Most folks over-clean thier rifles. The natural state of a rifle barrel is fouled. If the gun won't shoot well with some fouling in the bore, it's a one shot rifle.
Too, people tend to buy into the marketing rhetoric that your barrel is going to turn into something resembling an iron sewer pipe if you don't get every single last smidgeon of copper fouling out.
Many barrels are truly "cleaned to death" by well meaning, but certainly confused individuals.
Use Hoppes number 9 for routine cleaning. True, it doesn't have the nitro-benzene in it these days, but it's still plenty powerful to do the job--provided you don't suffer from OCD /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif ... When copper build up begins to impede accuracy, treat the bore with Sweet's or JB bore paste to knock the high spots down on the copper. Then leave the Hoppes in the bore and it'll slowly work more fouling out--and also prevent any rust or corrosion problems.
Here's a piece I wrote about this matter a couple of years ago...
http://home.earthlink.net/~dannewberry/dannewberrysoptimalchargeweightloaddevelopment/id3.html
Dan
