butchs bore cleaner

ajax

Regular
Rating - 100%
29   0   0
Location
regina, sask
just a warning for you fellow gunnutz!
i have a big bottle of butchs and i just used up some hoppes elite in a small plastic bottle, so i thought i would wash out the hoppes bottle with water and use it for butchs bore cleaner applications. after filling up the plastic hoppes bottle i noticed a couple of days later that the bottle started looking funny!? another couple days later again and the bottle was slouching over and looked melted! so went out side and poured it out and the contents looked white! the butchs was eating the plastic bottle inside out!!

for your info.
 
I am yet

oh it is good stuff alright, just dont put it in another bottle!

to have any troubles with the plastic bottles I transfer it to. I use hair coloring bottles that come in the hair coloring kits and bottles from my favorite gun shop.

Bottles are still soft after 3 years of use. I use a lot of Butch's........:D
 
tod, your shelf of cleaning products sounds like mine. I pick up a bunch of wipeout at every gunshow that I attend, whether I need it or not.
 
I tested Butche's when it first came out and was extremely unimpressed. Didn't cut copper at all. But then I am also not impressed with Sweets and Wipeout either.

I am sure it works for BR smooth barrels but then most anything will clean that up.

Thanks for the heads up on the melting plastic bottle thing but mine is sitting comfortably in its orig bottle getting very dusty.

Jerry
 
The more

time I spend on this site the more I get amazed when I read about complaints of products.

Today it is in regards to Butch's. I have to voice my pissy opinion on this subject. I use it and only it. It does what I require for my match barrels.

The first question for those who have responded to this thread is how many rounds before you clean your barrels?

I do mine after every agg which is 12-15 shots per agg as most shortrange BR shooters do.

I know a few of you fellows have talked about it is more fun to shoot then to clean. Well I will guarantee you fellows if you let that copper build up there will not be to many cleaners that will get it out just like that.

You talk about Wipeout, I cannot talk for it but from what I hear it supposedly works.

All I know is that the products I use will and always will be based on what the masses of BR shooters be shortrange or long range use.

I will not deny it this is my piss fest for today.

CBY

I
 
cycbb486, like you, I felt that if the "BR shooters weren't doing it then it wasn't any good".
It finally dawned on me that BR shooters stick to the tried and true and just won't deviate from what works.
Some barrels are worse than others when it comes to fouling. When we're extremely lucky, we run across one of those elusive beasts that requires little if any cleaning and is dead accurate on the first shot from a cold non fouled barrel. I've only been that lucky once and with a custom hunting rifle at that.
Cleaning a barrel with 15-20 rounds through it is about what the average hunter shoots in a year. When you shoot your aggregate, depending on what style of BR shooting you're doing, you will shoot anything from 6 to 20 rounds. The barrel is hot and cleaning is much easier than waiting to get home and set up the cleaning procedure and supplies. It's a totally different thing than most here do.

Your mind set has closed your eyes to a very efficient form of cleaning, especially if you're blessed with a barrel that doesn't like to collect copper.

Wipe out can be less efficient than Butch's or Sweet's 7.62 especially when they're backed up by JB paste. A well regimented cleaning procedure is hard to beat.

Wipe Out is a god send for people that aren't as regimented or educated as yourself. It works and works well. It will clean a barrel down to the raw steel and without doing any harm. You can leave the residue in the barrel overnight and as long as the steel in your barrel doesn't have an extraordinary amount of copper in its make up all that is required to clean it up the next day is a couple of patches.

Most of the people on this site are shooting off the shelf rifles with less than polished bores. Cleaning often can be a real chore. Also, many off the shelf rifles need 10-15 rounds of fouling to stay consistent. I have a 7-08 with a Gaillard barrel that I would have sworn wouldn't be a fouler, lots of luck, it takes at least 10 fouling shots to be consistent when cold, under hunting conditions. I shoot it at the beginning of the season and don't clean it until November. I put maybe 35-40 rounds through it each year and will check it out at least once every two weeks to make sure it's still happy.

At the end of the season, I squirt some Wipe Out down the tube and leave it for a few hours then run a few patches through. If it requires more, I repeat the procedure until I'm satisfied it's clean.

BR shooting doesn't give you the luxury of time between aggregates to clean this way, so you use the tried and true methods everyone else at the match does. I don't blame you one bit and I would do the same under match conditions. I did find out though that the tried and true method, as good as it is, didn't get all of the fouling. So, after talking to a dealer on the BC gun show circuit, I tried Wipe Out in my Hart match grade .308 barrel. After 5 minutes the foam was dark blue and this is from what I thought was a well cleaned barrel. I repeated the procedure until the foam stayed clean.
The one thing I did notice, was that cleaning at the next HBR match was quicker and easier. I don't shoot HBR anymore but while I did I always followed up with a quick Wipe Out session. It just made life a lot easier and IMHO helped keep things consistent by eliminating some of the fouling variants.
 
Bear hunter

you are possibly right that using match barrels has closed my eyes in regards to cleaning.

What I do accept is that with any stock factory rifle the copper build up will definately be worse. I do not worry about getting all the copper out anymore.

