Cleaning questions.

[zanemoseley]

I'm still new to centerfire precision rifles, I shot 3P smallbore for a few years but I'm still learning about properly cleaning procedures especially while I still have factory barrels instead of high dollar custom barrels. At some point I should invest in a bore cam, otherwise its hard to know if I'm undercleaning or overcleaning.

So I had Wirelessguy2005 on the forum make me a bore guide for my Savage 12BR chambered in 6br, it fits a jag and patch but not a bronze brush or 6mm VFG pellet. I know brushes are avoided but old habits are hard to break. Do precision shooters ever use brushes. Do most people use 1 bore guide only or do they use a tight guide for a jag & patch and a loose one for VFG pellets.

I was taught by an older shooter to use foaming bore cleaner to remove copper and loosen carbon/crud as well as avoiding brushing. If I'm doing a light cleaning I just use foam, possibly several applications over hours/days to loosen/dissolve stuff then patch out. I patch again with CLP and patch dry.

I read about the VFG felt pellets, Kroil and JB bore paste combo in my smallbore days. I used it on a Anschutz I owned. I just got some 6mm "intensive" pellets as thats all Brownells had in stock. The first try i couldn't even get the pellet in the bore, perhaps this means it had carbon buildup. I worked the bore with my standard 22 pellets, Kroil and JB for a bit. Then the 6mm intensive pellets would fit. All of this was with no bore guide (shudder), should I get a second larger guide to allow pellets to pass through? Also are intensive pellets safe to use on a semi regular basis or just on rare occasions? I would have bought the normal pellets but they didn't have a small pack, they just had the jumbo size $40 package.

So I'm looking for general guidance but have lingering questions:

-Should I brush ever?
-1 or 2 guides? 1 for guide & 1 for pellets and brushes?
- How often to Kroil / JB paste out carbon
- How much does the foaming bore cleaner really remove.

 

[Jet]

Zane

You will get a lot of different opinions on cleaning methods. So here are some answers based on my experience but know you will likely get answers that will be different than mine. I've tested just about every product on the market and use a bore scope to verify results. Your experience and record keeping should guide you.

- Use bronze brushes: Yes
- I use two guides. One for the bronze brushes and patches and another when I use IOSSO (like JB)
- Kroil and JB frequency: I tried kroil and didn't find it to aid in cleaning. JB will depend on what your barrel is telling you. Savages seem to like to shoot dirty so I wouldn't be to aggressive with it. Maybe use every 200-300 rounds
- Foaming bore cleaners: I've tried them and didn't find any magic with them

Get some BoreTech Eliminator (I'm not affiliated with them) and use it as you search for/try other products. It works pretty darn good.

God Shooting

Rich

 

[KMart]

Zane

You will get a lot of different opinions on cleaning methods. So here are some answers based on my experience but know you will likely get answers that will be different than mine. I've tested just about every product on the market and use a bore scope to verify results. Your experience and record keeping should guide you.

- Use bronze brushes: Yes
- I use two guides. One for the bronze brushes and patches and another when I use IOSSO (like JB)
- Kroil and JB frequency: I tried kroil and didn't find it to aid in cleaning. JB will depend on what your barrel is telling you. Savages seem to like to shoot dirty so I wouldn't be to aggressive with it. Maybe use every 200-300 rounds
- Foaming bore cleaners: I've tried them and didn't find any magic with them

Get some BoreTech Eliminator (I'm not affiliated with them) and use it as you search for/try other products. It works pretty darn good.

God Shooting

Rich

What he said

 

[Comrade Terry]

+1 on the Bore Tech products.

 

[mongo chicago]

Foam, messy and useless. A good copper cleaner and a borescope. I consider a borescope ESSENTIAL! Don't know how many times people said "the bore is clean because the patches aren't tinted. Then they look through a borescope and see all the copper fouling.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

borescope- no. bronze brush and butchs yes. flitz/iosso/jb according to what shoots. clean it to keep it shooting and no more. ditch the pellets and use pro shot patches. borescope is a bad tool for a shooter. lots think otherwise but when you see that firecracking at 800 rds itll never shoot again. no telling how much money those cheap borescopes made me when they came out. a borescope will never tell you when your gun will shoot or not that takes practice cleaning.

 

[dogdude]

Bore Tech products +2, try the Carbon Remover..C4..very nice.

 

[zanemoseley]

Thanks for the advice. I think I'd like to get a bore scope, if nothing else I'd like to see what the cleaning is doing to my barrel each step of the way.

 

[JimPag]

Thanks for the advice. I think I'd like to get a bore scope, if nothing else I'd like to see what the cleaning is doing to my barrel each step of the way.

Borescopes are a good tool, but when I told a good friend of mine who has been shooting SR score for a while now that I was buying a Hawkeye he said Jim don't let that thing drive you crazy when it comes to interpreting how clean you think your barrel should be. He said the results on the target will tell you if their is something going on with the barrel. A mutual friend of ours who has won score shooter of the year 5 times had a barrel with chunks missing from the lands and any person looking at it with a borescope would of said this barrel is junk. Well that barrel could still shoot lights out. Everyone has their own way of cleaning, so your going to get a ton of opinions, some good, some not so good. IMO I like Butch's patches better than any others that I have tried. They have a texture to them. To me it's like comparing a regular sponge to one that is 2 sided with one being a regular sponge on one side and a scrubby more aggressive side on the other. I use to use Butch's bore shine until my friend who warned me about the borescope gave me about 4 cases of Wipe out patch out. Without a doubt it removed more fouling, carbon, and copper than Butch's. This has been my 5th season of competitive shooting and after the first year I have never used any brushes, just patches and knock on wood I never have had a carbon ring in any of my barrels. I use HBN coated bullets and I hardly have any copper in my barrels. I was told by a few barrel makers that you shouldn't remove all the copper from your barrels because it acts as a lubricant. I finish it off by putting a patch of Marvel MO down the bore, followed by a dry patch. That stuff also cleans as it lubricates. Everyone that I shoot against uses a bore guide. IMO the TK Nollan guide is the best of the best. TK asks you what your using for a rod and builds the insert so that the ID of the guide is just a pubic hair bigger than you rod so there is no slop and the guide rod is a lot longer than anyone else's and it just overall works better.

 

[dsculley]

Some people clean every range trip, some clean only when accuracy falls off. Read this article from Criterion Barrels - http://criterionbarrels.com/media/the-dirty-barrel-trend-clean-your-barrel-after-each-range-trip

Please note while reading this that at 700 rounds without cleaning this rifle had not experienced any loss of accuracy. The only ill effects were to the chamber. I routinely swab out my chamber. I do like to clean regularly with Ed's Red as my primary cleaner. As was said earlier, while a borescope may be interesting to use it will not tell you how well the rifle will shoot. Unless my accuracy falls off I will not clean too aggressively.

I clean a bit differently too. I use the Otis cleaning kit that entails pulling a patch through the barrel with a coated cable. I like this because I can pull a tighter patch than I can push. I also like that I can keep this kit in my backpack when hunting to take care of any obstruction that occurs. I have only had to clean my barrel of an obstruction once while in the field but it is peace of mind to know that I can if I need to.