patches come out clean I let it soak then repeat.

Joe Salt