Rifle bore cleaning

You may find this link of interest. It sounds like carbon is your problem.

Solvent Tests

One solvent I use is Canuck Tire Throttle Body Cleaner. Just don't get it on your stock or it may remove the finish.
 
Pouring boiling water down the barrel seems to really cause accumulated gunk to come to the surface for easier removal. In the old days that was what they used in a lot of black powder guns. Just make sure to oil the bore well when done cleaning, hot metal really accelerates rusting.
 
Ed's Red over night, run the bore brush through a couple times, then swab until clean. Most of the people I have given a sample of the stuff to can't believe how efficient a cleaner it is.
I have found it removes copper fouling very well.
There are numerous websites which have comparison tests of Ed's Red compared to every overpriced bottle of junk out there.
I used to use M-pro 7, Military CLP, Hoppes etc.
Ed's Red worked as good or better than all of them at a fraction of the price.
 
Get yourself some JB paste and follow the directions. It works great for stubborn, badly fouled barrels, getting the gunk out.

Once the barrel has the gunk out of it, using WIPEOUT makes your life easy and you can keep your barrel clean with minimal effort.

I use Ed's Red as sort of a general solvent for cleaning actions and stuff, but WIPEOUT is a far better bore cleaner for removing copper.
 
^ I agree, I find Ed's Red great for removing carbon fouling and general purpose cleaning. In the past for stuborn copper fouling I swore by Barnes CR-10 and Sweets 762. I tried a can of Birchwood Casey's foaming bore scrubber which seems to be advertised with all the same properties as Wipeout and was impressed with the results on copper fouling.

I have Win m70 .280 that is a bloody copper magnet. After getting the carbon out it took a dozen reps with CR-10 or 762 to get rid of the copper, which amount to a couple hours at the cleaning bench. When I tried the foaming bore scrubber, 2 overnight soaks was all it took....without the stench of stale cat piss!
 
To OP, if you could get access to a borescope it would shed a lot of light on your situation too. I think you bore may have a certain degree of roughness, either from initial manufacture, some pitting or erosion. When carbon fouling gets imbedded in this roughness it is awfuly hard to get rid of as no matter how much you scrub it the bristles of the brush never get to the bottom of the roughness.

But then again sometimes after looking through a borescope you wish you never saw what you saw.... As they say ignorance is sometimes bliss!
 
I picked up some small corks at the hardware store that fit nicely in the chamber. Try filling the bore with carb cleaner and let it sit overnight,pour it out and clean again. Make sure the stock is removed first. I used the carb cleaner that you pour in the tank as opposed to the spray cleaner.

I also have a Lee Enfield that would not come clean so I made an electronic bore cleaner. I couldn't believe the crap that bubbled up and got pushed out. That bore looks almost new now.

Walt
 
Thanks again to all who have passed on their knowledge and experience. I didn't want to sound like I am new to bore cleaning, since I have been a gun owner since college in the 70s. This bore is just a new experience for me in that it seemed to be an endless source of what now seems to be carbon. I have switched to Birchwood Casey bore scrubber (which I had bought last year and forgot I had on the shelf) and left it overnight and all day now and the patches are now blue/green from the copper this solvent is attacking (what older gun doesn't have copper?) and the black residue is down to a minimum. I'm going to stick with it for a couple of more days and that will have to do. Good point about the accuracy. I haven't shot the gun yet so I won't be able to do a 'before and after' comparison, but if it shoots poorly at first, and then improves as it fouls, I guess I will have my answer to that looming question. Going to mix up my Ed's Red this weekend for future use and will post again if it works well at keeping a bore clean. Also, not sure I really want to peer down any of my rifles' bores with a scope. I might not like what I see. :)

Thanks again to all who replied and now to shoot the old PH and see what I've got. Funny thing is...I think it's time to make a break from Hoppes. Forty years was a long run!
 
So, I went back to the PH with Ed's Red and let it soak for a while. Then I got a real surprise...out (on the phosphor bronze brush) came lots and lots of little tiny dark brown (not black) squiggly filamentous curly cues that look almost exactly like ball point pen springs only smaller. Could this be years of carbon build-up in the sides of the lands being stripped out by the brush in this configuration, or has 'buddy' been shooting plastic or coated ammo maybe at some point. I've never seen anything like this before. Anyway the bore looks great now, and whether the previous solvents loosened things up for Ed's Red or not I cannot really say at this time. Anyone else ever get these curly cues from their barrel??
 
