Careful what you use to clean your bore

H

HiBC

New member
I'll put this here for max exposure.
A good friend of my brother is rather dismayed. A preventable bummer.

He has been doing some competitive longer range shooting. The rifle is an Accuracy International in 6.5 x 47. It has 2000 rounds through it.

Up front,I'll say it seems he did something unfortunate.This is NOT a comment on Accuracy International rifles or the 6.5x47 round.

The borescope shows an alligator skin throat. He is meticulous.I learned he uses brake cleaner in his bore.

I recommend that anyone interested go here:

http://www.schuemann.com/Documentation.aspx

Or to the Schuemann barrels website,then to documentation.

Read the articles on barrel cleaning,and barrel steel.

Take it for what it is worth. I'm not going to argue about it,do whatever makes you happy.

You can put whatever you want in your barrel.

(Spoiler,type 416 R barrel steel is quite susceptible to chemical damage. Do not switch around on bore cleaning chemicals,do not,for example ,use Sweets followed by another bore cleaner,and do not put chlorinated hydrocarbons ,either by themselves or particularly in combination with other bore cleaning products .They even say "Don't use Butches this month,then something else next month You read,and decide. )
 
From the post, it sounds like the problem is in the throat area of the barrel. Why would bore cleaning chemicals affect the throat more than the rest of the barrel?
 
One reason is that the throat, being larger than the barrel, tends to leave more cleaning residue in it. When you switch from a carbon solvent to an ammonia based copper solvent this is the place those compounds are going to mix.

A dry patch probably isn't enough, and there is bound to be some seepage even with a good bore guide. I try to clean out the cleaner with Kroil if I'm going to switch solvents and use an ammonia based copper solvent. I use a larger swab to clean out the chamber and the throat after I remove the bore guide.

I think the throat probably gets the least attention when your cleaning, and it should get the most.
 
Question: is type 416 R barrel steel used a lot in commercial firearms or is it a 'custom' thing?

(I did read the article and it made me feel pretty smart to always stick with Hoppes #9 :D...but then it made me feel kind of old too. :()
 
Brake cleaner bad for steel??
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No. It is used commonly. HOWEVER, one problem with brake cleaner is that it totally removes all protective oils from the metal surface. After using it, you must re-apply a thin coating of oil to protect the metal.
 
Doyle said:
No. It is used commonly. HOWEVER, one problem with brake cleaner is that it totally removes all protective oils from the metal surface. After using it, you must re-apply a thin coating of oil to protect the metal.
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Yeah I know, but it does alligator skin to it???
 
DaleA you are old and smart :p I only use Hoppes9 and gun oil on my firearms and they function just fine.
 
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HiBC said:
Did you read the articles?
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I did not before I first replied. But after now having read them I still saw no mention of throats being more susceptible to chemical corrosion from bore solvents.

There may be some merit to Ozean's statements however.

The most disappointing thing about the articles is the general lack of positive suggestions for barrel cleaning, except perhaps the use of Kroil and JB Bore Compound. Surely there is something better than never cleaning a barrel and leaving powder residue in the bore (which also promotes corrosion, especially in the presence of humidity).

Edit: Added JB Bore Compound
 
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If you have not read the articles,I'm not going to transcribe them.I'moffering some very good information.If its not worth reading to you,well,you may do as you wish with your barrel.
If you buy a stainless barrel,it is most likely 416 R. The "R"is for "rifle"

This steel has sulphur added to it to improve the machining characteristics of the steel.It gives a better finish,but at a price. These chemicals penetrate into the sulphur and react with it.
It happens more rapidly in the throat because there is more heat and pressure there.
The bulk of the article was written by some guy named Borden at Precision Shooting Magazine. Rings a bell.
TFL does not like copy and paste of someone elses work.I gave you a source.

Once again,I freely offer what I have found.You can read it,learn as you choose,and do whatever you want to your barrel.

Not my job to convince anybody.

And Doyle,there is more to it than completely degreasing the steel.

One of the sources in the article:

Precision Shooting Magazine, December,'93,"Rifle Barrel Cleaning Materials and Barrel
Corrosion", by Jim Borden, presented information about the etching of 416 barrel surfaces by
various chemicals.
 
