Bore Snake damaging barrel?

bearhunter said:
Just google "Shoot to Live." It is a WWII military training manual with all sorts of good information. One of the bits of information in it is a newbie using a "pull through" cleaner on an angle. It can be quite difficult to keep any type of pull through straight when you are pulling it through the bore. Any angle at all and no matter how soft the material it will eventually damage the crown. As Guntech says. No self respecting/knowledgeable competition shooter would or will use a pull through type bore cleaning device.

Many milsurps have issues with worn crowns. That is one of the reasons so many of them are counter bored.

Using a bore snake occasionally may not cause any grief. Using one on a regular basis will. Even if the fiber the snake is made from seems soft it is still abrasive. If you don't believe it take a piece of nylon or polypropylene rope and rub it a few times against the side of your barrel Watch how quickly the bluing disappears. That blue only penetrates about a half thou so it goes very quickly. Still it won't take a lot to take a few thou off the edge of the crown and down inside for a half inch or more.

It's your snake, your rifle. You choose. Before you do, ask yourself if you can pull that snake absolutely true to the axis of the bore. If you can do that every time you should be OK.

Recently at the Penticton gun show I traded for a lovely Kleingunther in 30-06. It was immaculate. The trader was a walk in and he asked me if I was willing to trade him along with some money for a Ruger #1 chambered in 308Win I had on the table that was in the same shape. It seemed like a fair deal with the cash included but something just wasn't right. I asked him what was wrong with the rifle and he told me quite truthfully "seeing as I asked" that he just hadn't been able to get the rifle to shoot consistently and that a 6 in group with any factory ammo he had tried was the best it would do.

Well, we made the deal and he had to sweeten it a lot more. Nice rifle but if it needed a new barrel there wasn't any profit in it. When I got it home I checked out the muzzle wear with a set of wear gauges I picked up at a surplus sale over 40 years ago. It's a go/no-go gauge that fits into the muzzle and has circular marks on it to indicate the diameter at the crown. This rifle was worn badly at the crown and down for about a half inch.

Just to be sure, I took it to the range and put a couple of dozen rounds of different factory loads through it. It wouldn't group. I had put my go to Burrix fixed four power on it to make sure it wasn't the scope etc.

Pulled the receiver from the stock and chucked up the barrel in the lathe. It only took a few minutes to clean out the offending last bit of the bore. Slight over a half inch (15mm) and the bore gauge said it was a good as new.

Put it all back together and took it to the range. All was well. It shot several factory loads into slightly over 2cm. Likely hand loads would do better. This was premium ammo though from Lapua so maybe not. Anyway it was now acceptable to offer for sale. It didn't last long. It was a very nice looking rifle with fantastic grain in the stock.

There is only one reason for that muzzle wear and that was improper use of a pull through or dirty bore snake.

Guntech isn't giving you his reason for not using a bore snake lightly. I am willing to bet he has run across this situation on more than one occasion. It is actually something I have come to expect on milsurps, especially Lee Enfields and Garands.
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I would suspect much more, that most of the crown wear comes from too much cleaning with a steel being pushed and flexed into the muzzle end first. To me, a bore snake is a time saver and perhaps a field expedient when something silly happens to the muzzle. They don't replace a deeper clean (that may be warranted on a less frequent basis), but as a quick swipe to cut down on the heavy crud and preserve some 1st shot accuracy without needing foulers.
 
I love the 30 cal one for dirty, crusty milsurp bores but I'm hesitant using the 12g one with my chrome lined shotgun barrels for some reason. I guess cause I know they will lose their shine.
 
FYI bore snakes can be washed clean so as to not be pulling the "same dirty snake thru your barrel". I use them during hunting season but see no reason any other time of the year. Cleaning rifles with patches and a rod is a great way to spend and evening
 
guntech said:
Nothing wrong with cloth and bronze... it's the solvent and carbon from combustion that gets on the snake and then dragged across the crown. You will never see any serious Benchrest shooter use one.
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I agree. It is not the bore per se but the crown that counts for accuracy and if you continually rub a snake over the crown it may affect accuracy. I remember a used gun that shot terribly until a smith recrowned it and then it was deadly accurate.

CD
 
tactical lever said:
I would suspect much more, that most of the crown wear comes from too much cleaning with a steel being pushed and flexed into the muzzle end first. To me, a bore snake is a time saver and perhaps a field expedient when something silly happens to the muzzle. They don't replace a deeper clean (that may be warranted on a less frequent basis), but as a quick swipe to cut down on the heavy crud and preserve some 1st shot accuracy without needing foulers.
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try what he suggested... but do one better. take an old gun with an ugly barrel (or hell, a piece of steel rod), clamp it in a vise, and do the "shoe shine" on it with the bore snake (hell even just use the rope part, not the brush part) and do that for a few minutes. See how well it's polished it up. The crown of a barrel is pretty damn important... you don't want it being lopsided, not at all. i use a bore snake in a shotgun, but only because I know I'm not gonna be shooting for a perfect trap score with it and actually expecting to achieve that all day long. Plus, worst case, if I really did wear it to the point I was shooting funny, new choke and it's back in business.

