Dark Bore Cleaning

"dark bore" - could be soot fouling; could be rust pits. In my bore scope, I have seen both - sometimes at same time - in elderly (WWI and older) rifles. I have tried WipeOut, steel wool, various solvents - can see in bore scope that crap goes away, but pits make the grooves still look dark - no way that I know of to restore that to "new" looking - but is no rust or fouling left in there - patches come out more or less "clean" (now - after multiple treatments with various stuff), but still "dark" bore.
 
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You could try a good metal fouling remover. Even cork and soak overnight. Thorough brushing and cleaning.
Electrolytic cleaning with take everything down to bare steel. It is amazing how much crap electrolytic cleaning will loosen.
After thorough cleaning, shoot and clean, shoot and clean. It will probably look better.
But in all likelihood the bore surface is roughened by decades of neglect.
 
Is this a dark bore on a rifle you recently purchased or something that occured while you owned the rifle? The best course of action is prevention in the first place by making sure that you clean up correctly after shooting corrosively primed ammuntion. You must always clean the same day you shoot and pour boiling water down the barrel.
 
Provided question is about dark bore of milsurplus - don't sweat it. It did not become dark in one day and you will not remove it in one day. Shoot, clean with CLP until patches are light-grey, repeat. Combination of shooting and modern CLP will eventually remove all these layers of crap.
 
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you can try some JBs bore paste on the bore too it can help. I had a Hakim that was pretty bad and the bore paste was the only thing that made any difference after trying other cleaning techniques using wipeout, kroil. I wore out a few tipton bore brushes from scrubbing
Truth is there really is no way to get those old barrels back to new. There is going to be pits and frosting and 80 years worth of crap in there so just clean it best you can and go shooting. Like was said above it will get better and smoothen out with time.
A lot of times a dark pitted bore will still shoot good so you may be pleasantly surprised
Using non corrosive ammo will help prevent any more damage as well
 
I've found the cleaner 'Rem 40X' is a 'relatively mild' abrasive that did wonders in my '51 Tula SKSes (-2x) but the pits still were pretty black. Also, using an old brass brush with a bit of copper Chore-boy scrubber wrapped around it will cut thru carbon and lead fouling without much damage to the bore/rifling. Here's an 'after' the 40x in one of the SKSes. Still shot like an old SKS - 4-5 moa.
51 Tula-T after 40X cleaner 7-05-21.png
 
M39MosinGoose said:
Is there a way to clean out a dark bore? Would wipeout work or is there a better cleaning product?
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Read Tiriag's post and don't bother with anything else.

You can't "fix" what's wrong with that bore, other than replacing the barrel, which likely isn't an option.

Everything you do to "fix" the bore is only removing more of the metal, which may alleviate some of your issues but it's still going to be a sow's ear, no matter how much metal you remove and polish the surface.

At best, you can "round off the sharp edges" of the pitting so it doesn't pick up jacket metal as quickly, which will give you a few more (maybe) accurate shots before you have to clean it all up again.

Mostly it's just a frustrating experience, although I'm sure someone will come along and regale how their dark bore barrel was miraculously transformed into a tack driver at 25 yards.

Clean it, shoot it and repeat, until you don't want to do it anymore and find a rifle with a decent bore.
 
I had a Mosin that was dark down the bore, not pitted or frosty looking just dark. Almost like it hade been blued, after a couple clean and shoot sessions it was pretty damn bright again. Shoot it and clean it, I used a brass brush and Hoppes9 after flushing it with hot water a few times. Hot water not only flushed corrosive primer residue but I find it will loosen a lot of crud as well.
 
remington jim said:
There’s lots of them newbies like that ! Prob shouldn’t bother with them 🤷🏼‍♂️ RJ
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RJ, newbies are OK and most that post here want to learn. We all had to start somewhere.

As we get older, sometimes it becomes tedious, but if they seem to be picking up the info and can wade through the BS, I'm OK with newbies.

Some have preconceived ideas, usually from a mentor or these days a video game, or they've watched one to many movies, with not enough personal experience or knowledge to be aware of the realities involved with shooting.

There are volumes of knowledge contained within the mind recesses of many good folks on this site, such as yourself, and it's a shame to see it wasted by keeping silent or ignoring an honest question, because to them the answer is obvious.

I'll see you in Salmon Arm on the 19th at the Gun Show.
 
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If the OP's rifle is an older MilSurp, Battlerifleelitist is right. You shouldn't try to get 'em 'too clean', they can become 'rattle-tubes'. I've had 2x Tula SKSs that were MOPP @ 50, then I broke down and bought a Frenchie - NIB in Cosmo, chrome bore. Now MOPP @ 100 (if I can see the target :rolleyes: )
And bearhunter, I think we were commenting more on the 'lack of response' than lack of knowledge. I don't mind helping a bit but newbies should use Search a bit more instead of just asking Qs. I still spend a lot of time reading posts.
 
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