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As I said above, I didn't read the articles before my first post, but I did read them before my post just above.

I went back and read the articles yet again and saw one mention of chlorinated aerosols (sometimes used to dry chambers) possibly accelerating corrosion in chambers when combined with certain other solvents.

Still would have been more helpful if the article on cleaning had some positive cleaning suggestions beyond scraping the chamber with a brass rod (though Kroil and JB Bore Compound seemed to be good according to one of one of the quoted snips).
 
DaleA you are old and smart I only use Hoppes9 and gun oil on my firearms and they function just fine.
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BINGO!!!
Does everything any of the amateur chemists home brew, and automotive products do. Just made to do it in guns!:)
 
That's a some seriously disjointed reading.
It's like watching my autistic daughter bounce from Doc McStuffins to Backyardigans, to PeeWee's Playhouse, to Paw Patrol, and then on to PJ Masks, and more...


My personal opinion:
Your friend fried his barrel early on by not watching how much he was heating it. ...And then, eventually, blamed it on cleaning agents by only getting around to bore-scoping it when performance degraded.

Argue if you wish, but the few details provided lead me to operator error and excessive heat - not cleaning agents.
 
FrankenMauser said:
That's a some seriously disjointed reading.
It's like watching my autistic daughter bounce from Doc McStuffins to Backyardigans, to PeeWee's Playhouse, to Paw Patrol, and then on to PJ Masks, and more...


My personal opinion:
Your friend fried his barrel early on by not watching how much he was heating it. ...And then, eventually, blamed it on cleaning agents by only getting around to bore-scoping it when performance degraded.

Argue if you wish, but the few details provided lead me to operator error and excessive heat - not cleaning agents.
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I agree, that was horrible reading. And feel that the barrel was overheated because I have seen that same thing happen from over heating. The fact of it happening after 2k of shooting also helps to support that theory.
 
It has always seemed to me that the best bore cleaner is one that was developed just for that. I've used Hoppe's for a lot of years and no complaints.
 
HiBC,

Thanks for sending that website on. On reading through the barrel cleaning section, what caught my eye mostly was this comment:

"Most American barrel makers hesitate to recommend Sweets as a regular bore cleaner because experience seems to show that barrels last longer with other petro-chemical based bore cleaners like Hoppes No. 9 or Shooters Choice. Ammonia is present in bore cleaners like Hoppes No. 9 in the form of ammonia oleate."

I believe I've read that the recipe for H#9 has had some ingredient changes from when it was originally offered commercially long, long ago. Hatcher's Notebook gives this for the recipe (approximates of his findings) as he researched it back in the 1920s. In his book, first published in 1947, he admits he didn't know if the recipe given below had changed even back then. Here's what he found for H#9s ingredients back in the 20s, as I understand it:

Ammonium oleate...................................16%
Neutral Saponifiable oil............................24%
Nitro-benzene.........................................6%
Light Mineral Oil, such as kersosene,
along with Amyl acetate...........................54%

If I remember right, I believe the Nitro-benzene was one ingredient changed out to some other additive (?)

Personally, I'm an H#9, die-hard advocate, too, and I've never used Sweets or any other bore cleaner with lots of ammonia present. I've heard from enough shooters through the years, along with the professional gunsmith I use when I need that service, that Sweets has ruined more rifle barrels than one might imagine. I can only guess that using that bore cleaner has to be monitored very closely, and in a timely manner. I've never used stainless steel bore brushes either.

In the last paragraph of that article, I had to raise my eyebrows a bit when the author claimed as his personal practice that he NEVER cleans his barrels.

An old shooter/machinist/gun-building friend once told me you never have to worry about H#9 hurting a firearm. I believe him, and I'll continue using that tried and true old stuff; it has always worked for me and my guns.
 
Alligators in your barrel ? That's a good description of what is often called 'erosion ' but in fact is the effect of letting the barrel get too hot and the steel absorbing carbon from the hot gases of combustion !!
We metallurgists understand all this but it seems to be lost on many shooters. A proper metallurgical test was shown many years ago by a Canadian. Slow down your shooting let the barrel cool between shots.
 
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