How Do/Did Soldiers Clean Their Weapons After Using Corrosive Ammo?

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sksnujack

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With all the different methods people seem to have when cleaning their guns after using corrosive ammunition i was just wondering what the protocal is for soldiers when shooting this ammo. im assuming they dont have a sink, warm water or windex out in the battle field. so what do they do to rid of the salts prior to cleaning their weapons?:D
 
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Some people here are just too fussy. That's all I can say. You do have to clean the gun (if you have time) after each combat, but you don't cook up a pot of hot water in the field. All you need is just a piece of reasonably clean patch, some gun oil and the tools that come together with your SKS. AKs and SKS were built to be used under combat conditions and were expected to be abused extensively.
 
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THey woulds use the issued cleaning kit in the butt and maybe a rag with solvent on it. They wouldn't give a rats ass if there was some rust in the gas tube.
 
My guess is they cleaned little & oiled alot. Anyone ever wonder why milsurps have "oversized" bores even when new? Brand new 303 brit bore with groove sizes in the .315 range?
 
Cleaning corrosive ammo is only a problem for us "modern" folk, most of the gun oil/gun cleaners that used to be issued contained ammonia (I belive) to clean that for you ;)

As for oversized bores, well proper bores are nice for target shooting but as your bore gets tighter fouling and dirt in the barrel poses more of a problem espcially when you are in the middle of a combat action and stopping to clean your firearms every 10 or 20 or even 50 shots like alot modern shooters at the bench just wont happen :)

Dimitri
 
Ammonia does absolutely nothing for potassium chloride. It just helps dissolve copper and clear grease, powder and oily deposits so water can get at the very soluble salts.
Once the salts are dissolved and flushed, that metal has to be coated with oil or grease, that's all.
Hot water helps to dry the bore faster but isn't absolutely necessary. You can use WD-40 to flush water out, too, then coat the metal with oil.
PP.
 
the stuff they issued with the rifle will keep the rifle in service for 20+ hard years of use...............

NO KETTLES

NO BATHS

NO WINDEX

oil covers salts, thus salts don't corrode....

clean and oil as per the manual, unless you want a gun to last for 1,000,000 years then go crazy............

service rifles... get it?

service rifles... come on now

service rifles...
 
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the older generation of solvents the army issued would neutralize the corrosive salts (and likely cause cancer too, man that stuff smells nasty!)

But since our armies on this side of the pond stopped using corrosive ammunition ions ago, it is harder to come by now.

Can anyone confirm this or tell me I am full of BS? :runaway:
 
ammonia evaporates... ie it is self neutralizing, oil last much longer,
would you put oil or ammonia in the small metal can in an SKS stock?

what would you rely upon, fancy techniques or an 'oil it' or get punished...
kind of training regime?

what do people do in combat if there c7a1 / m16a2 starts to gum up ?
do they ....
a) oil the #### out of it, or
b) detail strip and clean it.....

OIL - it's why we fight according to the LEFTIES!!!

oil works for me..........
 
Proutfoo said:
Can anyone confirm this or tell me I am full of BS? :runaway:
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Read my earlier Post. Your not Full of BS ;) US GI Bore Cleaner in WW2 was a mixture of ammonia and a powder solvent. Its mentioned in "The ABC's of Reloading"

ABC's of Reloading Page 47-48 said:
The US millitary came up with its own preparation called, simply, "Bore Cleaner." This was a dark brown concoction with a smell you will never forget, (athough you wish you could) that combined ammonia with water soluable oil and powder solvents. Bad as it smelled, it worked quite well.

Corrosive priming was gone from commercial ammunition by the 1930's. In the early 1950's noncorrosive priming gradually replaced the corrosive type in US millitary ammunition. A decade or so later, the Army switched to a newer type of bore cleaner which is sold commercially under the name "Break Free"
Click to expand...