Anything with a crown, I wouldn't do it. I much prefer to clean any crowned barrel from the back if possible, and if not, then using an adapter to ensure the rod is centered in the bore as it goes in (empty shotgun shell with a hole drilled in it works well for many guns, such as the m1a)
 
I have no idea how a pull-through, at any angle could do damage to the crown. The crown is still a part of the same barrel that's made to have a pill blasted through it. A buddy dropped an SKS that I owned on it's crown from the height of his 4Runners trunk to a gravel parking lot...no damage at all (just a big flinch from me and gasp from us both).
So when you consider that guns have metal flying down their barrel at thousands of feet per second, sometimes with a steel core becoming exposed to rifling on the way down, what is the rationale that a soft brass specifically made to clean guns is going to damage anything? The crown is definitely important for accuracy, and yet almost all I've shot is steel core with some of my rifles...and the crowns are fine. That steel was going like 2300 FPS on its way out, too. How is brass that's slowly being pulled going to exert anywhere near as much force? I doubt a few degrees of pull being off is going to result in brass messing that up.

I don't know much about the metalergy of brass, but an example of at least a type of brass' Rockwell value is 60 HRB
http://www.matweb.com/search/QuickText.aspx?SearchText=brass
An example of 4150 steel is 99 HRB and some of the other high carbon steels that have been treated go to 55-66 HRC (C>B)
http://www.matweb.com/search/QuickText.aspx?SearchText=4150 steel

All I'm trying to do is prove that brass can't damage steel within the realm of reason. And for something lower on the Rockwell to damage something higher there has to be insane levels of force exerted. That's why a soft lead fired out of a gun at thousands of feet per second will damage a hard steel. But it's not like a boresnake pulled by any mere mortal can damage steel.
 
I saw a nice G88 Mauser on the second day of a gun show once and couldn't believe it wasn't snapped up at the price. Then I went to look at the muzzle. It was literally oblong at the crown. Looked like an egg shape. Eep.
 
krprice84 said:
try what he suggested... but do one better. take an old gun with an ugly barrel (or hell, a piece of steel rod), clamp it in a vise, and do the "shoe shine" on it with the bore snake (hell even just use the rope part, not the brush part) and do that for a few minutes. See how well it's polished it up. The crown of a barrel is pretty damn important... you don't want it being lopsided, not at all. i use a bore snake in a shotgun, but only because I know I'm not gonna be shooting for a perfect trap score with it and actually expecting to achieve that all day long. Plus, worst case, if I really did wear it to the point I was shooting funny, new choke and it's back in business.

Anything with a crown, I wouldn't do it. I much prefer to clean any crowned barrel from the back if possible, and if not, then using an adapter to ensure the rod is centered in the bore as it goes in (empty shotgun shell with a hole drilled in it works well for many guns, such as the m1a)
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Tried this with a 5/16" piece of mild steel. Used a wire brush in my bench grinder to take off the mill scale and some loose rust. The rod measured 0.3120 to start. Put 1000 strokes on the rod with the rope part of a bore snake with considerable pressure. No evidence of any polishing in fact the slight scratches in the steel rod were still there. Still measured 0.3120. 1000 strokes of pressure didn't touch a mild steel rod. Considering that gun barrels will be considerably harder and that there is very little if any lateral pressure applied when using a bore snake I would bet it would take 100,000 cleanings with a bore snake to have the effect on a gun barrel that I achieved with this little experiment; ie nothing. If you are worried about a bore snake affecting your barrel then don't use a brass brush to clean it and certainly don't fire bullets out of it. The heat, friction and pressure from a bullet going down the barrel once will do more damage than you could ever do with a bore snake.
 
I cut a Mosin barrel with a hacksaw on the bench. No vice. I "crowned" it with a countersink bit in a cordless drill. I shot a 3 rnd group @100M that measures 1 1/2". Got the target downstairs. I'll try to remember to shoot it again soon with the same load. Maybe I'm just the "monkeys that eventually typed an encyclopedia".
 
This might be an issue for older milsurps but I can't see it damaging the chrome lined barrel on my Vz. Especially not with a thread protector on it. If the protector gets ovulated I doubt that'd do a thing.

Either way, you need to be careful with a cleaning rod too. Basically it's don't be an idiot when you clean your gun. Easy enough.
 
I like and use boresnakes..they are convenient to have in the field and sometimes without them a wet barrel wont get the light cleaning and lube it needs and rusting begins....I understand that a too tight boresnake should not be pulled hard over the muzzle edges...but this can be avoided with care...and it is a better option than rust in the barrel or withdrawing, and bouncing!, a bare 'jag' across the edges of the rifling at the crown. Fwiw most newer military smallarms have flash eliminators that 'stand-off' the crown enough that a 'pull through' presents little risk of a ham handed soldier damaging his rifles crown.

To add: I have seen some very very ugly crowns that looked like they had a large 'lag' screw hammered into the muzzle...that still shot amazing groups for a hunting rifle....go figure!
 
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