BoydAllen
Gold $$ Contributor
I think that in any discussion of this type, that an important distinction needs to be made between powder fouling, which seems to be what most posters are referring to, and so called hard carbon, which some may not be aware of, and which is so hard, that an abrasive must be (carefully) used to remove it. If you do not have a bore scope, or have access to one, you are just guessing as to the condition of your bore. That is a fact. True hard carbon will not show on a patch after soaking with solvent. I have a friend that had read an old article in Precision Shooting in which the author had recommended against brushing barrels. After that, my friend has made a habit of doing repeated soakings and patching until patches were clean. Unfortunately this did not tell the story with regard to hard carbon. Recently I had him bring over a .20 caliber barrel for bore scope inspection after cleaning. It had hard carbon in the back of the bore, and after we determined that that was the case, I used a little IOSSO and a nylon brush to carefully clean that out, working only in the problem area, because it will tend to polish a bore, and that will cause copper fouling if it happens in the front of the bore. After that, we inspected again with the scope, and the hard carbon had been removed. He is not the only one that has run into these kinds of problems. Within the group that he shoots varmints with, people have changed powders because a particular one would develop a problem after too few rounds.