Well, I've played this game too, and the best thing that I have found was to build yourself a "electro cleaner". The instructions are on the net and all you really need is an AC power supply....and we all seem to have several of those lying around the house from various electronic devices that have since died. I built one last year after I bought an old Mauser that was really dirty. It took me about 1/2 an hour to build and I use Windex with Ammonia....I can't believe the crap that comes out of the barrel after letting that thing run for half an hour.
 
thepitchedlink said:
Well, I've played this game too, and the best thing that I have found was to build yourself a "electro cleaner". The instructions are on the net and all you really need is an AC power supply....and we all seem to have several of those lying around the house from various electronic devices that have since died. I built one last year after I bought an old Mauser that was really dirty. It took me about 1/2 an hour to build and I use Windex with Ammonia....I can't believe the crap that comes out of the barrel after letting that thing run for half an hour.
Click to expand...

You mean a DC power supply. Like a car battery charger,old cell phone charger,etc
Care should be taken not to reverse the polarity or to leave the cleaning cycle too long other wise you can either plate your bore with the anode material or strip your bore into a smooth bore.
I have no experience with widex as an electrolyte but know caustic soda will readily dissolve copper and Chrome! They also tend to strip more at the muzzle and throat then in the centre.
 
Brake cleaner, evaporust, CR10, JB bore paste ..... repeat and repeat and ....

Like peeling an onion, there's many a layer in a badly fouled bore.

That old cupro-nickle jacket fouling has too be the most diabolically stubborn stuff known to man. :mad: Once, even had to use 38degree stronger industrial ammonia to get 'er to budge.
 
From John Barsness:

"Cleaning a Barrel to Bare Steel
The proper installation of Dyna-Bore Coat involves first cleaning the bore down to bare, dry steel. Otherwise the coating won’t be sticking to the steel, but powder or lead or copper fouling.

I know, you’re already perfectly capable of cleaning a barrel—but “perfectly” is the key here. With today’s cleaning products it’s actually pretty easy to keep a barrel clean enough to shoot accurately. However, this is not the same as perfectly clean. I know this because I use a bore-scope—and so does Doug Burche. When I first sent him a rifle for the installation of Dyna-Bore Coat, Doug warned me that it needed to be perfectly clean, and challenged me by stating that he had never received such a barrel. So I made sure it was CLEAN, and even Doug agreed it was.

Everybody has their favorite ways of cleaning a bore these days, but I have found that few are based on the use of a bore-scope. So here is the method I used to get my bore perfectly clean:

This was a custom barrel, chambered for the .223 Remington. First, I cleaned out the loose powder fouling with Hoppe’s No. 9 and a half-dozen cotton patches. This is the easy part.

Next, a .22 brass-wire bore-brush was wrapped with a thick cotton patch, so that the patch stuck to the brush. Then the patch was liberally covered in JB Bore Cleaner, a fine abrasive that will wear away lead or copper fouling—or even firmly embedded carbon from powder fouling. The patched brush was then run back and forth in the bore 30 times.

In order to work, this patched brush has to be tight. If it doesn’t require considerable effort to push and pull the brush back and forth, the JB Compound will not wear away metal fouling. If the patched brush feels at all easy to push at any time during the 30 strokes, then wrap another cotton patch around the brush, smear on more JB and do it again. Done correctly, this will remove all lead and carbon from the bore. It will remove almost all the copper from jacketed bullets, but usually not quite all.
Next, clean the bore again with Hoppe’s No. 9 and some cotton patches. This removes the JB Compound.

Now use a chemical copper solvent to remove the last tiny traces of copper. It doesn’t matter which you use, just follow the directions, and repeat them at least three times. It doesn’t matter if you can’t see any blue traces of dissolved copper on the cleaning patches; very often none will show up even though there are traces of copper in the bore. Just have faith and repeat the cleaning cycle recommended by the manufacturer three times.

Finally, degrease the bore. I normally use either isopropyl alcohol or acetone on cotton patches. Repeat three times, with a clean patch each time. Now your bore is really clean, and ready to be treated with Dyna-Bore Coat.

We would like to thank John Barsness for the excellent cleaning instructions you have just enjoyed."





Now apply DBC, buy some WipeOut, and NEVER worry about it again.
 
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