Cylinder discolored

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You're saying that the carbon becomes molecularly bonded with the stainless steel?
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No but steel is porous and it becomes embedded in the material. You cannot remove it mechanically without also removing a tiny amount of steel. Not a big deal once or twice but for the guy that shoots a couple times a week and cleans his guns every range session, over time it will make a difference.

Scratches and wear show up on bluing because you can actually see it. Stainless scratches and wears easier but it is unnoticeable without a fine polish.

Leadaway cloths remove metal, period. I've taken a brushed finish to a bright polish with the stuff. Don't believe me, try it. When you rub it on clean steel or aluminum, that black stuff you see, that's your gun.
 
Stainless steel of the type used to manufacture revolvers is not porous.

Its surface, like any surface, is not totally smooth. It may appear so, but it is not. It has minute fissures, peaks, valleys, etc. Carbon may become lodged in those, but it does not become embedded in the sense that I think you're using.

Does Lead Away cloth, which is a combination of mild abrasives (diatomaceous earth) and chemical solvents that can lift carbon fouling remove metal?

Probably, but the result is, if anything, to increase the smoothness of the surface.

Cleaning the bore of your gun with a brass brush can also, over time, remove minute amounts of metal.

And, for that matter, shooting your guns will, over time, remove minute amounts of metal from them.

But, in either case, the metal is far harder than the cleaning agent, and the removal of metal is so fractionally minute that it would likely have to be measured in laboratory conditions with extremely precise equipment.

In other words, it's really a non issue, unless someone tends to spend 20 hours a day, every day, aggressively rubbing the front of his cylinder with Lead Away cloth.

Even then I think it would be quite some time until something noticeable happened.
 
Polishing a 400grit brushed finish to a bright polish must have been all in my imagination then. I love it when those who have never done something tell those that have it didn't happen. Do with the information what you will, I'm tired of arguing about it. :rolleyes:
 
Polishing a 400grit brushed finish to a bright polish must have been all in my imagination then.
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Not at all, but a 400 grit finish has a surface roughness average value (Ra = the absolute departures of a roughness profile from the mean line of the measurement) of .23um (thats micrometers).

Please do the math of how deep those peaks and valleys are that you smoothed over (from peak to valley, aprox 0.000018" or 18 millionths of an inch). All that rubbing didn't take much off at all considering you still didnt get the surface perfectly flat even though your eye tells you different.
 
I'm not exactly sure what you did, but I am sure that you didn't do what you think you did.

Diatomaceous earth is not an aggressive abrasive. If it were, it wouldn't be used in things like... toothpaste.
 
Anyone ever tried using Lead Away cloths as tooth whiteners? Probably a lot cheaper than what those Hollywood dentists charge the movie stars.

Just think, get someone to pay for one tooth "treatment" and you would probably make enough to pay for all those guns you can "wear out" by polishing the front of the cylinder for the rest of your life!
 
I have found that after a few cleanings with the lead-away cloth, following heavy-fouling range trips, the carbon now has less of a "tooth" to grab onto, and it takes little to no time to wipe it off. The cylinder face is the shiniest part of my 686+. The chambers and throats likewise after shooting 38's come clean much quicker and I now barely use the cloth. That cloth is doing what the factory should be doing before shipping the gun.

I pride myself on sharpening edged tools and under a scopes I see a similar things happening with good blade steels. Some super-steels, like Benchmade's M390 (62+ on the Rockwell scale) take forever to polish but once it gets there it slows to a stop. All we are doing is aligning those peeks and valleys/fissures... knocking them down, more than removing anything.

Once that gloss is there, I just don't see that much is happening.
-SS-
 
I'm not calling you a liar, I'm saying your wrong in your conclusions. There is a difference.

You're assuming that you've somehow damaged (or would damage) your gun by using a Lead Away cloth, or a similar product.

Yet, you provide no empirical data to prove that assumption other than "it looks like it."

Not a valid data set or basis of analysis.

I and others have pointed out a number of erroneous statements, and have questioned others. Why you equate that with being called a liar, I have no clue.
 
You're assuming that you've somehow damaged (or would damage) your gun by using a Lead Away cloth, or a similar product.
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I said no such thing, you're the one making assumptions. I never used a Leadaway cloth on a firearm because I had enough sense to know that if it removes the carbon scoring and bluing, it's probably removing metal as well. So I tested it first.

