Cleaning too often?

A

AlphaAssault

New member
I have an old turk mauser reworked to take 8mm ammunition. All I fire, at the moment, is corrosive ammunition. As such, I clean my rifle after every firing. I use a copper bore brush, among other things, and was wondering if there's such thing as cleaning youre barrel too much. Does cleaning the bore with the brush abnormally wear down the rifling in the barrel? I shoot about once a week, so I clean it about as much. Just making sure I am not hurting anything by cleaning it so often.
 
A bronze brush is not going to wear away much barrel steel. Just keep the rod clean and smooth and use a rod guide in the action.

You MUST get the salts out of the barrel soon after firing chorate ("corrosive") primed ammunition. Only water will do the job. Regular solvent will get out the powder fouling and coppering and oil will protect it after it is dry.
 
I use water, as well as solvent and oil. I just wanted to focus on the wire brush because I thought it was the biggest potential problem.
 
Just don't use it too long so that it wears out and the steel core scratches up the barrel.

If you still worry about it, you can get the potassium chloride out with wet patches or a nylon brush and clean the fouling out with Wipe Out foam or similar, no wire brush required.
 
I use hot water (120`F), remove the bolt and poor it down the breach. Heating up the barrel opens the microscopic fissures in the bore and allows more of the salts to flush out. Then I will swab some soap and water in the bore and flush it again with hot water. Then dry it with compressed air. Then go over it with conventional cleaners and oil. I never had problems with corrosive ammo this way. Bore would come out quite clean.
 
AlphaAssault:
Was the chamber built with stronger steel than what was used in the early Spanish 7mm Mausers in the 1890s?

Some of those were converted to .308 and the steel is reported by many to be of questionable strength for .308.
A guy died at a range in PA when shooting his converted .308 Spanish Mauser, from that period. Have no other info, or what ammo he used.
 
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