This would make a great "Sticky", except that as illustrated above there are as many "best" approaches are there are people shooting corrosive - that guarantees lots of emotion and differences of opinion. From what I've seen, hot (or even tap) water is an excellent approach to remove the corrosive salts, but can be messy, and you must then remove all traces of water. Further, water will not remove copper, powder, lead, and other non-corrosive nasties, so it must be followed with a good "standard" solvent and proven techniques. The important differences between cleaning after shooting corrosive as opposed to non-corrosive are that you must clean directly after shooting, and you can't just use whatever you use for non-corrosive, because it will not remove the corrosive salts.
I shoot corrosive in bolt guns and have found that running a swab sopping with Household Ammonia (that contains ammonia and a lot of water) followed by my usual Hoppe's Benchrest (that contains solvents for powder and lead as well as ammonia for copper), has worked wonderfully for me, i.e. no rust.
There are many good approaches, but each of them depends on:
- immediate action; and
- plenty of water to remove the corrosive salts.