Coyote,
Sorry I missed getting back to you. Yes, I know what moly can do to a steel barrel. Have used it in quite a few rifles, all the way from 224s to cast bullets in my Marlin 45-70. Before the advent of the TSX, it was great on Barnes X to prevent copper fouling, which it still does admirably. Took about twenty rounds to get the bore done, and never had to use any copper solvent after moly coating them.
As for moly building up in bores, that just does not happen. While it plates onto the bore, one molecule thick, it never does build up thicker because MoS2 does not bond to itself. That is why it is used in so many extreme lube applications.
While I have read and heard many of the horror stories, personally have never had a single instance of rusting or etched bores in 12 years. Nor do I know anyone who does normal bore maintenance on their rifles who has. For me, that consists of a few swipes of Kroil, or other light oil, after every shooting session. Takes about two minutes per rifle, before putting it in the safe. I do this regardless of what bullet I have been shooting.
Perhaps the best reason for using it, is one rarely needs to clean a rifle to maintain accuracy. Accuracy stays the same for many, many, hundreds of rounds. One of our very serious silhouette shooters up here rebarrelled a rifle to 7-08, and as an experiment purposely decided to not clean the bore at all after breaking it in. The last I asked him about it, he was well over 1000 rounds, had no metal fouling, and accuracy was unchanged.
I have one good friend who does much more shooting than I do, and he molys for everything; target, varmint and hunting rifles. He has had no issues with bores.
BTW, the easiest way to remove moly from a bore is to simply shoot ordinary bullets. The moly will be gone in just a few shots. You can actually watch the velocity steadily move up on a chronograph as the friction increases in the bore, until it levels off. Sometimes as few as five or six rounds will do it.
Best,
Ted
