butchlambert
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Fred, I did,t say that it was good or bad. This is just Ed's original recipe. I've never tried it.
Did I just find a great Carbon Cleaner?
- Thread starter fredhorace77
- Start date
Fred, I did,t say that it was good or bad. This is just Ed's original recipe. I've never tried it.
Subaru spray upper engine cleaner seems to work the same way. More importantly, the local service manager can't believe what I use it for & gives it to me when I ask for it.
Don't understand how it could harm a rifle barrel if it doesn't harm an aluminum carburetor.
I've been soaking AR bolts and carburetors in it and so far, it works great for that.
Seems to melt carbon as well as anything I've ever used.
butchlambert
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butchlambert
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Sorry meant poorboy.
Yea, I'm kinda careful about what I get on my stock.
Don't think I'd want any of the stuff mentioned on my stock.
Google "Ed's Red Bore Cleaner". It's been around forever and I still haven't found anything better on carbon....and you can mix up enough to last a lifetime at home for just a few bucks.
Yep! you can make a gallon for about $20 and you can also use it as a penetrating oil, tap cutting oil for aluminum, polishing lubricant for polishing metals with cloth or paper abrasives. For a light oil use a 50/50 mix of ATF and kerosine. That is what I use for the actions on my guns.
It is amazing what shaving cream can do....
butchlambert
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Ah, I missed seeing where you posted the formula, Butch. I haven't had much time and haven't been on any of the forums much of late.
Anyway, I'm the type that likes to test to prove or disprove things that I read on the "internets". Bore cleaners are a good example of something that's pretty easy to test for yourself. First, I've yet to find any cleaner that will magically, without scrubbing, dissolve baked on hard carbon. But with that said, there's a lot of snake oil out there and Ed's Red is not a snake oil, IME. Anything that I've yet seen does take some amount of scrubbing for hard carbon..a bronze brush works well. A few strokes with a wet brush, with ER, followed by a short soak time, is as good as I've seen on carbon. The soft stuff just melts away...the hard stuff is what needs a little agitation. Anyone with a bore scope can test until they are satisfied with whatever they wish and until they find what's best for them. I'm happy with what I've found and my cleaning process. Basically, my process is to use the ER for carbon and then attack the now exposed copper with a dedicated copper solvent. Again, it's easy to test which copper solvents work and which ones are snake oil.
I did a test like one that I read about several years ago, taking several bullets, weighing them..then soaking in various solvents, weighing again afterward. At the time, KG12 was slightly most effective but I don't care for how it "reads" on a patch vs most cleaners. It doesn't show the typical blue/green on a patch, making it more difficult to read the patch. The close 2nd place cleaner was Patch-Out with Accelerator. That's what I use mostly because of it's combined effectiveness and "readability" on a patch.
A bore scope and the targets tell me that my process works to my own satisfaction.
As always...YMMV.--Mike
I shot HBR for several years. Steve Kostanich buillt my rifle. He told me that Mercury Top End cleaner was the only thing to put in my barrel, and never use a brush. Every hundred rounds or so, a bit of Sweets, followed by a thorough Kroil swabbing. It worked. I shot over 3200 rounds, 150gr MatchKings and 4895 thru that barrel, and five years later it would still group under .3 on a good day with my 36X Leupold on it at 100yds.
Want a quick check on what a brush will do to your barrel, take one and just drag it across a barrel. Are those scratches? Yes.
I usually listen very carefully to what Butch says. He had enough of a head start on me to make all the mistakes decades ago. That way I don't have to.
Rich
Want a quick check on what a brush will do to your barrel, take one and just drag it across a barrel. Are those scratches? Yes.
I usually listen very carefully to what Butch says. He had enough of a head start on me to make all the mistakes decades ago. That way I don't have to.
Rich
MEK was popular for cleaning in my shop at NAS NEW YORK in the 60's. You did not want to get it on your skin but it would clean oil, grease, and deposits better than any thing else. Methelethelkeytone
perry42
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Some folks refer to it as 'cancer in a can'.
If you polish steel enough, you can see scratches left by running your hand over it. Hand lapped barrels are lapped by using 240-320 grit abrasive. Think about that for a minute. I'm sorry, but your logic is flawed. If it weren't, they'd make band saw blades, end mills, lathe bits, drill bits..etc, out of phosphor bronze.
The long term, biggest enemy in regard to a bronze brush is the dirt and grit it carries. That dirt and grit is far more abrasive than those thin bronze bristles. That same dirt and grit gets embedded into copper or lead bullets that we propel down the bore of a rifle at 3000fps, at 60,000psi at about 8000 degrees, and you're worried about bronze bristles on a cleaning brush. You're not the only one that worries about such, but obviously, I worry more about other things like, cleaning the bore, reading the flags...and the price of tea in China.
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A bronze or copper brush will mar the finish on a barrel but it won't scratch it unless there is something harder than the steel. After all to are running copper allows through the barrel with every shot. The copper doesn't wear the barrel but the hot gases and carbon bits do. Somewhere between 2000 and 10000 shots will be time to replace the barrel. The determining factor is the number of consecutive shots and the maintenance done. Target rifles are typically better maintained than a hunting rifle (most hunting rifles) but the hunting rifle rarely sees strings of 25 shots. Target rifles are shot for practice more than they are in competitions but they are shot a lot more than the typical hunting rifle. My rifles (which are hunting guns) get shot a lot more than most hunting rifles but there is no way that I shoot as much as a target rifle.
Cleaning is only bad for a barrel if it is done improperly. I use a one piece rod with a chamber protector and clean only from the breach. I don't want to pull any of that stuff in the barrel into my chamber. I use a chamber brush and shotgun swap to keep the chamber clean.
Cleaning is only bad for a barrel if it is done improperly. I use a one piece rod with a chamber protector and clean only from the breach. I don't want to pull any of that stuff in the barrel into my chamber. I use a chamber brush and shotgun swap to keep the chamber clean.
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