barrel cleaner

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furflyer

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What is the best barrel cleaner out on the market today ? And how do you know without a bore scope if the barrel is clean . /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
Two items need to be cleaned from a barrel; powder residue and copper/guilding. Powder can be washed out with a good solvent some good bronze brushes and, of course, a quality cleaning rod and bore guide. Many good solvents are available such as traditional ones like Hoppes or some of the more recent ones like Shooter's Choice, Butch's etal. These solvents also will take out some of the copper fouling.

Once the powder residue is removed, the task of removing copper is next. Normal removal with excellent solvents like Barnes #10, Montana Extreme or Sweets will suffice for normal removal. JB Paste and RemClean gets used on the tough stuff, although, just how much needs to be removed is a judgement call.

Some copper fouling imbeds the pores of the steel and its removal is not needed. In fact, most avid shooter probably overclean their bores whereas a good judgement call is to do so when accuracy deteriorates. This is a variable depending on barrel quality and, often, one of the advantages of a premium barrel that has been properly laped after the rifling has been cut, hammer forged or button pulled. IMHO and experience, premium cut rifling is the easiest to clean of copper fouling and influences my preference Krieger and K&P barrels, both of which take only a few patches to clean up and normally need such cleaning after 100 to 150 rounds (220 Swift, 223 Rem, 25-06AI, 257AI).

I've seen some enticing ads recently for Copper Melt and would like to try some.

A third type of fouling is caused by the use of moly coated bullets. This can be a tough assignment for any solvent. It may be one of the reasons current purchasing trends have moved away from the coated bullets. A bore scope can often show impacted moly areas in bores that have been fastidiously cleaned of powder and copper. My only solution has been to scrub, scrub, scrub and to return to plain jacketed bullets which have had no effect on accuracy in any rifle I've used.
 
Handloader makes some good points. Different cleaners have different uses. Generally, Shooter's Choice and Sweets have been the top dogs for years. SS is not a copper remover per-say and Sweet's is a copper remover only in my book. A new one called Montana Xtreme seems to be a good all around one performing both jobs in one use but needs to be used outside or a well vented area. Butch's Bore Shine is another. Many make claims so you will have to sort through them. Any of these 4 should work well.

I use the Shooter's Choice for general cleaning and Sweet's if copper fouling is present.

No way to really tell it clean unless you use a bore-scope but I think that is a little over-board.
 
I have a bore scope and have spent many hours on this subject. Here is my version: the above mentioned products as far as what I have seen are best classed as "maintenance", that is to say once you have a clean {really clean} bore they help keep it that way if you use them properly and often enough. Properly is written on the bottle and enough depends on how much and the way you shoot. Bore cleaners, and I am sure there are others that will get the job done, that work real well are J-B Non Embedding Bore Cleaner, Remington Bore Cleaner and Witches Brew. These three will get the fouling {whatever it may be} out, and they are not long doing it. Everything relative, it is possible to completely clean all the copper smears out of a barrel with copper solvent alone but for the effort you have to put forth it seemed not worth it to me when you see the results thru a borescope. One last thing I will pass on...prior to my borescope days I used to clean the copper out with solvent and when the smears and streaks at the muzzle {because that was all I could see} were gone I believed I was finished. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fact is, this area is the last part of the barrel to get smeared with copper and so it is always the least amount in the bore. Conversely, it is the first to come out while cleaning. Just because the copper you can see in the muzzle appears gone dont make it all gone. In fact the borescope shows that the worse of it, the area just ahead of the chamber is almost just as caked up as it was before swabbing it with solvent. I have soaked barrels overnight and half the next day with Shooters Choice solvent only to see nearly as much copper remaining in the bore as before I started. To soak a bore for any length of time with the much more powerful copper solvent type ammonia based stuff is asking for disaster as they will definately etch the bore. Typically I can scrub a barrel that is fouled to the point of accuracy drop off for a half an hour and still see fouling. The J-B compound will clean out everything in about 10-15 passes. Good luck.
 
Handloader, Harpy, I have a bore fouled with moly, bad, I've heard a overnight soaking in brakefluid will nearly remove the moly. Have you guys tried this or heard of it before? I've scrubbed it to death but still am getrting moly out. Your opinion's would be appreciated. kyray.
 
Just as a general topic, I bought a large bottle of Copper Melt. It smells like almost pure ammonia, and after cleaning the barrel, I'd try something else, like Sweet's or Hoppe's, and the patches would come out dirty. I just don't know about it. It cost about $40.00 for a 3.5 oz bottle. I emailed them about it, and they said it was other ingredients than ammonia. Just thought I'd throw this in, maybe someone else has some thoughts or experience about it or with it.
 
