Originally Posted By: Ricky BobbyI decided to give one of my rifles a thorough cleaning this afternoon. I did the normal wet patch with bore cleaner & then let it sit for probably a half hour. I then run a dry patch through with my jag tipped rod. I then run a bronze, caliber specific brush through it and then repeated the process of one wet patch followed by a dry patch. I kept repeating this process until I realized ... Holy Cow, how many patches does it take to do a normal barrel cleaning? I bet I ended up with a pile of 50-60 patches. 
You can't get a barrel clean like that, cuz you are putting the dirty back in, and then cleaning it, then putting the dirty back in, then cleaning it, and on and on...
It is the brush that is making it dirty again.
I used to do the same thing and spent forever going through the same cycle - and easily would use 30 to 50 patches.
I always thought the black patches were carbon that the brush had loosened up again, so I continued until I reached the point of, "Well, that good enough!", cuz it NEVER got clean - at least in my mind!
My cleaning procedure was to soak the barrel in a copper remover, using a chamber plug (midway has them) for an hour or so, then scrub with a brush, and then patch , then brush, then patch, then brush, then... yadda yadda yadda...
I thought the brushing wa loosening up more caarbon, so I had to keep going.
Then, one day I was scrubbing the barrel, and patchin' it until the patches came out white, and then running the brush through "to make sure", which loosened up more carbon (so I thought)... and I quit for the night and was gonna come back and continue in the morning.
In the morning, all of the old patches were on the table and they were GREEN, not black. That didn't make sense.
So I thought about what I was doing, and figured that it was the brush that was re-depositing the brass on the bore, like a piece of chalk marks a blackboard.
So I switched methods and I soaked the bore, and then brushed it the normal amount, then I put the brush away... and I patched it until the patches came out clean... and quit!
I took a rifle cleaned this way to my local 'smith who has a Hawkeye, and asked him to look at it, and he said it was squeaky clean.
So, it was the brush on the repeated runs that kept re-depositing the brass on the bore - and why I couldn't get it clean.
It is also where the wives tale comes from about barrel fouling being like a layer cake - people think if they patch the barrel and then brush it and it comes out dirty, they must have loosened another layer of carbon - I mean, that's what I thought. But it's not carbon - it's brass that they just re-deposited.
To prove it to myself (and a doubting friend) last year, I got a new Kreiger barrel for a 20 Tac rifle. It had NEVER seen a single round through it - it was straight from the rifling machine.
I cleaned it with a patch and bore cleaner and the first patch came out chalk white.
Then I brushed it, and ran another patch with solvent - the patch came out black - the next day, that same patch was green.
So that is where the dirty patches come from.
So now, after letting the barrel soak for a while, I brush once. Then it is only patches until they come out white - then dry it, and quit!
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