Mosin Nagant: CorrosiveAmmo - Cleaning with Windex?

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Mike-Mat

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Mosin Nagant: Cleaning with Windex?

What is the difference between using regular cleaning products vs. using Windex the then using regular products?

As long as it's clean, isn't that good enough?

I've shot my Mosin once and then used WD40 to flush it out like I do with all my guns. Then regular barrel cleaning with Hoppe's #9. Am I setting myself up for long tern corrosion?

Mike
 
Possibly. The corrosive salts found in this ammo are water soluble, thus the various recipes of boiling water, soapy water, or Windex. - Hint: all contain water.

Petroleum products may not effectively dissolve these salts.
 
Definitely want to use a soapy water mix when cleaning away corrosive primer residue. Then use your regular oils and such;)
 
it doesn't necessarily have to be windex, but something with ammonia in it. you don't even necessarily need ammonia, you just need hot(not boiling water and I normally take the stock off and throw all the metal parts in the bathtub and turn on the hot water....never had rust issues with the MNs.
 
I realize it's not that hard to take down the Mosin, but some times I only shoot 20-25 rounds. By the time wash it with water/ammonia, dry it off, oil it and reassemble, I'll have spent more time cleaning than shooting.

Mike
 
I've shot my Mosin once and then used WD40 to flush it out like I do with all my guns. Then regular barrel cleaning with Hoppe's #9. Am I setting myself up for long tern corrosion?
Click to expand...

Yes you are.

It is the primer salts that are corrosive, not the gunpowder. Gunpowder is organic, primer salts are inorganic. Oils will dissolve gunpowder, water dissolves salts.

WD40 is oil and silicon, Hoppe's #9 used to be good with corrosive primers, I think it changed.

Use hot soapy water. The water will dissolve the salts, the soap the gunpowder.
 
All I do is take a small bucket with hot soapy water in it (dish soap) then put the very end of the muzzle in the water. After removing the bolt, I get a patched cleaning rod wet with the soapy water then run it through the barrel from the chamber end.

Once it's all the way through, I pull it back so that the patch creates a suction and draws the soapy water into the barrel. I repeat this process about 20 or 30 times. You have to make sure you keep the muzzle pointed down and don't reverse direction until the patch is all the way out of the barrel.

I finish by rinsing the barrel and action with boiling hot clean water, allowing the gun to dry for a minute or two, then running an oily patch through the bore and coating everything else with an oiled 1" brush.

The water has to be really hot. That insures the salts get dissolved and that the water evaporates quickly.

Ammonia is a weak base, which can cause corrosion, so it isn't a simple answer of squirt ammonia Windex in it and don't worry about it. dilution is the solution, so the best results will be had by using lots of hot water. then coating with a light coat of oil to prevent the metal from contacting oxygen in the air.
 
What would happen if I didn't do the Windex thing? How quickly and how badly would the ammo damage the barrel and bolt? The ammo I have was advertised as "mildly corrosive".

Surely the Russians didn't us water and ammonia to clean their rifles?

I have several Nagants and I hardly ever shot them because I don't like having to immediately clean the rifles.
 
I read another reply to a similar question elsewhere. The person replying had a chemistry background. His reply was that water alone was superior to Windex, superior to soap and water. He gave the chemical reaction reasons why, that totally made sense. Where did the original Russian conscripts clean the solvents out of their barrels? Right, in a creek or stream. I also don't think the water needs to be boiling. It's the simplest, water. Plain room temp tap water.

I think that a lot shooters would rather come up with elaborate procedures and rituals around corrosive ammo cleaning, it makes them feel as if they are doing a better job than they could with plain tap water. A large number of corrosive ammo shooters simply use a few water soaked patches, then their regular gun cleaner and oil. I am of the "getting it done with the least amount of drama" school unless someone can give me physical, chemical reaction reasons why these other procedures work better.
 
My biggest reason for using very hot water is that it evaporates quickly and dissolves better than cold water. Have you ever tried to add sugar to cold tea versus hot tea? It dissolve way faster in the hot water. Have you ever spilled hot coffe compared to cold water? The hot coffee dries much faster;

I don't shoot as often as I use to and when I do shoot It is usually my more modern guns. I have rifles that haven't seen the range (or a cleaning) in 15 years, so the little extra step of using hot water is easy insurance.

The key is water though. Windex works primarily because of the water in it, not the ammonia.
 
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So should I drop the entire bolt assembly in the bucket of hot soapy water? Some of the blow back has to be getting inside the bolt. That would definitely have to be disassembled to get all the moisture off the threads on the firing pin.

But I do like the suction in the bucket idea.

Someone mentioned Hoppe's #9 might be different now. The quart bottle I have, I bought in 1981. Probably the older formula. :-)

Mike
 
Hello, I am surprised there has been no mention of the old style (WW2-Korea) era GI bore solvent..O.D. metal cans..dark & stinky! This was designed just for corrosive ammo..is this stuff still available?
 
Ive had my mosin nagant's for years and all I have ever used was plain old water and I have yet to see rust inside the barrel of any of my rifles. I dont know where the windex thing came from but water by itself is sufficient to remove the corrosive residue. Maybe the windex helps in cleaning the rifle but I dont know, Ive never tried it.
 
Historically, I've used Windex knowing that the reason it works is it's mostly composed of water. The ammonia in Windex does no good, it's at too low a concentration to do anything, and if it were high enough to do something, it would quite possibly do more harm than good.

One day, my Windex bottle ran dry so I just refilled the spray bottle with water. Been using just plain tap water for a long time ever since and haven't ever had a single problem with it. After that, just follow up with the usual cleaning procedure with the solvent of choice and the gun oil of choice.

Obviously one shouldn't be negligent, but there's no need to complicate things and waste time/trouble.
 
"Surely the Russians didn't us water and ammonia to clean their rifles?"

Cleaning solutions provided by most nations during the corrosive priming era contained a lot of water and werer quite alkaline, sometimes ammonia, sometimes other compounds.

The reason for that is that the alkaline solution would remove any traces of that might hide corrosive priming salts.

The old GI Bore Cleaner (NASTY NASTY stuff!) at one time contained a fair amount of sodium carbonate.

Another benefit to this is that it would neutralize any residual acids left in the bore from the early smokeless powder. These powders often had residual acids left over from the manufacturing process.

The Chinese used to issue a double spout bottle - one side for oil, the other side for cleaning solution. The bottle I got with my SKS years ago still smelled vaguely of ammonia in the one side.

In fact, as you can see on this site (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...le&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&gbv=2&tbm=isch&um=1&itbs=1) a fair number of nations used to issue the double solution bottles.
 
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All you need to clean after shooting corrosive ammo is a tea pot, a turkey baster and a bayonet.

As to how long you can leave it before you damage the rifle, it depends on where you are. The salts are not "corrosive" in the traditional sense, but they do attract moisture which will cause rust. The time involved is directly related to the humidity. I suspect in Phoenix you could go a while, but Louisiana, not so much.

I wish Surplusrifle.com was still around, they had an excellent test of how well the various cleaners worked on removing salts.
 
All you need to clean after shooting corrosive ammo is a tea pot, a turkey baster and a bayonet.
Click to expand...

Even that is excessive. All you really need is a your normal cleaning supplies and a little bit of water. Clean as normal, then run a few wet patches through the bore, run a few dry patches through the bore and oil.
 
"All you need to clean after shooting corrosive ammo is a tea pot, a turkey baster and a bayonet."

This sounds like a parts list for a torture scene from "Inglorious Basterds".
 
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