Hoppe's bore cleaner ?

[rebs]

Can Hoppe's regular bore cleaner or foaming bore cleaner be left to soak over night in the bore to remove copper fouling ? Can any of the other cleaners like gunslick or shooters choice be left in over night or is it not necessary ?

[chiefr]

You have just described the way I have used Hoppes to clean out many severely fouled bore for many years. IMHO hoppes is the best. There will be others that will say their brand is better, but Hoppes has been around for at least 80 years.

I would not leave it overnite on chrome lined bores but I have never seen a chrome lined bore need an overnite treatment unless it was shot out.

[MJFlores]

I've left it over night in many a barrel...I call it soakin! I used to use Sweets but Hoppes is just as good!

[LE-28]

It will do a good job for you over night. It is a lot slower then some of the bore cleaners on the market today, but in my opinion is one of the safest bore cleaners to use. It won't rip you nose off if you get a wiff of it.

I don't use it for a copper remover but as soon as the copper remover that I use is out of the barrel, the Hoppes goes back in there. I've been using it for 35+ years.

[rebs]

Does it stay wet over night or does it dry out ? Can Hoppe's foaming bore cleaner be left to soak over night ?

[jepp2]

Can Hoppe's regular bore cleaner or foaming bore cleaner be left to soak over night in the bore to remove copper fouling ?

I have never had any luck with regular Hoppe's bore cleaner removing any copper regardless how long it was left in the barrel. Maybe your experience will be better.

Any of the solvents specifically designed to remove copper, will do so.

If you think using regular Hoppe's bore cleaner has removed all the copper try this:
- Use regular Hoppe's until you are satisfied the bore is perfectly clean.
- Dry the bore with clean dry patches
- Run a patch well soaked with a good copper removing bore cleaner through the bore. If you don't use a jag that is nickel plated you may get a false positive. Let the bore sit for 30 minutes UNLESS your copper removing solvent has a shorter maximum - for example Sweets 7.62 has a 15 min recommended maximum)
- run a clean dry patch through the barrel and check to see if there is any blue on it.

I am assuming you have fired some jacketed bullets prior to this.

[rebs]

Yes all I have fired in this rifle is jacketed bullets. About 150 rounds, is that too many to shoot before cleaning ?

[MJFlores]

Just keep running Hoppes patches down the bore. I actually do it at the kitchen table. If the barrel is really bad I get ti good and clean by brushing and wet patches, then sit it at the table while I puter around doing stuff. Every hour and whenever I walk by I push a few dry patches down, then run two soaking ones and let it sit...wait and repeat. Keep a little bag handing outside to put the patches in or your house will soon smell like the Hoppes factory LOL. I kinda like the smell but most ladies don't care for it. You'll get a few bluish/ green patches and then clean (that's the copper jacket fouling). I just keep doing it until the bore can sit wet for a hour or so and I can get a clean patch out of it. To be truthful, some barrels will never get clean unless they're match grade or properly broken in factory barrel. No matter how rough it's still worth it to try to get what you can out.

[Unclenick]

Rebs,

Hoppe's No. 9 will turn slightly green with time, indicating a slight copper reaction, but it's painfully slow. As Chiefr says, it's old, which to me means hopelessly behind the modern chemistry curve. According to Hoppe's site it was invented in 1903, so it's 110 years old, and chelating compounds and means of inhibiting rust in water-soluble compounds and making water miscible oils and managing ammonia for attacking copper without activating steel surfaces seem to have been completely unknown back then.

But the truth is that they don't sell the 110 year old formula anymore. It had 9 different chemicals in it, which is where the "No.9" came from, but at least 4 of them, nitrobenzene in particular, didn't pass the modern carcinogen tests, and they are now down to 5 components, IIRC. So the current formula is maybe 20 or 30 years old. It still has banana oil, so it smells like it used to, pretty much, but it doesn't clean as well as I remember from childhood, and it's nowhere near being up to some of the more modern formulations in performance.

As far as I know, you can leave Hoppe's No. 9 in a bore indefinitely. I would not do that with Sweets, having had the experience of roughening an old military bore by applying that stuff for long periods. The only ammonia-based copper cleaner I have heard of a test result for is Butches Bore Shine, and what the owner told me was he had put a piece of barrel steel in some and left it for 6 months, then examined it under a microscope and found no indication of etching.

I can't tell you how No, 9 compares to the new Hoppe's No.9 Synthetic cleaner, or to the Hoppe's No.9 Benchrest cleaner.

Read this article. Boretech Eliminator so outclasses any of the petroleum solvent-based cleaners and the ammonia-based cleaners that the author didn't find any others worth mentioning. It does better than petroleum-based cleaners on carbon. Only if you let the carbon age-harden substantially do you need the Slip 2000 carbon remover mentioned the article. Eliminator is virtually odorless (wife likes that), is water-based, biodegradable and, relative to petroleum and oil base products, non-toxic. Despite being water-based, like a water soluble machinists cutting fluid, it has enough corrosion inhibitors in it that it can be left in a bore indefinitely and allowed to dry out in there and will do no harm. I've tried this.

150 rounds may be too long. It depends on the bore condition. The one Marine Scout Sniper instructor I know has students clean every 10 rounds, but clean, cold barrel shots are critical in that application. A lot of service match rifles are fired without cleaning in matches requiring 80 rounds + sighters. So it's not outrageous to go 150 rounds in a good barrel. However, a really rough bore can start to lose accuracy in just twenty rounds or so. I've owned one personally that suffered considerable precision loss after about 40 rounds. But I've also had smooth custom barrels that would shoot the long matches with no problem. So there just isn't a single firm number to use.

These days, because carbon hardens with age, I like to use a pump sprayer right at the range to squirt some Eliminator into the chamber and let it run down to the muzzle, then put a stopper in the chamber and muzzle and pack up and head for home. By the time I get there, the bore normally is clean. I still have to push a couple of patches through to get the dirty remnants out, but there isn't much work to it. I've used Gunzilla the same way in the past, which gets all the carbon out, but then I still had to apply a copper cleaner to get at the metal fouling.

[rebs]

excellent post and the article was an excellent red as well, thank you