(Please Help!) Where do these infernal particles in my barrel come from???

M

Mosin-Marauder

New member
I decided I would clean my Mosin today , as I cleaned it yesterday and an ungodly amount of surface rust had accumulated for whatever reason. I started out with Hoppe's. Cleaned up well, oiled a patch. Ran it through. Ran another through and these little black specs keep appearing in the barrel. So I run about a dozen more sets of dry patches down the bore and I seem to have gotten most of them. Still a few remained. So I steeped my cleaning arsenal up a notch and used Barnes CR-10. Ran copies amounts of soaked patches brushes, and dry patches and finally got the blue patches gone and no black specs! I ran an oiled patch through and black specs... I ran a dozen more clean patches through. Most are gone. Sprayed some Rem-Oil down the muzzle and wiped the excess out. More black specs. Ran dry patches through and no more. So I left it there like that, but I'm worried it will be like yesterday and a bunch of surface rust will be there when I get home because of the Barnes. Should I run a greased patch through? Like RIG? I'm at a loss as to what to do now so help would be appreciated. None of my other rifles do this after oiled patches. At one point I thought it might have been the coating on the rod coming off but I don't think that's it. Could it just be the patches? I don't know. Help is appreciated. Thanks.
 
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It could be that all the cleaning you are doing is finally getting through 50 years of accumulated crud.
 
I typically clean with an alternating approach.

Step 1. Wet the bore with a nitro solvent, brush the bore (several strokes) and then patch out the crud until the patches are clean.

Step 2. Wet the bore with MPro-7 or Hoppes Elite cleaner or a foaming bore cleaner (BreakFree or Outers make good ones), wait 15 minutes and then patch out the crud until the patches are clean.

Step 3. With a bright light and your Mark I eyeball, check to see if the bore is clean yet**. If not then back to step one.

If things don't seem to come clean after several of those cycles, get some RemClean and a tightly-fitting patch and run it back and forth through the bore several times and then go back to Step 1. You MUST shake the bottle of RemClean vigorously right before you apply it to the patch as it is a suspension of very fine non-embedding abrasive particles. If you don't shake it vigorously or if you allow the particles to settle before applying it to the patch then it will be remarkably ineffective.

**NOTE: If the bore is pitted or has had a significant amount of rust in it in the past, it will be very difficult to determine when it is completely clean by just looking. In that case, continue the first two alternating steps until you don't get any blue patches from Step 2.

Also, if the bore is rusted or pitted, you want to leave a decent quantity of a good rust preventive in the bore when you're done cleaning. If you use a thick rust preventive--something like a grease, then either leave a very light coat or be sure to patch the bore out before you go to the range to shoot.
 
It is most likely that you are just breaking in to layers of old fouling. I own 15 military surplus rifles including 5 Mosins. For the first 12 or so bore cleanings I would get light gray patches while cleaning no matter how I cleaned the bore. The bores clean up better and better as you shoot and clean the rifle over time.
 
Probably old, caked-on, hardened carbon fouling.


...But it could just be paint flaking off of your cleaning rod. ;) (If it's painted.)
If so, that's an indication that you're dragging the rod across a sharp edge somewhere in the barrel (crown, throat, chamber mouth, etc), and that you need to stop doing that. But, of course, that only applies if it's actually paint.
 
You can scrape some of the coating off a Dewey rod if it's rubbing against something sharp. You can look at the rod and see if that is happening. There will be a rough spot, or maybe even a bare spot if the coating has been completely removed.

If there's crud in the bore, it needs to be removed, but if you can't get it all out tonight, leaving it in there another day shouldn't be too harmful.
 
This is a review from Midway USA's website:

It might help

Jim

Have a Savage 10FP-LE2 that shot acceptably but fouled horribly. Looking thru the barrel w/ a borescope revealed the cause... it looked as though the bit used to bore the hole for the barrel had chattered the entire length of the barrel. The bottoms of the grooves where the rifling button had been pulled thru was nice and smooth... the tops of the lands were like a file or a rasp, loading up on copper on every shot.I ran the Final Finish kit w/ the .30 cal 190gr SMK's thru the gun... 37gr of Varget in a Lapua case, CCI BR2 primer... just above a listed minimum load. Followed the directions, getting the barrel as clean as I could before hand, and then after each stage of 10rds of one grit, then clean, then the next.At first cleaning was extremely difficult, as before. Basically had to put in a chamber plug and soak over nite, or use something like Wipe Out foaming bore cleaner, multiple times. As the process went on, I started noticing a definite easing in pushing patches thru around grit #3, and about grit #4, the fouling dropped off markedly. After grit #5... fouling was down to the same level as I have gotten out of my custom match rifle barrels w/ Pac-Nor SuperMatch and Broughton 5C's on them.I didn't do extensive load testing before, but now after the Final Finish treatment (and a new aftermarket stock) the gun will shoot selected handloads well under 1/2 MOA out at least to 300yds, some groups getting approaching 1/4 MOA.Definitely money well spent in my opinion.
Click to expand...

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/51...pping-system-308-caliber-and-762mm#reviewHead
 
I honestly think it might just be my own negligence. The rod gets hard to push sometimes and I admit, I do walk nit a bit to persuade it. I'll just be more careful from now on.

I don't know about that barrel lapping system. Seems like too small of a diametre to do any good in my rifle. Moline bores are typically .310-.312. And when it's getting into the finer distances like .0003, I doubt it would be effective in my gun. Near idea though.
 
Mosin, what kind of ammo are you shooting? You can run 10 bottles of copper remover through the bore and it will not neutralize corrosive salts. You have to wash them out with water, water based cleaner, or ideally black powder solvent.
 
I actually haven't shot it recently. I do occasional cleanings on it just to make sure everything is in working order, not to mention I've been tinkering with stock pressure points and stuff. I'll give it a cleaning tomorrow after school and try to not make the rod drag. And see if the black specs are still there. As for corrosive cleaning. I either use boiling water or Shooter's Choice.
 
Did you:

Ever run a brush through?
Ever try that JB's Bore Paste I suggested?
Recall discussions about not leaving RIG in bore?
Denis
 
I ran a .30 Cal brush through a few times like it says on the Barnes bottle, otherwise no. I need to try the bore paste sometime. I kinda forgot.
 
Let me give you something cheap to try. It might not help but it certainly won't hurt. If it is old crud, this will loosen it.

1. Take the bolt out.
2. Plug the muzzle with something that will hold liquid - tapered dowel, rubber plug, etc.
3. Put the rifle muzzle down in a bucket. You can tie a string to the stock and hook it to a closet rod/shelf/etc. to hold the rifle facing down in the bucket.
4. Fill the barrel with kerosine. A bent soda straw and small funnel will help.
5. Let it sit for at least 2 days. A week is better. If it starts seeping out of the plug, keep refilling.

Kerosine is a great crud loosener. Remove the plug and run a brush thru it several times. I'm betting you'll start seeing all kinds of crud come out.
 
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