How necessary is cleaning a .22LR?
- Thread starter Alpheus
- Start date
- Location
- West Quebec
Are you a plinker or a Bullseye / target precision guy..
Cleaning 22 rimfires
The reason you should clean your rimfires is to remove carbon build-up just ahead of chamber cause by powder, primer residue
I clean my 1956 Rem 40x usually after 200 to 400 rounds, I use Butches Bore shine then a few passes of brush (not nylon) patch out dry, then I put some Carb-Out with a cue-tip in chamber and ahead of chamber and let sit to make sure there is no carbon ring developing. I always use a bore guide.
This rifle shoots quite good for being use for over 55 years.
I had cleaned barrel and action before I tried some Midas + bullets a few weeks ago. I fired 12 shots to season barrel to new ammo I started shooting 5 shot groups
at 100 yards, conditions was good no wind.
Note Target I started on target above the sighter target bottom right, going up then down the left side and finishing on sighter target.
not how the groups stared to tighten up as barrel seasoned to new ammo, this Midas ammo produced no flyers like a lot of other ammo does, wish this stuff was $50 a brick.
manitou
The reason you should clean your rimfires is to remove carbon build-up just ahead of chamber cause by powder, primer residue
I clean my 1956 Rem 40x usually after 200 to 400 rounds, I use Butches Bore shine then a few passes of brush (not nylon) patch out dry, then I put some Carb-Out with a cue-tip in chamber and ahead of chamber and let sit to make sure there is no carbon ring developing. I always use a bore guide.
This rifle shoots quite good for being use for over 55 years.
I had cleaned barrel and action before I tried some Midas + bullets a few weeks ago. I fired 12 shots to season barrel to new ammo I started shooting 5 shot groups
at 100 yards, conditions was good no wind.
Note Target I started on target above the sighter target bottom right, going up then down the left side and finishing on sighter target.
not how the groups stared to tighten up as barrel seasoned to new ammo, this Midas ammo produced no flyers like a lot of other ammo does, wish this stuff was $50 a brick.
manitou
That's what I've found. Every time I've given my Savage 93FVSS or my boys Marlin XT-22's a good cleaning it has taken 50-100 rounds before they are really shooting sweet again.
What's the point of cleaning every couple of hundred rounds (as some have suggested) if it means 1/2 your ammo is wasted.
Even considering the low cost of .22 ammo (we won't even talk about the .22WMR) if 1/2 the rounds aren't going where you want them it would be cheaper just to not clean the gun at all and replace it every 5 years.
After a session I spray down the actions with a good solvent/lube and wipe her down.
A great example (IMO) is the Mossberg 715T, which has a bad rap for various failures, many of whom believe you gotta clean the gun every 100 rounds to keep it functioning.
I purchased mine 1.5 years ago. Tore it apart when I got it home to clean out any gunk...slapped it back together (a poor design means this is an hour job) and all I've done since then is the solvent/lube route and a wipe down.
I'm now have around 8000 rounds through it and haven't had a failure of any kind in the last 2500 rounds (fingers crossed).
I have a couple of rimfires that have not had their barrels cleaned in many thousands of rounds, and many others with lower round counts but still well over 1000 rounds each, also with no barrel cleaning. None of these guns display any deterioration in overall accuracy, and most are shooting better now than ever. They range from simple cheapo plinkers to Anschutz match rifles. Where is this "carbon build-up" on my guns? It must be darn near blocking the barrel after all those rounds. Many years ago, I did experience a ring of crud in the chambers of .22lr rifles after shooting large numbers of .22shorts in them, but that's about it. I have never seen the problem when shooting long rifle cartridges in barrels chambered for them.
I agree that switching ammo brands often requires that you shoot a few, or a few dozen, rounds before the barrel will display the best accuracy it is capable of with that ammo...I'd love to hear a good explanation for that "seasoning" of the barrel that often seems to be required.
Clean the actions, sure. But why would you ever shove anything down the barrel of a rifle, risking unnecessary damage, unless you need to? Like Freyr pointed out, you likely must accept a certain loss of accuracy for some finite number of rounds until you get that gun shooting its best again.
Please prove me wrong. Someone come on here and honestly say that their rimfire displays a gradual deterioration of accuracy that isn't related to ammo changes, and that the accuracy is restored after a nice compulsive barrel scrubbing. Anyone?
- Location
- West Quebec
- Location
- West Quebec
I'm starting to think the same thing other than professional competition.. any Pros out there?
Cleaning is an absolute necessity in the fullbore target game. We clean after 50 or so rounds. I put thousands of rounds through my Sako P72 in .22lr and decided to clean the barrel. Virtually nothing came out on the patches. Clean and grease actions by all means, light coating of oil on metal surfaces. Leave the barrel alone unless it gets wet. Don't touch the muzzle on carpets - salt from peoples' shoes could cause damage.
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When I first started buying guns as a teenager, the first few were .22's, including a 10/22. I cleaned them after every shooting session, just as carefully as I cleaned my hand-me-down 12-gauge Ithaca 37 and my .303, i.e. thoroughly to the point of fanaticism. After reading an article about it, I decided to stop cleaning until function or accuracy began to suffer. The 10/22 went several thousand rounds before it started to gum up and misfeed. I cleaned the action thoroughly, and it went on to go another few thousand before it needed attention again. The barrel was never cleaned again...ever. That gun's accuracy never, ever declined in all the years I owned it (roughly 22 years). I sold it to a guy who still owns, uses and loves it.
Today, I have around 15 assorted .22's...bolts, levers, semis, single shots. I clean the actions when they need it, which varies from gun to gun and from ammo to ammo but is almost never more frequently than every thousand rounds or so. If a .22 needs cleaning more often than that, I'll stop using that particular brand of crappy usually-imported ammo...after I use it all up in practice...and the problem always goes away. Keep in mind that I'm talking here about cleaning the action, bolt, etc...I am not cleaning the barrels...EVER. The only exception would be a hunting gun that has gotten wet. That will get swabbed out, oiled, and then dry-patched before the next firing.
I shoot a fair bit, at least a couple of times a week, usually every day in good or even fair weather, and most of it is with .22's...I would estimate that 98% of the rifle shots I fire are with .22's...whose barrels are never cleaned. Accuracy has never suffered. My Anschutz 54 Match rifle, the same specimen that I shot at the Hart House Rifle club at UofT in the 1970's, shoots as well or better now than it ever did. My BSA target rifle has somewhat fewer rounds through it (fired by me, anyway) than the Anschutz, but it currently holds the record for lack of barrel cleaning. I got it in 1980 or 81, I shoot it regularly, at least once a week...and I have never, ever cleaned the barrel. It wears the same BSA aperture sights that it came with (the Anschutz now has a scope) and it has only gotten better and better.
It's just another, slightly less-publicized reason for shooting rimfires, and it ranks right up there with low cost, low noise, accuracy and all the others.
Right on!
My 22 barrels never get cleaned either.
You mention shooting in the 1970s. They were still shooting the Dominion Marksman program, where if you shot long enough and straight enough, you could end up with a big, engraved brass shield, called the gold shield.
Did you shoot on this program?
I notice I got my last gold shield in 1972.
I can't say that I recall that particular program, but I wasn't really interested in any sort of competition. I got involved with the club simply because I was attending UofT and living on campus, had no car, and was going absolutely bonkers with no place to shoot in the heart of Toronto. Most members were, or at least fancied themselves to be, "serious" shooters and competitors. I felt like I had crashed the party.
It was, however, my first exposure to aperture sights and got me hooked on them for life.
- Location
- West Quebec
Thanks..
