Gun cleaning question.

[TheOtherZilla]

I have been laid up following knee surgery for the last few months.. So I decided to give my 204 Savage 12 a good cleaning.. I have several products on hand, and right now Wipe Out seems to be the stuff of choice.. So I started.. Filled the barrel let sit overnight, lots o blue. Re-filled, let sit a few hours, still blue. This went on for like 3 days.. I'd let it sit for 2-3 hours and clean, overnight etc. I am still getting blue with the Wipe Out. Today I tried some Sweets 7.62.. After a few tries per the instructions the bore shows clean.. Put Wipe Out in, more blue but a lesser amount.. So for all you Wipe Out users does the blue ever go away?

 

[DennisH]

I use Wipe Out on all my guns, nothing else.

I have never had this situation. Is your chamber clean? Are you using a brush, and is it clean?

I usually fill my barrel up with foam and after an hour push out with a patch. I try not to use a brush if I can get away with it. I also flush my barrel with gun spray cleaner. Personally I think this is the key.

If I do a second treatment, it's usually white as can be!

Something has to be going on, I don''t think there can be that much copper in your barrel. Personally I fell WipeOut is better than Sweets, but then again, my opinion.

JMO, Dennis

 

[TheOtherZilla]

The instructions said not to brush.. So I didn't.. Yes it seems like a lot of cleaning to me.. I have no idea whether the blue from the Wipe Out is coming from copper still in the barrel or if it is reacting with the steel in the barrel.. I have a new can here as well as the one i am using. Might try one more time with a different can.

 

[DennisH]

It's not going to react with the metal. Only copper.

Try flushing the barrel, then reapplying WipeOut and see what happens.

I have had some hard to clean barrels and never had this situation, FYI

 

[jonbearman]

I dont care about how wipeout is so great,but I can tell you one thing,if a barrel is heavily coppered use the sweets to remove the heavy stuff and use nylon brushes as the bronze ones add alittle copper in the barrel which will give a false positive. Then use your wipeout to get the rest. If you clean it spotless the barrel will probably not settle down till you refoul it with several shots.If you coat your bullets with hbn,danzac,moly then you want a spotless bore to begin with.

 

[DennisH]

as the bronze ones add a little copper in the barrel which will give a false positive.

+1 on the above

But after your flush the barrel with barrel spray flush, it removes all residue.

Run a patch through, there should not be any blue or just a trace if any.

I have done it too many times.

Savage barrels are the hardest to clean and get all the copper out and I don't have as much as the OP states.

Dennis

 

[Uthink Uknow]

What kind of a jag are you using to push the patch?

 

[seanhagerty]

Try some JB Bore paste.

 

[lpreddick]

a borescope will "tell it all". i inherited my father's 6mm rem and gave up trying to get the copper out...he never used a copper solvent. jb with a little kroil and a hale-parker type jag and elbow grease will clean everything out of a bore. there is a product by Dynamic Finishes to coat the bore after COMPLETE cleaning. it consist of .025 micron sized ceramic (glass) particles in a solvent that is patched thru the bore,then "cured" after a few shots. the coating significantly reduces general fouling and copper adherence and reduces my cleaning time to minutes. some barrels come clean of copper with 2 or 3 patches, no joke. powder residue comes out without brushing. john barsness has written about this product.

 

[TheOtherZilla]

I am using a stainless rod and jag. Just seems odd to me that the Wipeout pulls blue, but the Sweets and Barnes X10 come clean. I do not have access to a borescope, wish I did. I'll put some more Wipeout in there and see what happens.

FWIW i have also tried Butch's Boreshine and it came clean. It is only the Wipeout that is pulling blue.

Edit: I just filled it up with the new can. I'll check it in a few hours.

 

[whiskey08]

most of the time i when i wrap the patch on the brush or jag it starts to turn blue before i even put it in the barrel, so if i keep to my cleaning ritual i dont worry bout the blue to much.

best way to tell will be a bore scope for sure.