I took a piece of steel, I put a 400grit brushed finish on it. I then put a Leadaway cloth to it at low speed for two minutes. Comparable to two minutes of hand rubbing. It took the brushed finish down to a fine polish. No, it did not take all the scratches from the wet-or-dry but it did do a very good job of polishing the steel. Enough for anyone with any knowledge of how this works to know that IT REMOVES METAL.

Obviously some people use the stuff and believe it does no harm and refuse to believe otherwise. You obviously have the need to assume that everyone else is a moron, which seems to be rather common here. If you know of a way to polish without removing metal, I'm sure the world would love to hear of this astounding discovery.
 
I took a piece of steel, I put a 400grit brushed finish on it. I then put a Leadaway cloth to it at low speed for two minutes. Comparable to two minutes of hand rubbing. It took the brushed finish down to a fine polish. No, it did not take all the scratches from the wet-or-dry but it did do a very good job of polishing the steel. Enough for anyone with any knowledge of how this works to know that IT REMOVES METAL.
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So, you had an assumption , tested out that assumption and when the results seamed to verify your theory, you deduced that your original assumption was correct and therefor fact. That was a very intelligent way to go about it. But, you misinterpreted your results.

I think your first mistake was lumping all abrasives in the same category. There are abrasives that cut and abrasives that do not cut. The abrasive used in those lead away cloths have a much lower specific hardness then the metal it is being used on. In other words, the abrasive breaks down before the metal will.

Think about those peaks and valleys that were mentioned numerous times in this thread. Along those surfaces of those peaks and valleys, oxidation forms (all steel oxidizes, just at different rates depending on its makeup). This oxidation causes the light hitting the surface to reflect a certain way, making the surface dull looking.

When you took the leadaway product to your prepared metal surface and rubbed it, what you were doing was removing the oxidation from the surfaces of the peaks and valleys, but not removing the actual metal. This causes the light to reflect more efficiently from the surface making it shiny looking. The black stuff you seen on the leadaway cloth was the oxide that was removed.

So, I can see where your thought process lead you to your conclusion. But, it is basic physics that the abrasive used in those products will not cut the harder metal. Incidentally, this is why it effects the bluing, which is a chemically bonded layer of black oxide infused with oil. This is also why it effects the carbon fouling on a cylinder because carbon is composed of forms of oxides.

I don't think anyone used the words liar or moron, we were just trying to explain to you how these products actually work.
 
Okay, so maybe I did polish steels for a living. I'm even published, with patents held with UC. Who cares. But Flitz or leadaway, or diatomaceous earths, are not seen as efficient stock removal agents or fine finishing other than a quick cleanup like Mother's, and are not viewed as polishing compounds. If you want to quibble about sub wavelengths of removal (hope you have an interferometer), I could use a chuckle. I'm not trying to be mean here, but lieber Mann!
 
"I said no such thing, you're the one making assumptions."

OK, if I misinterpreted the following statement by you, then that is my bad.

"Not a big deal once or twice but for the guy that shoots a couple times a week and cleans his guns every range session, over time it will make a difference."

You're right, nowhere did you say that you have ever used these items on your guns, but by making that statement you have already arrived at the conclusion (without adequate proof) that use of such cloths will, over time, cause damage to a gun.

It's already been noted (and is also noted by the manufacturer) that these items are not to be used on blued guns, and the original poster has already noted that he has stainless steel guns.
 
"I don't think anyone used the words liar or moron, we were just trying to explain to you how these products actually work."

Correct, no one ever accused newfrontier45 of being a liar or a moron, only of arriving at faulty conclusions.

History is littered with examples of exceptionally intelligent people who have arrived at faulty conclusions.
 
Ok.

So, I got to thinking.... We have been talking about this back and forth for a bit. On one side we have the argument for what should be the results and on the other side we have someone who did some testing and argues the opposite. Now, being a machinist, I have run into my fair share of what we call "Book-Smart Engineers". These are guys, usually fresh out of school that have learned quite a bit from their books, sometimes claim something should be possible, but in actual practice it is not. So, in that spirit, I decided to do some actual testing, instead of going "by the book" so-to-speak.

I made some time in work today to test out the effects of leadaway on steel.

