Help scratches on barrel?

[jaysonh]

Hello members,

I recently purchased a colt 6920. Last week, I clean it. However, I mixed my bronze brushes. Instead of cleaning it with a .22 cal I used a .30 cal. I passed the bronze brush 10 times just going from inside the barrel out then removing bronze brush and repeating the process. Do you think that my barrel is scratch? Would a wrong size bronze brush have damaged it? Thanks.

[JohnKSa]

It's extremely unlikely that you did any damage to a centerfire firearm barrel using a bronze bore brush, even one that's oversize for the bore.

However, it probably didn't work very well for cleaning and also probably ruined the brush.

By the way, pulling the brush back through the bore shouldn't be a problem after it's been pushed from the breech to the muzzle. You just need to be sure that you wait until the brush is all the way out of the bore before you reverse directions.

You want to clean from the breech (insert the cleaning rod from the chamber end of the barrel) to minimize the chances of damaging the muzzle.

You also want to avoid reversing the brush while it's actually in the barrel because it can cause the brush to bind in the barrel. There's some small potential for barrel damage if that happens, but what usually happens is that it ruins the brush and it can be very difficult to get the brush out of the bore.