As for cancer causing properties I dont know. I do know that there is talk CLP had a possible cancer causing agent originally and then it was removed. This is 2nd hand knowlage though. Anyone can conform about the CLP ?? :confused:

Dimitri
 
I have a can of that stuff & they are right, it smells nasty! I once used a chemical that smelled the same. It was called hydo seal carbom solvent, you put your parts in a carbon disapears. Put my hands in it once, skin almost fell off! Does work though. Question is, do you honestly think, in the hard combat of ww2 every body had a can? Given supply problems in most theaters oil was what they had & used. You are in a trench, eating crap out of a tin, you shot your rifle during the day & you haven't see a patch in two years. What are you going to do? Oil & pray boys, oil & pray. Not gun oil either, 30w run through a tank or other vehicle mixed with a little diesel or gas to thin it out, applied with the rag that used to be your enemies britches.
 
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Now if Cretien was asking the question:

How Do/Did Soldiers Clean Their Weapons After Using Corrosive Ammo?

How do did Dat Clean Weapon?.... :D
 
Thamok said:
ammonia evaporates... ie it is self neutralizing, oil last much longer,
would you put oil or ammonia in the small metal can in an SKS stock?
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Actually, commie armies use a 2 reservoir can. One for a "Base" solvent solution (like ammonia - but they used something else, I'm sure) and one for oil.

The Amonia does NOTHING to the salts. It is a coper eater to dissolve jacketing deposits so that the water and oil on the rage you use to clean will get at the harmful salts.

In the military this wasn't a huge problem since issued rifles were cleaned virtually every day.

Combat was another story. The British, for example, issued a wire gauze with the pull through during combat operations to scrape out the surface rust the KNEW would form in the bore whenever combat prevented regular maintenance.

The commies and Japanese went with chrome lining bores, etc.
 
desporterizer said:
Question is, do you honestly think, in the hard combat of ww2 every body had a can?
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No, why carry a whole 6oz can when you have a platoon and you can spread it out between everyone ?? :confused: Just have one person carry one more granade or something similar and one person carry a can. Problem sovled and everyone is carrying the same weight. ;)

And I'm pretty sure it depended more on individual soliders when it came to cleaning especially in combat, unless you had a strict Sgt or officer incharged and they wanted it done regularly.

Dimitri
 
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Dimitri said:
No, why carry a whole 6oz can when you have a platoon and you can spread it out between everyone ?? :confused: Just have one person carry one more granade or something similar and one person carry a can. Problem sovled and everyone is carrying the same weight. ;)

And I'm pretty sure it depended more on individual soliders when it came to cleaning especially in combat, unless you had a strict Sgt or officer incharged and they wanted it done regularly.

Dimitri
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O Gawd, I can just SEE it "BOB you IDJIT!! You just threw our can of rifle cleaner into that foxhole!!":eek: :D
Cat
 
Corrosive salt cleaning

Since the dawn of firearms the British army flushed the salts with boiling water during maintenance.

This was done by the group as a whole when stopped for rest and food.
That is exactly why groups had unit armourers and those funny bent funnels so the sodiers could pour a quart down the bore then go sit around and clean the bore and oil it.

They first did this ( use hot water) to flush black powder and continued using this wonder material "Boiling water" into the bolt rifle era and it worked then and still works now.

As for the comments in the thread about SKS's "well" the SKS has a chrome bore and always has had a chrome bore and this treatment was used because the Russians and Chinese knew exactly where and how those firearms were to be used, tropical heat and moisture, desert sandy conditions and everything in between.

In short -- the boiling water method was used for a long long time.
If in action a brit would be given the order to scrape out the bore with his screen material this would be if the unit was in combat for days and it only takes one day for those spider webs of corrosion to appear in the old ammunition days.

And if you have never ever seen those little webs growing out of a rifle bore -- it is something to be seen. Regular cleaners do little to stop it growing.
Boiling water however works to stop it immediately.

That is exactly why I have two Canadian army cleaning funnels for the Lee Enfield rifle as they work for every other caliber I have.

A litre or quart of boiling water down the bore sure does make cleaning powder fouling easy as it softens the powder and copper layers so they can be removed with much less work.

Regards
Terry
 
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