CLR for cleaning rifles used with corrosive ammo.

[the11]

This is not correct. KCl (and various other salts in there) is water soluble and "ammonia", aka the household variety of aqueous ammonium hydroxide is mostly water. I think the theory is that household ammonia evaporates faster than regular room temp water. It does nothing to "neutralize" salts.

Incidently that is why you use hot water. So it evaporates.

Yeah, I misspoke there. The salts are dissolved in the water in the windex. Not neutralized. Except perhaps in the sense that once they have run out on the ground, they are no longer a threat.

But it does seem to me that windex does a pretty good cleaning job of all the black crap that comes from the dirty Bulgarian ammo I am working on burning up. Maybe it is my imagination. Or maybe I have watched "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" one too many times.

There are many ways to skin a cat. I just know I like to get the worst of it cleaned up right at the range, and then clean and oil properly once I get home.

When at home I will even often take the bolt, piston, rod, spring, etc and wash it in hot soapy water in the sink, and then rinse it with boiling water out of the kettle. I honestly don't understand the paranoia about using water on a gun. They don't call it the universal solvent for no reason.

 

[sunray]

CLR isn't for cleaning carbon or the salts resulting from corrosive ammo. It's for lime and iron oxide mostly. Not Windex or anything else remotely like it. (Ammonia does nothing. It's the water in Windex that does it.) The only thing you need for cleaning after corrosive ammo is plain hot tap water. Boiling water is a bit better as it dries faster. As daft as that sounds.

 

[MauserMike]

It doesn't seem obvious to me that windex would do anything for carbon fouling. (wearing my PhD chemist hat)

But it will remove metal fouling. Most copper solvent contains a healthy dose of ammonia, which your nose will tell you when using it!

 

[EL34/6L6]

This is not correct. KCl (and various other salts in there) is water soluble and "ammonia", aka the household variety of aqueous ammonium hydroxide is mostly water. I think the theory is that household ammonia evaporates faster than regular room temp water. It does nothing to "neutralize" salts.

Incidently that is why you use hot water. So it evaporates.

Yeah I think you are confusing the issue. I said the ammonia does not dissolve salts. Its the water which flushes the salts in the windex, and it seems to clean the initial fouling well. The spray nozzle also doesn't hurt for in the action too. I'm not a proponent for the use of ammonia. I've also never used water beyond the windex Just bore cleaner, solvent and oil. My rifles are gleeming.
But people can put however much work they want into it, I know how much I put into it and the result after.

 

[basic_drill]

Wow I don't know where everyone has such divergent ideas on this. Hot water should be fine, although the heat and HO ions will very-briefly cause the acid salts to be a strong acid until dissolved.

CLR will remove the bluing. I use CLR before I re-blue. It is very good for this, but a real pain to rinse away. Does not rinse off very well.

The best method is just adding some baking soda to your hot water, or even better some calcium carbonate. Or even better, a little bit of sodium hydroxide. Get a pH in your water of 8-9 or so, a nice gentle base solution, and rinse your action, chamber and bore and gas piston and gas tube with this solution. Then rinse with regular water. A base will rinse very easily off metal and will not corrode metal even though it has water in it. Just raise the pH slightly. You can even use some "pH up" or whatever for pool & spa.

And the base *WILL* neutralize the acid.

 

[JDForBrkFst]

Just stick to hot water and oil. I resisted the water method for a long time and after letting the rifle sit for some time after trying every other method under the sun I would always pull through and see orange. Since I started exclusively using the boiling water followed by oiling method I haven't had a problem. It also requires very little work to do.