Easy-Off bore cleaner?

Rustydust

Rustydust

Active member
Earlier this year my Lilja barreled .17 Remington started having accuracy issues. It seemed no matter how much I cleaned it or what I used to clean it with it would only minutely help or not at all. Took it to the range last week with a few different loads and 2 or 3 or 4 shots would group OK then...wow!..next one would miss the entire target or if it did hit the target somewhere it would keyhole. Barrel is way too new for it to be toast. But then I read about using Easy Off oven cleaner got get stubborn carbon out of a bore. Easy Off down my $400 barrel? Oh hale no! But then well, it shoots like crap now so may as well try it. Went and bought a can of it (Heavy Duty) and sprayed some on a patch and ran it down the bore. Waited a bit and did a second patch. It was black! Did a few more until they came out clean and after a few dry swabs followed by a couple of alcohol moistened patches then finally a patch with some Kroil on it I went back to the range. Land sakes alive it shot like new gun again. It was windy but shot a bunch of less than 1/2" 4 shot groups with the dang wind always opening up the 5th shot. Had I settled for three shot groups I would have had several that measured 1/4". I was shooting 20 grain Vmaxes and 25 grain Vmaxes and 25 grain hollow points and they all shot well. I am so happy and relieved that something finally worked.

And for those that think oven cleaner might be too caustic for rifle bores I tried a little experiment (thanks, Keith!) with a section of another stainless steel barrel. I sprayed Easy Off all over it until it was foamy glob and left it. Came back several hours later and went...oh oh! It etched the steel! But no, it had only dried on there and left some residue. Came right off with some spit and a rag. Clean too!

So I am not saying that this will work for you but if you ever do get a barrel that suddenly (or perhaps not so suddenly) shoots like crap then you may want to try this. I did and it worked for me so thought I would share it with you guys.
 
Sure will! After you eat my cooking just spray it right down your throat!
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Quote:It was windy but shot a bunch of less than 1/2" 4 shot groups with the dang wind always opening up the 5th shot. Had I settled for three shot groups I would have had several that measured 1/4".

Try not looking at your groups before firing that 5th shot.
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Regards,
hm
 
Originally Posted By: ackleymanCongrats Russ!

Wonder how brushing with the oven spray would work? Hummmmm....

I skipped a step, Keith. I did scrub some with a bronze brush. I sure did. I am not totally sure that it was necessary but I just wanted to hurry up the cleaning process. I just now came back in from the garage and tried the oven cleaner again and got little bit black out of it but not much. I think I may have a new bore cleaner. At least one to try if all else fails anyway.
 
Originally Posted By: hm1996Quote:It was windy but shot a bunch of less than 1/2" 4 shot groups with the dang wind always opening up the 5th shot. Had I settled for three shot groups I would have had several that measured 1/4".

Try not looking at your groups before firing that 5th shot.
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Dang! Why didn't I think of that? Dope slap!
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Glad you saw the humor in my post, Rusty.
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All joking aside, though, I shoot more "fliers" on the last shot of the string than at any other time. I think I get over confident or just plain lose concentration.

Regards,
hm
 
Originally Posted By: hm1996Glad you saw the humor in my post, Rusty.
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All joking aside, though, I shoot more "fliers" on the last shot of the string than at any other time. I think I get over confident or just plain lose concentration.


Well, usually it goes like this:

1st shot. OK. Inch high so that's good.
2nd shot. Dang! Touching the first one. Maybe?
3rd shot. Weeee! Clover leaf! Should I stop? One more....
4th shot. Hot dang! All touching! I guess one more shot.....
5th shot. DOH!!!
 
Thanks for the tip, Rusty!

Just cleaned a SS Savage bore last week. Strange what one can
see with a Lyman bore scope. Just looking down the barrel, it
shined as though squeaky clean, but the bore scope revealed a
tremendous amount of carbon. Wipe Out and Accelerator wouldn't
touch it...same with JB. I finally resorted to Flitz metal
polish and with much elbow grease, finally got it clean to the
metal. I wouldn't want to use Flitz very many times, though.
That rifle went from 5/16 capable groups to "lucky to get MOA".
Gotta get it to the range and see if it helped or hindered.

I have a throw-away steel barrel and will test if the Easy-Off
effects it in any way. Glad to see it doesn't effect SS!
 
Originally Posted By: DannoBooneThanks for the tip, Rusty!

Just cleaned a SS Savage bore last week. Strange what one can
see with a Lyman bore scope. Just looking down the barrel, it
shined as though squeaky clean, but the bore scope revealed a
tremendous amount of carbon.

Yeah buddy! I wish my Lyman bore scope would work with the .17 bores. Cannot see much through those BB sized holes. Several months ago someone here on the forum demonstrated his Lyman (thanks, Matthew!) in my .223 AI and my .204 Ruger. Yikes! I thought they were clean! Streaks of carbon as well as copper. Meh. I called Brownell's that evening and ordered my own bore scope and now I know when my bores are clean. Except, of course, the .17 cals. When they are clean they are joy to shoot. When they get fouled they are not so fun to shoot. Aggravating to say the least.

Dont know who the guy was that first tried Easy Off but I owe him a tip of the hat for sure. Really worked for me.
 
I had never heard of using ez-off but some boys on accurate shooter.com are using CLR for carbon. Not ready to go there myself, but if I had a tube that was going to end up in the scrap pile anyway, why not.
 
I tried the CLR. Can't really say if it worked or not. Hard to put that stuff down a good barrel. Ended up cleaning my coffee pot with it.
 
I had the same thing happen with my Ruger M77.After many cleanings nothing seemed to work.Thought the barrel was toast.Finally I tried Wipe Out foam.Very happy to say it worked like a charm and brought the gun back to like new accuracy.Glad to hear your gun is back to.Nothing worse than thinking a gun's a gonner.
 
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