 

[fdshuster]

zilla: I'm a regular user of Butch's & it will remove light copper fouling, especially if left to soak for a while. But for heavy layers of copper it will not. For that I don't hesitate to use JB bore paste. All verified with my borescope.

Without a borescope, you really don't know what's going on inside the bore, and the condition of patch's coming out the muzzle will tell you very little of the true condition.

 

[TheOtherZilla]

Thanks for all the replies.. I can't recall seeing the bore paste in any of the shops here.. But then I live in the sticks and it is hard to find anything.. Going to the big city tomorrow so will look there. I do not shoot competitivly so have never felt the need to buy a borescope. I'll keep swabbin. Thanks again.

 

[Forum Boss]

If the factory barrel has transverse tooling marks (like the female threads in a lightbulb fixture), there will be copper in those grooves that never, ever really gets 100% out, because it is BELOW the nominal bore surface.

I think you are obsessing a little....

My advice -- after you shoot your rifle, run 2-3 soaking wet patches, and then brush a couple times if you feel like it. Then apply the Wipe-Out. Make sure the foam works all the way down the tube. Wait 30 minutes. During this delay the foam bubbles will dissipate. Now fill the bore with foam AGAIN, and wait 3-4 hours.

After 4 hours Dry patch out the liquid and shoot the gun.

You do NOT have to get every last molecule of copper out of that barrel. And as I said to start, if your factory tube has transverse tooling marks (not uncommon), you can brush to your hearts content and there will always be some copper in those sub-bore-surface grooves.

Re the Bore Paste and other abrasives: They may help a little in your situation, but always be careful with any abrasives! I've never put JB in any of my best shooting barrels. Never needed to...

 

[TheOtherZilla]

I have it soaking with the stuff from a new can I bought a few days ago.. I do not think I am obsessing because the blue coming out of the barrel is a deep blue, and lots of it.. As I said, I am laid up and have a lot of time on my hands..

Boss, I'll try that method next time I go shooting..

 

[TheOtherZilla]

Well I let the Wipeout from the new can sit for 2 hrs.. Pushed a patch through, it came out clean.. Now I am thinkin that the older can was bad somehow.. Anyhow, it's time to go lay a new layer of copper down.

Thank you for all the replies and tips. I do appreciate them.

 

[jonbearman]

What I have done and will probably get put down for this is to use tubbs final finish bullets and follow his instructions and it will fire lap the barrel slightly and make cleaning easy.This is a method I use on rougher factory barrels only.This process works and the gun is always more accurate than before fire lapping.

 

[JRS]

"The barrel makers luv ya"

Quote from Gale McMillan

 

[Bob3700]

Barrels will foul in layers. Copper is laid down first and then the carbon. As you shoot each shot, you layer the fouling in that manner.

So as you brush the carbon away with your powder solvent, it exposes the copper. Depending on how often and through your cleaning is, you may have fouling developed in several layers. So running thru your cleaning program several times may be in order.

If the copper or carbon is really difficult to remove, then a product like JB or RemClean (both mild abrasives) may be in order to remove them. A patch around a worn out brush will do the job.

You will find that the throat and muzzle will be the two places where the fouling that is hardest to remove is located

For copper removal, you might also look into Bore Tech Eliminator. That is some very good stuff that will not harm your bbl. and will show blue/green when it is working on copper. If using Sweets, don't let it sit in your bbl for extended lengths of time, it will pit the bore. The benchresters proved this many years ago. May have been Jim Borden who did the testing.

Factory bbls are a haven for tooling marks, especially in the throat area. Polishing them with the JB bore past won't hurt them in the least.

Bob

 

[jcason]

I have a 7mm-08 in a Savage and you can't hardly get all the copper out. You can shoot 5 shots and the barrel is fouled so bad it will take 2 days to get it out. when i look at it with a bore scope it looks like threads have been cut in the barrel. I am serious. I have never seen a barrel like this. I am going to have to just put another barrel on it.