Huge leading issue

handofzeus

handofzeus

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Trout Creekish Ontario.
Just picked up a beautiful little Stevens Little Scout 14 1/2 .22 with the worst leading I've ever seen. You can barely see the rifling at all! Other than copper 'chore boy' wrapped around a bore brush, is there a super cure all for heavy leading? I was going to make a homemade OUTERS-style Foul Out setup but I don't know what to use as the replacement solution for their 'lead-out'. I know that it contains lead acetate and ammonium acetate, but how do you get that stuff?
 
Really bad barrels can be literally heated up with a tiger torch or gas range until its hot enough for the lead to flow from the barrel. That's an old trick from mr brownell himself from an old gunsmithing book I have.

Once clean You could soft lap it with JB bore paste and a patch wrapped around a cleaning brush. Back and forth for a couple hundred passes should smooth things out.
 
Mechanical removal is the easiest way.

Lead is soft and can be removed with little issue, it just takes time.

I have tried almost everything and the copper scouring pad is second only to the Lewis Lead Remover.

The only chemical solution is either acids, or mercury, and I wouldn't play with either in my guns.

A mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide works, but scraping out as much lead as possible before using it is a must, otherwise you will have some areas pitting from the acid while others are still caked in lead. It can do some real damage to your bore, and is messier, and would likely take just as long.
 
Actually you can soak the bore in 50/50 vinegar/hydrogen peroxide for 24 hours without issues for sure, maybe longer. Thats plenty of time to do some serious property damage to the lead. I had zero pitting issues and I used alot of that crap.
 
supernova said:
Actually you can soak the bore in 50/50 vinegar/hydrogen peroxide for 24 hours without issues for sure, maybe longer. Thats plenty of time to do some serious property damage to the lead. I had zero pitting issues and I used alot of that crap.
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If it is as bad as he makes it seem it may not work in 24 hrs, and if some areas are leaded worse than others the spots with less/no leading are at risk.

Scraping it out is just cleaner, and more satisfying IMHO.
 
Okay then guys, I have my ducks in a row. I'll be trying the conventional scrubbing, then peroxide/vinegar, and I'm getting everything to make a 'foul-out' system. I'll repost when I try these. Thanks for the ideas.
 
mikeystew said:
Really bad barrels can be literally heated up with a tiger torch or gas range until its hot enough for the lead to flow from the barrel. That's an old trick from mr brownell himself from an old gunsmithing book I have.

Once clean You could soft lap it with JB bore paste and a patch wrapped around a cleaning brush. Back and forth for a couple hundred passes should smooth things out.
Click to expand...

As a point of interest, a heat gun will get things hot enough to melt lead and would be less, or zero chance, of getting the steel too hot.
Just to try it, I used a regular, two stage heat gun and melted a 45 calibre lead alloy bullet.
I guess if the barrel was short enough to go into a kitchen stove oven, that would be the safest, best way.
 
Good tip about the heat gun. It would allow greater control of the heat for sure.

In bob brownells book he reccomends using a gas range (two burners for rifles, one for pistols) with the vent on, and holding the barreled action with your wife's oven glove :p

There is even a picture of him standing by the stove doing it with the glove on. Apparently it will get ALL the lead out in a very short ammount of time without harming the metal or bluing. When it's super hot you just hold it upright and gently tap it onto a piece of cardboard and the lead falls right out the bore.
 
if you can get your hands on mercury and plug the bottem of your barrel and fill it with the stuff it will eat the lead and u will have a lead free barrel. Just be very careful if u do we all know how toxic the stuff is. You can just keep reuseing it for year and years.
 
I may just have to go the lead route! Tried high heat for 20min. with a torch, and I'm onto phosphoric acid. Still getting the stuff for a homemade foul-out system. Will be trying Ed's Red and vinegar-peroxide before any mercury! I may need custom glasses for the third eyeball I'm bound to start growing!!
 
Please don't use phosphoric acid, it will etch the steel permanently in short order, which is great for paint or park prep... Not so good for a bore. You may now have micropitting in the bore.

Also remember you have to raise the temperature of the entire barrel to 600+ degrees for the lead to melt. I'm not sure you can do that with a blowtorch, you can heat one spot, but when you move to a different spot the area you just do will cool off. It needs to be heated evenly and thoroughly.
 
It looks like micro-pitting is the least of my worries. I believe I can see some good sized rust pits. I can't tell yet if these pits are in the steel or in the uneven leading. The phosphoric acid did nothing. Seems like electro-chemical and mercury are coming up as last options.
 
If the area infected is the throat just ahead of the chamber it may be corrosion pitting from corrosive primed ammo. It's pretty common with old guns. I had a martini once that I spent weeks farting around with and it turned out it was just that badly corroded from the use of corrosive ammo way back in the day.
 
Well, the rifling is a touch more visible now. I don't know if I can get it much better. It looks as though the barrel was shot heavily AFTER the pitting had started. I made a foul-out system as a last resort and I have to admit that had I not seen it in action, I would not believe something could work so well on lead! I didn't have the o-rings, solvent or stainless rod, so I melted hot glue in 3 rings around a brass cleaning rod, plugged the bore with hot glue and a little kleenex stopper to keep the glue from filling the bore and went with an 11V dc phone adapter. I started with acetone and brasso then ended up using vinegar and acetone. I snipped the jack off the adapter and wired positive to the barrel and negative to the rod ( before filling with liquid, I used a meter to check for lack of continuity).......bubbling black goo was the result! Over and over I emptied the barrel and scrubbed the lead deposits off the rod. When the liquid turned from black to rusty I figured it was time to stop! Now I'll try conventional scrubbing, but man, that system really works! Thanks to everyone for the suggestions too.
 
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