First I found a piece of mild steel bar stock. This is not hardened steel. I then took some wet/dry sand paper to it. I tried to find some 400-grit, but the heaviest grit I could find in the shop was 500-grit. I put the material in a Monarch lathe in our tool room. I spun up the spindle to 2,500 RPMs and polished the surface of the whole piece.



I then pulled out the leadaway cloth and cut a piece off.



I then returned to the lathe and applied the leadaway cloth to the material, with mderate/hard to hard pressure, spinning at 2,500 RPMs. At this point, the other guys in the room inquired as to what I was doing. I explained to them and they got a chuckle at my little "government job" I had going (machinist slang for " making something I'm not getting paid to make" , lol). My intention was to do this for a couple of minutes, but the guys egged me on to keep it up. I did this for about 20 minutes.

You can see in the picture the black "slurry" that formed and came off on the leadaway cloth.



Here is a quick picture of when I got done with my 20 minute run. The cloth was totally black at this point. The end that was run against the leadaway is the end pointing towards the sand paper.



I tried really hard to get a closer picture with my old flip-phone camera. But it simply would not focus. I decided not to add one, and besides threads only allow 6 images.

So, now it was time to do some measurements.

I started with a Starrett Caliper with .001" dial. Both surfaces, sanded and the leadaway, measured just a tad under .374"

I next turned to a Browne & Sharp micrometer with .0001 grad. on the barrel. I got both surfaces measured at .3737".

So, pretty much the same. So I went into the tool crib where we have some more accurate measument systems. I started with the Keyence Optical measurement system (.00001"). I got .37374" for the sanded surface and .37372" for the leadaway surface.



Next, I tried the Z-Mike laser micrometer (with microscope camera.. we do micro machining, so we use micro-tooling). The measurements from the Z-Mike were .37373" for the sanded surface and .37371" for the leadaway surface. The difference from the optical is probably due to light-bloom from the optical machine.



At this point I debated if I should go into the inspection room were the really good equipment is. But, the inspection room is a clean room and I didn't want to have to suit up for this little test. Plus I figured it was crossing a line from some innocent "government job" to using some serious company resources. So I left my findings stand.

Findings:

Mild, Non-hardened steel.
Spun at 2,500 RPMs for 20 minutes.
Approximately 50,000 passes with moderate/hard to hard pressure.
Best measured difference = .00002" (20 millionths).

Conclusion:

I think that this particular product, Kleenbore's LeadAway, is perfectly safe for use on your firearm's steel surfaces, especially if you consider that the cylinder is hardened steel. We discussed the black slurry in work and it was the general concensus that it was a product of a few things. One, it was probably micro-burrs left over from the sanding procedure. Two, it was a bit of oxide that came out of the surface of the materail. And three, it was probably the actual abrasive itself breaking down. But, it was most definately not any substantial material that got removed.
 
Actually, I still had the piece in my pocket. I tried to get the best picture I could with my wifes camera, but I'm no photographer. I figured I would post this to make my previuos post more complete.

 
Finally, a credible argument.

I said it was abrasive and you have proven my claim correct. I also said that it is up to the individual to decide if it's worth the risk, which you agree upon. So where's the "rub"?

50,000 may sound like a lot until you actually do some math. I can rub 100 times in 10 seconds, counting in each direction. That's 6000 times in one minute. A minute of scrubbing is not very much. Plus, we're not talking about holding a cloth to a steel rod in lathe. We're talking about rubbing with fingers. You can't keep a flat area flat rubbing with your fingers. So the high spots, namely the edges at the chamber throats are going to eventually get rounded off. So cleaning the face of your cylinder 8 times is equivalent to your test. That's not very much. Like I already said, if you only do it a handful of times, it won't really amount to much but if you shoot as often as I do (several times weekly) and clean your cylinder face every time (100 times or more over a year's time), it 'may' make a difference over time. That has been my only point that YOU guys seem to have such an issue with. I never said if you do it a handful of times your revolver will be worn out.

All for absolutely no good reason.
 
Interesting thread!

Enjoyed all the comments and the practical experiment. Still comes down to---use Lead Away if ya want and don't use it if ya don't want.:D
 
All of us have said that lead away has an abrasive element to it. I said that in my first or second post. I said that is why it should not be used on blued guns.

I'm not sure why you think that is some kind of vindication.
 
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