Cleaning Copper Fowling

[KMart]

You need much stronger ammonia than you get for $2 at your local store. Ammonia can attack steel especialy if it is has any inclusions or impurities. For example Remington used to use some real junk steel for decades in their barrels and strong ammonia would eat those barrels like a fat kid eats cupcakes! So while you do not need 20%+ you need more than 2% for sure.

I make my own bore cleaner as taught be Ol'Sarge/Old Sarage but he died decades ago and I have modified from his initial recipe. He was from New Zealand and a mentor of mine. It progressed over the years but I think it is not safe to encourage most people to do this.

You can still buy out of print books on the cheap that teach you how to make just about everything you would ever buy in a store from raw ingredients.

The main components in most copper cleaners not polishes and such are ammonia like ammonia persulfate, ammonium hydroxide or strong peroxides. Toss in some Glycol Ethers and 1-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone as general sovents and "Bob's your uncle". The problem is the ancient steels still in use in the industry and the purity of the steel itself. 5% will take forever, 10% will work quickly and if the steel is very pure will not etch the steel. How do yo know what the quality of the steel is? 20% can be safe but that is at the raged edge of safe and if your steel is remotely questionable it can attack the steel. When using 8xxx or 17-PH type steels for mandrels for copper plating a part from electroplating after the part is removed from the mandrel the above chemicals are used to clean the mandrel with out etching the steel. That is why over the counter products are so weak. They do not want you the consumer to need knowledge to use product safely and they do not want you to destroy your barrel if the steel is questionable.

Hatcher used 20% Ammonia just like you can purchase from Amazon but he had mixed results and was working on rifles ready to be sent back to be re-barreled so if it attacked the barrel and ruined it he was not at a loss!

The reason you can only buy 20% maximum ammonia is that after the ammonia reaches that concentration in water at atmospheric pressure, that mixture is at the saturation point. Any more ammonia you add will just evaporate off. To get a higher concentration of ammonia, you must keep it in a pressurized container. When you open the lid of that container, the concentration will drop back to 20%. If you warm a 20% solution at atmospheric pressure, the concentration of ammonia will drop.

As an aside, the industry standard for the manufacture, transport and storage of anhydrous ammonia is carbon steel. In our process, the diluted 20% concentration was handled in 304L ss pipes and vessels.

 

[D Coots]

Sweets lost me for a customer years ago when they changed the recipe.

 

[SPQR70AD]

Sounds like you have serious barrel issues

that is because I stupidly listened to "experts"

 

[JEFFPPC]

Sweets lost me for a customer years ago when they changed the recipe.

What have you replaced it with?

 

[D Coots]

Usually use iosso on a patch.

Also thorro clean is good.

No fan of JB either.

Using Hawkeye to verify.

Lots of ways to skin this cat. Your milage may vary.

I might ad that when I bought a bore scope is when I quit using Sweets, the old stuff. I found that there were layers of carbon and copper in my barrels. I shoot short range 100/200 yd. I used butches and sweets and cleaned every 10-15 rounds back then. Bronze brush with the butches.

Later
Dave

 

[JEFFPPC]

Biggest fallacy I observe is guys cleaning after the match, gun is clean, put in the case until next match. I believe soaking is required to really get the gun clean. I average about 5 days before I say clean.I Isso about every 3 or 4 matches.Which in season means every other week.