cleaning your rifle or pistol ?

[rebs]

Do you guys prefer a cleaning rod or a flexible cable pull system and why ?

Do you push and pull a cleaning brush both ways in your barrel or just from breech to muzzle ?

[Doyle]

I like a rod. Either way works. The pull type can be an advantage in rifles where you can't use a rod from the breech end (lever actions/etc.). As to pushing/pulling a brush. Yes, you can go both ways BUT - DO NOT CHANGE DIRECTIONS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BARREL. Changing directions in the middle of the barrel is bad juju.

[James K]

A cleaning rod. If you want to know why, Google "stuck bore snake".

Jim

[Unclenick]

Ditto what James K said.

The breech-to-muzzle-only cleaning techniques were started by benchrest shooters. There are two principles at work. One is that with abrasive cleaning compounds, the end you start from will tend to get the most polishing and wear. A gun shoots well if slightly wider at the breech than at the muzzle, but can throw shotgun patterns if it is the other way around. The other is just to avoid the cleaning rod rubbing the muzzle. It can carry small bits of grit and dirt that could eventually affect the symmetry of the crown edges. Some sectioned cleaning rods have enough offset between the joints to make a sort of speed bump that can be hard on the muzzle if the rod is steel and not brass. (Note that you can spin the sections of a sectioned steel rod in a drill and chamfer and polish the outer edges of the ends of each section with a hone to mitigate the effect of the "speed bumps".)

For the lever guns and the Garand and M14 and BAR and other guns that prevent convenient breech end access to the bore, the Dewey cleaning rods and some others have a jag you can run through the bore from the muzzle, then wrap the patch onto to pull it through. There are muzzle end bore guides for some of these rifles for those using these tools. Unlike the Bore Snake, the Dewey won't break off easily, though Dewey does use a heavier thread than the standard 8-32 used by most cleaning rods, and the male thread on the rod is steel, not brass or aluminum.

Otis also makes pull-through plastic covered steel cable rods. I've not heard of these breaking, either, but they do only try to pull one patch at a time, and not a whole train of cleaning surface, like the Dewey. The Otis has the drawback that it needs patches that have a hole in the middle for the jag threads.

As to brushes, I just flat don't use them anymore. If you reverse a brush in a bore, even if it is bronze and not stainless steel, a bore scope will sometime show you the spot, as it can mark the steel. So if you use brushes they have to go all the way through and out. When they do, as the bristle spring back out as they exit the bore, they fling whatever they've picked up around, either into the chamber or out into the room. Little microdrops like you see in slow motion videos of someone sneezing, plus carbon and crud. You can use a muzzle container to capture that going from breech to muzzle, but coming the other way the chamber and action behind it get sprayed.

Modern cleaning chemistry has, in my view, made the brush obsolete. You can buy chemicals that dissolve everything in a bore easily if you let them work, then just patch out. I went to Walmart and got a small pump sprayer for a buck in the Health and Beauty travel section. I put Boretech Eliminator in it. At the end of a range session, with the barrel still warm, I hold the gun muzzle down at an angle and put several squirts in the chamber, turn the gas port to the high side of the downward angle (if there is one), and let the Eliminator run down to the muzzle. I plug the chamber and muzzle with rubber stoppers and go home. By the time I get there, often just one or two patches wet with Eliminator, and allowed to sit for a bit inbetween will complete the cleaning job. If you get to carbon deposits before they cool, they dissolve much more easily. Some kind of bonding and hardening happens when it's cool.

This article points out that most people don't give cleaning agents time to work. He saw them continue to work for up to 20 minutes. I usually get impatient, but do leave them at least 5 minutes. In the article the Slip2000 carbon removing product (sold with several names, but all the same stuff; check their site) is used. I've found it works well with a variety of really hard carbon. But the article is from 2006, and in the last nine years other products have come out.

Boretech has its own stronger carbon-only cleaner, called C4. I like Gunzilla for tough carbon, though it has to sit a long time for thick, hard carbon. Overnight is often best, though I had one pitted bore that sat for six weeks while it slowly got all the carbon out of pits and all the rust, as well. (I don't think it took that long; that's just how long I happened to leave it before I got back to it. But I have seen it take three weeks in a glass tube to get all the rust on a pieces of steel to fall to the bottom). Board member Hummer70 has recommended Mobile 1 motor oil, which has very strong carbon removing additive. I've tried the 0W20 Mobile 1 and got good results, but have not done a controlled comparison. It's certainly another product that's easy to leave for a long period then patch out, and it's about 1/8 to 1/4 the price of most products sold as gun cleaners.

If you get out only the carbon with Mobile 1 or C4 or Gunzilla and need to dissolve either lead or remaining copper separately, as may happen with an especially heavy build-up, there are products just for those jobs. Wipe Out maker Sharpshoot'R has a product called No Lead that I've found successful at turning lead deposits into crumbly black crud in about an hour. The black crud patches out. KG-12 copper solvent is probably the best and most aggressive copper remover. It's only drawback is it doesn't turn blue or green. It just becomes a darker orange-ish brown color at is dissolved copper. So after it is pushed through, some color changing product like Boretech Eliminator or their Cu++ copper, which turn cobalt blue in the presence of remaining copper, can be used as an indicator to see if the job is really done.