I usd to be obsessed with trying to get it all out. Not anymore. When I saw after a few rounds the glowing orange I said the heck with it. All I worry about is making sure I get all the carbon buildup out.

CBY
 
Barrel Cleaners

When decanting bore cleaner into user friendly containers,
using fluorinated plastic (polypropylene) bottles will correct the leaking or the fluid (ammonia) leaching through the container.
There is also a difference in the polypropylene as in high density vs. low density.
Plenty-O-Patch used to stock the correct bottles for decanting these type of bore cleaners.
DanO
 
If you fellows are married and your wife/girlfriend or just a friend dye their hair, the bottles that hold the hair dye are the best thing since sliced bread. Those bottles will stand up to anything, including acid.
Their only problem is finding something to cover the nozzle when not in use. I'm lucky enough to have several rubber stoppers that just slide over the tips. I've seen others use the small screw on tops from cans of oil.
 
Last edited:
I too am somewhat puzzled by some negative comments about a couple of products. I use Butch, as well as Sweets. Perhaps someone could explain what they don't do? Both of these products, in my experience, remove copper fouling and appear to clean the rest of the crud from the barrel.
I just don't throw the used patches into the cheap plastic garbage can in my basement, as it melted it a bit.
 
Al-Sway, I wouldn't worry about it if you like Butchs keep using it. Bore cleaners are really personal preference between shooters. Kind of like a ford vs. chevy kind of debate.
 
When I tested Butches, wipeout, Barner CR10, Sweets, Hoppes, JB, etc a few years back, it was for both match and factory barrels.

My objective is speed. The only time I have to clean is at the range BEFORE I come home so waiting for hours to have a solvent work was not in my cards. The number of shots could be a few to alot depending on the rifles end use.

Since I saw that powder was something that many solvents handled well, the next chore was getting rid of the copper. Hearing so many glowing reports on Butches and other cleaners, I decided to give them a try and see what they would do.

What I found was that wipeout was very slow - no matter how well it might work, it would never work for the time frame I was allowed. A few minutes per rifle....

Sweets was much better but still slow.

Butches did a nice job on the powder but didn't do much for copper at all. Used in several barrels, I cleaned till patches were lily white. Then cleaned a bit more just to ensure that I was giving the cleaner the best chance to work.

Putting another wet patch of either Sweets or Barnes immediately showed blue. It would take some patches to remove the remaining copper. Since this was repeated with various barrels that would copper foul, Butches was not for me.

Hoppes Copper shared a similar fate. Just wouldn't cut the copper.

When I got to Barnes, I found what I was looking for. I know some are concerned about strong ammonia in their solvents but I have not found any issues with my barrels. So I just wipe this stuff in (outside only), and wipe out the fouling - powder and copper - all in one solution.

Definitely not something you want to leave in your barrel for any length of time which is exactly why I like it. It cleans as fast as I can run wet patches down the bore. When the patches show no copper, no other solvent can extract more so it is pretty much gone as far as I am concerned.

JB does a similar job but will not get into the rough spots found on factory barrels.

Now I have found a system that works even better and is a whole lot cheaper. I use a powder solvent made by Kleen bore. Any quality product will work. The Kleen bore was on sale at the time. GM top engine cleaner also works well.

When the patches turn a light grey, I switch to janitorial grade ammonia. Pretty much as concentrated as you can get without a license. This is not the stuff you find at the grocery store (that stuff doesn't do much by the way) but at stores like Zep.

USE OUTSIDE ONLY.

This stuff dissolves copper like magic. If it is in the bore, it is coming out without scrubbing. You just need some snug fitting patches. Wipe in, wipe out. A couple of dry patches to ensure nothing is left and you have a clean bore. Of course, a bit of preservative will be a good thing if facing rust. Takes only a few minutes to clean my rifles.

One of the biggest surprise when using this stuff is that the first patch or two is also coal black. The only thing I can figure is that this is getting out that hardened crud in the throat area. AWESOME. I have autopsied a few barrel that was cleaned this way to see if there was caked in fouling in the throat and have found none. No copper, no powder, no nothing.

I am almost at the point where I will only use this conc ammonia solution to clean my barrels. Why not, it is getting rid of all the crud?

So I have a method that works for ME. It is very fast, does not require brush scrubbing unless I am dealing with something like a surplus pitted barrel. Dirt cheap and readily available.

I have shared this ammonia with other shooters 'brave' enough to use it and they have also been thrilled with the results. For those concerned with ammonia, this is the worse possible stuff to use.

So use whatever makes you happy. No one method is particularly better then another. But there are different methods and learning about pro's and cons can sometimes open new doors to make a task easier.

By the way, I have used barrels from Gaillard, Douglas, Kreiger, Shilen, Brux, and a few others picked up at gunshows. Any of these top quality and lapped barrels have copper fouled very little if any.

My F class barrels usually fire 45 to 60rds before cleaning and rarely is copper an issue. My present Shilen Select Match in 223 has gone about 100rds then cleaned with only a bit of powder fouling and no copper. Butches would work well in these barrels for sure.

YMMV.

Jerry
 
Back
Top Bottom