The active ingredient in most copper cleaners is very strong ammonia. It is much stronger than anything you would use to clean floors, etc. The extremely strong bore cleaners based on ammonia work by actually chemically reacting with the copper in the bore. Copper that has been "altered" comes out as a blue green coloration on the patch that you clean with. This blue green color suggest some sort of conversion to liquid copper sulfate. These type cleaners are such a strong base that they would probably clean out moly fouling as well but I would suggest being careful with any very strong ammonia smelling solvent as they also have the ability to etch metal if they are in contact too long. It is recommended that they never remain in the bore more than 10 minutes.
Brake fluid may clean out a bore too, it will certainly do a hell of a job stripping paint, it contains very strong alcohol. I have never heard of this being used to clean a bore but have an old junk barrel soaking now after reading this{I will try almost anything once as long as it dont cost me money!!!}
The thing about Witches Brew or J-B Bore Cleaner is that they dont rely on solvent or chemical action that could get out of hand. Which is not to say that some fella hasn't already scrubbed out a bore or two with these{you can ruin anything if you really want too!!} But at least you have the control. J-B has cleaned everything out of every bore I have tried it on with no bore scope discernable change to the bore other than it is clean. I have never cleaned a bore with it that shot worse afterwards and again its fast, easy and cheap. Good luck. I will post my findings with the brake fluid.
 
Bore-tech has just recently come out with a cleaner called "Eliminator" that works great on copper and powder residue both. and it has no ammonia smell , which is nice. But it is so strong that you have to use nylon brushes because it will eat up the bronze ones. I have been using it for a couple months and have been very pleased with the results.....
 
In the August issue of Predator Xtreme they cover this problem the one's they recomend Xtreme clean from Shooters Choice ,and Eliminator from Bore tech,Bore Cleaning foam form brak free and they say you just run a few patchs after these cleaners so you don't use a pack of patchs evey night check it out
 
kyray, and other moly shooters:

Try some acetone on that moly. I have used it with favorable results. It seems to dissolve the plastic properties of moly. I then finish up with JB.

You can get acetone at your local hardware store in the paint thinner department. I believe that plastic plumbing pipe cleaner and fingernail polish remover are the same thing.

As an added benefit; if you are a trapper, you can inject your trapped critters with this stuff, and "put 'em down" quick. (especially skunks)

Best to All
"Ridge"
 
When you buy that acetone, check to see how many narcs are following you. That is one of the ingredients the meth heads use up here during the meth manufacturing process.
 
I don't think you need to worry about the narcs unless you are buying hundreds of gallons. It is a very common solvent sold in every hardware and paint store in the country.

It is an excellent degreaser but you have to be careful because it evaporates extremely fast. If you don't get it wiped off before it evaporates, the grease is redeposited on what you are trying to clean.

A much better degreaser is HIGH TEMPERATURE lacquer thinner. It evaporate slowly and gives you time to wipe it off before it redeposits the grease. Of course, it is a lot more expensive than acetone or low temp lacquer solvents.

Jack
 
I second rotaderp's recommendation of wipe out I recently bought some and it is great. I am a believer and will use it as long as I can get it. Leaving it in the barrel for an hour or overnight does not hurt the barrel. I know a couple of other guys that use it an swear by it.

Whoever is in charge of advertising here should contact them. This would be a great site for them to advertise on.
 
I've tried the Wipe Out and it does work well and I like that there is almost no odor. I'm also trying the MPro 7 stuff. It also works well with very little odor and you don't have to let it sit as long as the Wipe Out. I see that Midway even carries it now. Both work well cleaning up my stainless revolver too.
I shoot mainly cast bullets so I don't worry about copper except in my 6tcu, 22 hornet and 17/223.
 
I like the Wipe-out also,great stuff.I used to used birchwood casey bore scrubber,but it took alot of elbow grease,and I didnt like the idea of running a rod through my bore so many times.I believe rods can wear out a bore just as much as shooting.I use a one piece rod and bore guide but still cringe.The wipe-out only took 6 passes with my rod and no brushing.
 
Here is the brakefluid report... it will clean the bore and it did not etch after three days of soaking. It did not take three days to clean though I just wanted to see if it would etch. I actually soaked overnight and cleaned then added it back in for three more days. All you guys using the new stuff mentioned above, are you borescoping the barrel after you clean them????? When you say it "works great" are you able to see the portion of the bore just ahead of the chamber??? {not just looking down the bore and/or getting clean patches????}
One final question to the guy that "injects" skunks with acetone.... is there anyway you could post a short clip of you actually doing this????? I have got to see that!!!!! You are not shooting them with a dart gun???? You actually walk up to a skunk in a trap, leg or live, and jam a needle in his ass, inject him with hot burning {there is no other kind} acetone without getting hit with the 36 hour piss treatment?????? I would pay cash to see that. WOW!!!!
 
I bought the Coppermelt and have been using it for a couple months. The first few cleanings it takes a little longer, but after you get the barrel coated the cleaning process gets shorter. I have used other solvents a couple times since to see if I could get more out, and didn't get anymore out. So far so good. Would like to have a professional look at it, maybe they could tell me just how good a job it may or may not be doing.
 
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