How much do you worry about copper?

J

JJ45

New member
My brother has owned a 30-06 bolt gun for 40 years. He will shoot about 3 rounds each hunting season to "check if it's still on" :) Then goes hunting. He has never de-coppered the rifle in about 40 years....At the end of deer season on goes the Hoppes #9 and that's it. His rifle seems to shoot good enough.

Me, OTOH, de copper after almost every range session using proper, non-damaging cleaning techniques and specific carbon and copper solvents....

I am beginning to wonder how much are you concerned about copper streaks in a rifle's bore. Especially if you have run some copper solvent through and have removed most of it...do you hafta clean your bore until there is NO evidence of copper at all, no streaks, no green, etc.?
 
I don't worry about it at all. I haven't decoppered the bore on my deer rifle in 30 years or more and it will still do tiny little five shot clover leafs at 100 yards.
 
Most deer rifles never see more than 5-10 rnds per season, my rifles however get fired a lot, ( for me) 25-100 rnds through testing new bullets, scope mounting, trigger tuning, and such.
I have a 1903a3 with a pristine barrel on it, it collects copper quite a bit and I had trouble, initially getting the bore clean, it shoots fine up to around 35 rnds then starts spreading group somewhat, so after every step was painstakingly went through, I found it was the copper fouling causing this.
 
In competition circles it's not uncommon to shoot 400-500 rounds or more without a cleaning of any kind. My match rifles will usually get cleaned of copper once in their lives and then it's really just ceremonial. I'll very occasionally drag a patch down the bore but even that's extremely rare. After a cleaning, I only usually need to fire 1 or 2 rounds to foul back in. My bores are extremely smooth to begin with so there's just not really a need for me to clean because it's doesn't over-foul.

If you've got a barrel that's rough as 5 miles of dirt road inside, you'll probably have to clean more often and it'll take a lot more shots to get it fouled in.
 
Hawg said:
I don't worry about it at all. I haven't decoppered the bore on my deer rifle in 30 years or more and it will still do tiny little five shot clover leafs at 100 yards.
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How often are those tiny 5-shot cloverleafs shot?

Every time?

Occasionally?

Rarely?
 
I don't worry about copper at all. If something changes in the way the gun shoots I will investigate the cause. I don't even clean the bore under normal circumstances. I have a rifle that has had nothing down the bore but bullets since 1987.

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stagpanther said:
I only clean copper from my bores when there's copper in them.
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I don't know but that might be after one shot :)

I tend to agree with most above. I don't think I'm going to clean as much.

But there are M1 Garand guys that insist you clean your Garand bore down to bare metal
 
You can detect copper presence, or not, with a patch dampened with ammonia. Run it through. If you see "blue" you have copper in your barrel.
 
JJ45 said:
But there are M1 Garand guys that insist you clean your Garand bore down to bare metal
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I'm one of them.

The 5 Garand 7.62 match barrels I wore out after about 3500 rounds each were cleaned to bare metal every 40 to 60 shots. They'll shoot well under MOA at 600 yards with 190s that way.
 
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When cleaning, am cleaning down to bare metal on most rifles. However, it is dependent on specific rifle or cartridge.
 
It depends on what your goals are and how much you shoot. Personally, I use bore tech eliminator which works well for carbon, and has a mild copper remover. As long as I use it consistently it keeps the copper buildup down. For a hunting rifle, that is getting shot maybe 5-10rnds a year, probably will not cause any issue for 10-20yrs if I had to guess.
 
I asked this to a friend who was a long range shooter.
He replied "Are you starting to miss yet?"

I think it's less of an issue than the noise would indicate.
 
doofus47 said:
I asked this to a friend who was a long range shooter.
He replied "Are you starting to miss yet?"

I think it's less of an issue than the noise would indicate.
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I prefer to clean before accuracy degrades.

If you and your stuff are good enough, you'll understand.
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stagpanther View Post
I only clean copper from my bores when there's copper in them.
I don't know but that might be after one shot

I tend to agree with most above. I don't think I'm going to clean as much.

But there are M1 Garand guys that insist you clean your Garand bore down to bare metal
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Really, I do clean after any shooting session where there is any copper build-up (if I can help it). Some bores build up faster than others. Some build-ups cause deviations faster than others. I'm much better at figuring out the difference between a clean bore and a dirty one than I am at the difference between OK dirty and bad dirty.;)
 
I used to clean my bolt guns regularly, but not anymore. Only after a few range trips or testing new loads, except for the last sighting before hunting. Don't clean barrels of bolt guns during hunting season. ARs are another story. I run 748 in my 5.56, CFE223 in my Grendel, CFEBLK in my 300 HAM'R, and LilGun in my 450 Bushmaster. 748 and LilGun are dirty in my guns, so I hit 'em every time. The CFE powders are incredible, but the BCG still gets pretty dirty, so I hit 'em, too. I've tried most all brands over the past 50 years. My current favorites are Shooters Lube and J-B Non-Embedding Bore Cleaner. Shooters Lube is the finest I've ever used on rifles and it's magic on AR filth. JBs get the nod on my Blackhawks that get a diet of cast bullets. The revolvers are cleaned every time I shoot because that lead builds up like crazy.
 
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