Gooey barrel 7.62x54r

S

stubbicatt

New member
Hello fellas. About 6 or 7 months ago took my SVT40 out and ran maybe 50 rounds through her. Just a magnificent piece to shoot. Afterwards, brought her home and cleaned her using Hoppe's #9, as it is purported to be suitable for cleaning after corrosive ammo.

Ran a patch of Breakfree CLP down the bore as a preservative, and put her away in the safe.

Took it out the other day to examine, and looked down the bore and it did look a bit fuzzy. Ran a dry patch down the bore and it was very sticky black stuff. So attacked it again this time using TM solvent and several brush strokes, and removed a whole bunch of thick black sticky stuff. Fortunately, no rust was evident on the patches.

I find myself trying to figure out what that stuff is, and suspect perhaps the old Czech ammo used asphalt or tar sealant, and perhaps that is what I was struggling against.

Bore is nice and bright and clean again, but my that was unpleasant stuff to remove.

Any ideas what it could have been? Didn't feel like carbon fouling, as it was sticky. If it is asphalt or tar, I reckon a little Sunoco race fuel might cut through it a little faster next time. Maybe CLP might cut it faster, as it is oil based.
 
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Most likely what you are seeing is the old crude and crap that has been in the barrel for years starting to turn free from regular cleaning .
I collect milsurp and some times I see this after I get a new rifle, clean it up and start shooting it.
Old dirt, cosmoline and powder residue.
Keep scrubbing the barrel it will clean up.
 
What really helped my Mosin:

Corked the barrel and stood it up butt-first against the wall with the muzzle in a container. Poured the bore full of Hoppe's #9 and let it sit for a long while. Came back and uncorked and then followed by a brush and a bunch of dry patches.
 
I've heard both yes/no in regards to the ability of Hoppes 9 to clear corrosive salts. I never wanted to take that chance, so I took an extra step.
I always ran a patch of water/ammonia through the hot barrel immediately after I finished shooting corrosive ammo for the day. Then a dry patch to dry the barrel. Then I took the rifle home and cleaned normally using Hoppe's 9. I never had any corrosion issues.

You issue sounds as though the packing cosmoline is melting and exiting the barrel. Be happy, now you can tell your friends that you were the first one to shoot it after it came out of storage. :)
 
I notice once I stopped worrying about rust I stopped getting it. the hot water flushes, the windex treatments, ETC, never once prevented me from developing rust. now I exclusively use CLP, safariland right now because it's odorless and I have not had a rust issue that was not caused by me being too lazy to clean at all.

as for black goop, sounds like crystallized cosmoline that has picked up contaminates(dust, GSR, oil, vodka, etc) being reconstituted through the heat of firing, and mixing with your CLP. I like Mosin-marauder's idea of plugging the barrel and completely soaking, though I would probably go with something a little less volatile than hoppes 9. hoppes is known to eat away copper brushes, I wouldn't leave a barrel to stew in that stuff very long, could compromise the metal chemistry. brake/carb cleaner possibly? fill the barrel, leave for an hour or so, then run a copper brush, followed by dry patches, followed by patches soaked in CLP, should get all of it.
 
Old Russian rifle and janitorial grade ammonia will really get the crap out....

Turns cleaning patches into this pretty blue flower...

Be sure to oil it up after....
 
I cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility that it is cosmoline. However, I have been through perhaps a half dozen firing/cleaning cycles with the rifle, and it has never exhibited this sort of residue before. The barrel has always come nice and shiny each time I cleaned it before, and what's more, it was shiny when I finished cleaning it 6 months ago and put it away for storage since then. The fuzz/tar developed while sitting in the safe.

Oh well, I guess I'll keep an eye on it and see if it develops this tar like substance again.
 
Hot tap water is for cleaning after corrosive ammo. After 6 to 8 months the fuzz could be spider web. However, Czech ammo has lacquer on the cases.
Janitorial grade ammonia does nothing. Not that there is such a thing anyway. Ammonia is ammonia. Corrosive ammo doesn't need Windex or anything other than plain hot water. It's the water in Windex that dies the job not the ammonia.
 
Janitorial grade ammonia does nothing. Not that there is such a thing anyway
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well there is and there isn't. ammonia is ammonia, that much is clear, but commercial cleaners that are often used by janitors often contain higher concentrations of ammonia than household cleaners.

