With all this talk of cleaning guns, it is important to keep things in perspective. A guy that shoots 20 shots a year shooting coyotes is going to have a lot different cleaning regiment than a guy that shoots 5000 rounds a year at ground squirrels, another 100 at predators, and another 5000 rounds at chucks and p. dogs. The longer your shot strings, the hotter you shoot the barrel, you will cook the fouling HARD in the barrels. If you do not heat up your barrel, then fouling tendancies are very different from a guy that does an extreme amount of shooting.
If you are on only using patches, you are not removing the powder fouling. Powder fouling will get so hard that it will not leave a black streak on a patch, there are exceptions to this rule.
Some plastic brushes will work, others won't. The most important item in your cleaning box is a bronze bristle brush, use 80-100 strokes max, then discard. I used the bronze bristle brushes in 8 of the finest Benchrest rifles for years, and each gun had at least 2-3 barrels. After 1200-1500 rounds down the tube shot in competition, the barrels were shot another 5000 or so rounds on p. dog towns. If bronze bristle brushes destroy barrels, it is news to me.
If bronze bristle brushes destroy crowns, that is also news to me. I do touch my crowns up from time to time with a ball bearing, drill, and coarse valve grinding compound, but it is rare that I do this, usually in 1500-2500 round intervals.
Some of the very finest Stainless Steel Match barrels can be got clean with patches only when the cleaning regiment is after few rounds fired, but even in my Hart barrel'd 223 AI, the powder fouling started accumulating. Cartridges like a 243 and a 22/250 really powder foul quite a bit and it is a real son of a gun to get out. I learned this from not cleaning properly my 22/250 when shooting the daylights out of jackrabbits with a 22/250 loaded with 39.2g of H380 with a 55g Sierra. Even my Hart barrel'd 22 PPC powder fouled so bad that patches would not remove the fouling after 20 rounds fired.
What folks do not realize is that fouling occurs in layers, powder fouling on top of copper, you have to work through the layers, I can not stress this enough. I used a Outer's Foul Out II for 12 repetive sessions, brushing inbetween sessions, to get the fouling out of one 7 Mag.
If you own any brand of factory rifle, it is very important that you use good Bronze bristle brushes in it to get it clean when you do clean....buy the brushes by the dozen.
All of us can share our cleaning regiments, which is a good thing, and after all, it's just a hobby.
If you ever get access to a bore scope and use the bore scope during your cleaning process, you will learn volumes the first time around, and you will be pissed! Every barrel is different, and each has it's own tool marks that has to be delt with. Fouling tendancies will inturn have an effect on every rifle differently.
It is very important to use a Lucas or Neil Jones cleaning rod guide if you do not want to lap your lands smooth in the 4 o'clock to 8 o'clock postitions, also.
Cleaning guns is a science, and another hobby in and of itself...I hate it, and that is an understatement. A combo of chemicals and good brushes are inorder to get a gun clean. How often you clean is really up to you and how you relate it to the accuracy that you want to shoot. I have known very accomplished coyote hunters not clean their 22/250's for years because they keep killing with them, they usually shoot at coyotes only for 8 or so years having fried perhaps a 100 rounds a year, then get another barrel. In their minds, the barrel is worn out, truthfully, the barrels are fouled so bad they just need another barrel.
By the way, gunsmiths that teach the use of only using Patches will have frequent customers. Those same gunsmiths have not invested in a bore scope.
I have seen bores so powder fouled that I had to use Comet on a bronze bristle brush in order to try and save the barrel, the guy is so broke, he can not afford another gun, cleaning supplies, must less another barrel. Often, 0000 Steel wool wraped in a bronze bristle brush impregnated with JB will remove stubborn powder fouling on extreme cases. These two methods are extreme cases to be used only as a measure of last resorts to save a customer's barrel, and the cure can be almost as bad as the problem itself.
On most of the tough cases, taking a worn brush that has 100 strokes on it, fill it full of JB, and it will take the fouling down to bare metal within 25 strokes.
If the barrel has more fouling in it after the JB on a Brush, a mild abrasive is in order such as Rem Clean in the yellow tube or Flitz, and I consider these two abrasives a means of last resorts, also.
It is a real son of a gun to have to look a fellow in the eye and tell him that he ruined a gun's barrel by not cleaning...a guy will usually hate the messenger. Powder fouling gets as hard as diamonds, which is carbon that has been under extreme heat and pressure.
Rockwell hardness of barrels will vary between 24-31. No doubt that on of the high quality stainless barrels of 24 rockwell may indeed get the very tinest scratches from a bronze brush. The barrels that Rockwell between 28-31 Rockwell will never get a scratch from a Bronze bristle brush. Also, the Stainless barrel with 24 Rockwell will get the lands lapped out easier from a cleaning rod that has not been kept centered in the bore with a Neil Jones or lucas bore guide. Barrel hardness is another entire can of worms, because Barrels that rockwell in the 24 range will also "Shoot out" sooner than barrels that Rockwell in the 28-31 range. Some gunsmiths love soft barrels because they get more chambers on a reamer, the fact that the customer comes back sooner for another barrel doesn't bother them either, reckon why?
