Cleaning help?

T

Thejunk07

New member
I've never owned a handgun until recently but I figured cleaning would be the same as a rifle. But when I clean the barrel it seems like I could literally run patches forever and it never comes clean. I ran a cleaner patch through, then brushed, then ran clean patches and then repeated that and it seemed endless so eventually I just figured the hell with it.

Am I doing something wrong? What products are best to use with my S&W 40 for cleaning? Any advice would help, thanks.
 
Are you using a bronze brush? If so, the solvent you're using is possibly reacting with the copper in the alloy (bronze being a mixture of copper and tin) and depositing the precipitate in the barrel as you pass the brush through it. If you're using a copper solvent, that's definitely what's happening.
 
Here are excerpts from a document I put together for friends and family who are getting started in firearms.

Materials:

Go to a gun store or a department store with a sporting goods/hunting/firearms department and buy some foaming bore cleaner. Outers & Breakfree make a couple of the better formulations, but all of them seem to work pretty well. Also buy some Outers Nitro Solvent (or other generic powder solvent). If you don’t like, or can’t tolerate the odor of typical solvents, Hoppe’s Elite makes a gun cleaner with a very mild odor as does M-Pro 7.

You’ll also need a brass or bronze bore cleaning brush and a cleaning jag (patch pusher), both suitable to the caliber of your handgun. Get a sturdy cleaning rod, a one-piece rod is always best. It’s handy to have two cleaning rods; put the bore brush on one and the patch pusher/jag on the other. It saves time since I find that it’s efficicient to alternate the use of those two items during the cleaning process.

You can buy or make cloth bore cleaning patches, but a strong paper towel (like Bounty or the blue “shop” paper towels) will work for cleaning patches. Trying to use a typical, flimsy paper towel is probably a lost cause—it will tear too easily. Just tear off a piece of paper towel and fold it over once or twice so that’ it’s roughly 2”x2” or smaller. If you make your patch too big or too thick it will be very hard to push it through the bore and it could get even get stuck. Start with a single fold-over and a small patch to get a feel for how much force you’ll need to get it through the bore. You can always make the next patch a little bigger or fold it over again, but if you get one stuck it’s a pain. When using paper towels you may have to experiment a bit to get the patches started so they don’t immediately tear.

You’ll need some safety glasses. Any time you're using solvents and bore brushes you'll need to protect your eyes from flying droplets of solvent and bristles that sometimes liberate themselves from the brush.

Spray some nitro/powder solvent into the bore and brush it out to remove the loose fouling. You’re not trying to get it the barrel completely clean on the first try, so a few passes of the brush are enough. Push the brush all the way through the barrel before pulling it back through. If you try to reverse the brush in the barrel it tears up the brush—in extreme cases it can cause the brush to bind which makes it very difficult to remove.

Now push a couple of dry patches down the barrel to remove the dirty solvent & loose fouling. Next spray some foaming bore cleaner in the bore and set the barrel aside. If the gun is a revolver you can set the whole gun aside for awhile until the bore cleaner does its work (read the directions on the bore cleaner you’re using). If you have a semi-automatic then you can clean the other parts while you leave the bore cleaner working.

After waiting an appropriate interval (per the bore cleaner instructions), run a clean, dry patch through the barrel to push out the solvent/cleaner & dissolved fouling. Put some nitro solvent on a bore brush (or spray it into the bore), run the brush through the barrel a few times and then follow with a dry patch. Spray the bore full of foaming bore cleaner and leave it until the next commercial break on TV (10 or 15 minutes ) and then repeat the “nitro solvent/brush/patch/bore cleaner/patch” steps until the dry patch after the foaming bore cleaner comes out clean, not brown/black, blue or green. Now the bore is clean.

Be aware that small bits of the cleaning brush will wear off in the bore and if you leave the debris from the brush in the bore before spraying in the foaming bore cleaner you'll always get gunky/blue/green patches since the brush material (bronze or brass) contains copper. That’s why you always patch out the bore after using the nitro/powder solvent with the bore brush and before you apply the foaming bore cleaner.
 
People tend to over clean...

A couple passes of a patch with cleaner, a few passes with a bore brush, a couple clean patches, and a patch with a little oil...

That is good enough 90% of the time.

As long as there are no obvious deposits of lead or built up copper, you are fine.
 
Run some solvent soaked patches through... let simmer while u clean slide and frame.

Then run brush a couple times.

Then run a couple more solvent patches.

Then run a couple clean patches... followed by bore mop.

Then run a very lightly oiled patch through.

