How often to clean

[Skeletor68]

If I use it, I clean it, love the Bore Snakes.

 

[coleman1495]

Meh give it a spray with some G96. Wipe it off with a clean rag. Give the barrel a squirt. Pull a dry couple patches or a bore snake through it.

Do this everytime you go out and I think your golden. Eventually you will have to give it a real cleaning with bore solvent etc.

 

[cartwheel]

For me- I run a patch soaked in WD40 and then a dry patch after every range session. I do a proper "to the metal" clean when accuracy falls off, which is more than a brick usually.

 

[Grock-co]

Clean when they start to fail, and that goes for every thing, including the so called corrosive ammo

 

[curseyou]

Winter is gun cleaning season.

Auggie D.

More or less yes. Clean when your groups open up or you suffer malfunctions. This is roughly 3x less often than you think and web wisdom says.

For my mkIII and 10/22 with dirty rimfire, I clean every 500 rounds ish at most, often closer to 2k. This is not based on common sense or theory. It is based on results. Most copper plated ammo, groups dont open until 2k. Some of the ####tier waxed lead starts to open groups somewhere over 500.

I used to clean after every range session. Now I know better. I piloted this lazy process after seeing Tiborasaurus Rex on you tube. Tried it on my precision .223 and .308 and found it was true. Now it applies to everything. You can clean more, but why?

 

[grumpyold]

Interesting comments.

Moisture...

A byproduct of combustion is water. Think about it.

Have a look at what goes on inside your barrel. Pay close attention to the various stages of pitting in the first few inches of the bore.

Quote from the excellent article written by Steven Boelter from Rim Fire Research and Development on rimfire cleaning. Well worth the read.

(Prone, 3-Position, & Silhouette)

Position shooters have a bit of a tricky situation to deal with. In some events, the competitor is shooting hundreds of rounds before they have a chance to clean their barrel, and like other old habits which die hard, many traditional prone shooters are reluctant to ever clean their barrel.

This may have been a trend in years past, but just about every top prone shooter cleans their rifle. At the AMU, it's about 100% who clean their prone rifle often. What is interesting is that while Olympian Eric Uptagrafft cleans his rifle with bronze brushes, cleaning rods, and solvent, and it seems to not keep him from shooting a 628.1 and 632.2 (new final qualification record). I asked Eric if there are any shooters at his level who don't clean, and his answer was simply; "No." "Well, those who place top three and win with any consistency clean their rifles. I don't know what last place does, and for obvious reasons I don't particularly care."

Take it for what its worth, its your investment and money.

Shoot it, DONE, clean it.