Corrosive ammo doesn't need Windex or anything other than plain hot water.
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to speak technically, hot/cold makes no difference. salt is water soluble, it doesn't matter if it's 33 degrees or 120, salt crystals dissolve in water. an argument may be made that the trace hot water leftover after flushing may evaporate out leaving no moisture behind, but hot cold makes no difference in the effectiveness of how well salt is flushed out. then again, unless the barrel is the same temperature as the water when flushing is done, the steam from hot water will just condense and leave cold water in the barrel when done anyway making hot/cold water pointless.

with all of this said, you don't need to dissolve salt crystals to remove them from your gun. any cleaning solvent and tight patches will remove them along with unburned powder and other debris. a coat of oil on top will prevent the oxidation process even if you leave some salt behind. I have long since stopped water and windex rinses in my guns. turns out my issues with rust pretty much don't happen as long as I just do a good job cleaning and lubing using long accepted cleaning practices.
 
"unless the barrel is the same temperature as the water when flushing is done, the steam from hot water will just condense and leave cold water in the barrel when done anyway making hot/cold water pointless"

I'll continue to use boiling water as the final rinse. It's not so much that the steam dissipates but a hot barrel tends to dry itself better than a cold one. This is from years of cleaning blackpowder rifles.

"you don't need to dissolve salt crystals to remove them from your gun"

So all those years of prescribed cleaning were wrong? It seems odd that no one else has come to this groundbreaking conclusion.
 
notice that none of the militaries that issued corrosive ammo ever took the time of teaching their troops to flush their barrels with water?

the "years of prescribed cleaning" didn't come about until the internet ruined everything.
 
I just use Hoppe's.

*shrugs*

I don't shoot much corrosive anymore, though.

Alkaline based solvent cleans it well, but I'm not sure if anyone makes an Alkaline based solvent at the moment.
 
the "years of prescribed cleaning" didn't come about until the internet ruined everything.
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No, actually, the "prescribed cleaning" took place as usual every time we went into the field. We would go play with guns, come back to the base, and spend the next day or tow cleaning the guns up. Even though no world military organizations are still using corrosive ammo, that is a holdover from the "old days" when corrosive ammo was the norm.
 
Janitorial grade has more actual ammonia content mixed with water than household ammonia...

Works very well on old rifles to get copper fouling and other stuff out...

I have bought the janitorial grade ammonia at corner hardware stores for years...

Ps
Don't sniff it


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RE Hoppes, one of the (many) previous times this came up, a guy on Calguns ended up calling Hoppes to get the straight answer. Which was: "No"

The old formula worked fine, the current formula, not so much.

Hoppes No9 plus is formulated for Black powder, and should work fine on corrosive primers. http://www.hoppes.com/bore-cleaners/no-9-plus

That being said, unless you shoot black powder, buying a special solvent just to do the same job as water you get from the tap for free, seems silly.

It is a crying shame the old Surplusrifle.com site is gone. There was an excellent test on there, testing pretty much every commonly available solvent on removing salts, Most of them didn't, and his pieces of test metal rusted nicely.

Luckily, it looks like the test is available on the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/2007070...usrifle.com/reviews2006/alittlesalt/index.asp

It is 4 pages long, and worth the read.

notice that none of the militaries that issued corrosive ammo ever took the time of teaching their troops to flush their barrels with water?
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Nope.

The British Commonwealth troops did, seen funnels made for it. After a trip to the range, they would put the water on for tea, and bore cleaning.

A quick Google search turns up these:

British funnel:
http://www.milsurps.com/enfield.php?pg=ti21.htm

Canadian Funnel:
http://denner.ca/weapons/GunAccess/index.html

To kill the salts after shooting corrosive ammo, I use hot tap water, followed by a good squirt of WD40 to displace the water, followed by a shot of Break Free and one patch.
 
BOILING WATER!!!! just pour a few pots down the bore and the cosmo melts away. just keep pouring until its clean, can take a couple gallons of slow pouring.
 
"No, actually, the "prescribed cleaning" took place as usual every time we went into the field. We would go play with guns, come back to the base, and spend the next day or tow cleaning the guns up. Even though no world military organizations are still using corrosive ammo, that is a holdover from the "old days" when corrosive ammo was the norm."

Yupper, clean your rifle 3 consecutive days after a trip to the range(and this was 1970)
____
 
OP- I didn't see where you mentioned anywhere, the initial cleaning performed on the barrel when before the range trip?


Age old discussion- like barrel break-in...
Except there is some science here to evaluate.
The KCL salts produced after primer ignition cannot be "neutralized", any more than you can "neutralize" a teaspoon of sea salt.

They need to be dissolved and flushed from the bore- hot water, or windex - the ammonia helps break up the powder fouling, releasing the salts and has the added benefit of dissloving copper. The windex only dissolves and flushes the salts as plain water does.

Hoppes #9 does not "neutralize" KCL salts.
 
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