Done
 
Thejunk07,

You may well be seeing metal rubbed off the bronze brush and onto the steel surface. This will look dark when the ultra fine particles are on white cloth. Try holding the cloth at an oblique angle (almost, but not quite sideways) to bright sunlight and see if you spot any bronze color coming off the dark areas. Sometimes you can pick up the metallic color that way, but not always.
 
No need to work so hard, it's just going to get dirty again.
The expected accuracy from most handguns is not improved with a squeaky clean barrel, either.
A gun should be extra clean only if it's going to be stored for a long time.
Spend more time shooting and less time cleaning.
Life is short.
Now, don't you feel better about the whole thing? :)
 
I will run a very wet patch soaked with my solvent of choice and let it sit while I clean the slide and frame. After that I will run a bore brush through it about 10 strokes. After that I will push a clean patch through it with a brass jag. If I hold it up to a light and see no deposits inside then I will run an oil soaked patch through it and call it good. If I see some crud, I will run the brush again. I don't care if the patches come out 100% clean. My barrels look like a mirror inside and that is good enough for me.
 
In my experience the majority of gun owners fall into one of 2 camps. They over clean or under clean their guns. Unfortunately most fall into the under clean.

I think you are over thinking it. If you are not seeing build up, fouling or accuracy issues there is no need to obese.

marine6680 & jaytothekizzay are spot on!

If you have fouling or excessive built up JohnKSa write up looks good.
 
I can always get my pistols squeaky clean quite quickly. What I do that I'm not sure everybody else does is that after I use solvent and dry the barrel, I use oil as a SECOND solvent and then clean all that oil out. Turns out that gun oil also does an excellent job of helping de-crud the barrel.

So what I do is:

Run a dry brush through the barrel 10 times.
Run a solvent-soaked patch through the barrel.
Run another dry brush through the solvent filled barrel.
Run some dry patches through the barrel.
Run some oil-soaked patches through the barrel.
Run another dry brush through the barrel.
Run some dry patches through the barrel.

I can do the oil soaking one last time if I don't feel it's good enough but usually this gets the barrel extremely clean in no time at all for me.

Of course it just comes down to finding a cleaning method that works for you.
 
People tend to over clean...
Click to expand...

Marine6680, I truly mean absolutely zero disrespect with my question, but how can someone "over clean" their pistol or revolvers?

I was "raised" on firearms in the military where we were taught to clean until no powder residue can be found on a patch. I won't say I am 100% there now, but very close. I shoot two to three times monthly or more, and almost always clean to bright and shiny.

I am not saying that one needs to clean to this level, but calling it "over clean" is a stretch, no?

No right or wrong, just opinion.
Tony
 
Excessive cleaning has been shown to cause acumalative damage.


The military teaches you to clean weapons constantly for a few reasons...

Busy work
Over reaction to the early M16 troubles
In a combat area, clean when you can, as you might not have time later when you really needed it.


But besides that... People tend to "over clean" because they clean beyond what is practical and necessary for proper function and accuracy. I have read of several rifle teams that have stopped cleaning their rifle barrels to "shiney clean" and removing all copper... as they found that too clean reduced accuracy for a significant number of rounds. They only scrub out the barrels real well when they notice a drop in accuracy, after many hundreds of rounds.
 
I think that some of the over cleaning is a hold over from the days of corrosive primers. It used to be if you left the copper fouling in the barrel with the corrosive material from the primer you would ruin your barrel or so I was told.

These days that is not an issue for most of us. I guess I think about it this way. I take the gun to the range and shoot about 200 rounds give or take. I bring is home and do a normal field strip run some cleaner of choice down the barrel and bore brush and then clean patch then oil. If I take the time to get all the copper fouling out each and every time what difference is it going to make?

I am going to go to the range and shoot 200 rounds and after about 25 guess what is going to be in that barrel. Copper fouling. For me it not a matter of accuracy but a matter of avoiding insanity. LOL

If you have excessive built up then it is time to get out some foaming bore cleaner or bore cleaner of choice and get to work but for the majority of us just shoot 200 or even 300 round range session does not require extensive cleaning. IMHO
 
Two things you might consider getting - a bore snake and a can of CLP Breakfree gun cleaner. After using these two things, I might run a patch just to see if its clean, and it generally is. Then, I'll put a little oil on a patch and oil the inside of the barrel, if it's blued. If its a stainless barrel, I don't even bother doing that anymore.

Like others have said, don't over clean your barrel. You can generally reflect a little light in it and see if its nice and shiny.
 
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