The Leaded Bore From Hell, part II

M

MAD DOG

New member
I just called Brownell's and spoke to one of their techs.
The best answer they could provide if the Foul Out failed to function fastidiously (excuse the alliteration) was to go after it with a stainless steel brush and Shoter's Choice Lead Remover as a last resort.
They warned that the SS brush could be deleterious to and debilitate the demonstrance (rats, there I go again) of the rifling, and should only be used as a LAST resort.
As it turns out, another local buddy has a Foul Out that seems to work as of a few minutes ago, so I am going to give it another try.

Keep your fingers crossed.
 
Give the Foul Out a try. If there is a good bore under all the lead, you certainly don't want to hurt it with a steel brush after all this trouble.
Actually, I have always suspected that it has a pitted bore under all of the crud and that this is why it fouled badly for a previous owner who subsequently gave up on cleaning it. Hope I am wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.
Let us know about it.
 
Mad dog I am not meaning to give you the idiot treatment but you are using the lead out solution aren't you? The copper solution won't touch lead. There is also the possibility you might have a dead short somewhere in the bore If it is as Herodotus suggested that it is a badly pitted bore while I don't ever suggest shooting abrasives through a barrel I saw some sections of barrels that had had David Tubbs aluminum oxide plated bullets shot through them and was surprised how well the bore had been polished
Gale
 
Have we considered a mini-smelting operation, or, alternatively using thermal differential contraction/expansion to flake the lead out? The lead smears in the steel barrel equate to a bi-metal interface with significantly different rates of contraction & expansion.

As old-timers trick, how about firing a handfull of cast zinc bullets to scrub the lead out?

[This message has been edited by Mykl (edited February 22, 2000).]
 
reality check guys.. its a surplus springfield... man its been seasoned with all that junk in there for years. Try the eletric lead thingy again.. and LEAVE it alone for a while (a watch pot never boils).And it that doesn't work.. well shoot it and see what the accruracy is like and if its not acceptable.. buy a new barrel.

Also.. since cast lead is not NORMALLY shot out of this rifle is it possible that you are actually getting something ELSE out of the bore?/ Like corrosive primer/powder residue or tracer residue??

Are you getting this back stuff off the lands AND grooves or just the grooves?

just food for thought...

Dr.Rob
 
Yes, we were using the lead out solution, not the copper remover.

It is coming out of the grooves, the lands now appear to be clean.

The weapon is on the way to the other foul out gizmo now.
More later.
 
The Foul Out works on lead, but you just have to be patient. I tend to leave it be for an hour or so, before I check and clean the bore rod. Don't forget to refresh the cleaning fluid as necessary.

If the bore is particularly fouled, especially from multiple shooting sessions, it helps to empty the barrel of cleaning solution, and then clean the bore with a brush and patch before starting it on the Foul Out again.
 
Good. I'm glad you didn't start with the dreaded SS brush-- that's a criminal act to a bore that has decent rifling. (But I do use one for my pitted Springfield bore, I must admit.) I was going to suggest the SLOW method of taking a very used .30 copper brush and running it through the barrel to come out the chamber end, and then wrap it in an un-wound copper Chore Boy (tm) scrub brush that you've cut into sheets of Cu net. Then pull the over-sized, super-abrasive (but much softer than steel!) brush back out through the chamber which funnels the copper mop down to bore size. Unscrew, push the rod down the bbl, screw back on, and repeat several times.

This works great on pistols full of cast lead fouling from my handloads.

Alternate solution, possibly not feasible and doubtlessly known to you, is Hg. Not too healthy to play with, unless you're careful.

At any rate, I'm glad you garnered gunk from your besmirched barrel. How's the bore? Worth the work?
 
So far, there appears to be no pitting or other damage in the bore aside from the unusually hard and prolific lead deposits.
The rest of the metal is also in superb condition, and the custom sporter stock is right decent. It is a nice straight grained piece of oil finished walnut. the grain is nothing to write home about, but it is tight and straight.
The barrel is a reprofiled military tube.
It is really a beautiful, well balanced piece with a suitably high serial number for an -O3, and I have a well known weakness for Springfields. Why this is I can not say, but they really speak to me.
( I also have a weakness for old Winchester model 70s, Square Bridge Mausers, Dakotas, Customized P14-17s and the like. Go figure...)
All in all, the piece has been well maintained except for the leading.
For these reasons, I believe that the weapon will shoot well when finally deprived of it's excess metal.

Dave Mazy is going to exercise the Foul Out to the best of it's capability. This will probably take a couple of days.
Until then, the problem is out of my hands.

In the meantime, I am doing all of the stuff I let fall behind while fretting over this.
I like the thing well enough to rebarrel it if necessary to get it to shoot well, and there are a bunch of new military barrels available that will screw right on after I do the extractor cut. The sights at present are a banded ramp front post type with a steel Lyman on the rear. Quite nice, and strictly correct for the period of the piece..
I will leave them as is or refit the banded front to a new barrel if necessary.
I am not after a match accuracy piece here so much as a capable hunter for brushy woods conditions like Montana Elk and Whitetail.
 
You don't suppose the problem is a Cerrosafe session that went south? Maybe the owner figured he'ld never get it all out and just sold it.
 
Mal H...

That is a thought...

(pours the cerrosafe, and all of the sudden, the girlfriend appears in a teddy...)

Yeah... it could happen...

------------------
.45 Super... Fat and FAST...

"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority" - Thomas Jefferson
 
A few years back GUN&AMMO(I think) had an article that said white vinegar in a barrel would cut lead out.I tried it on a 22(Rem. mod.34) that was never cleaned till then.I put a plug in chamber and filled it up.Next afternoon I turned it over and long silver hairs started coming out!I would never have believed it if I had not seen it myself.
Bert
 
I will shave some lead and immerse it in white vinegar, then see what happens.
I will weigh the lead before and after the immersion, as well as testing the white vinegar on a piece of gunbarrel to see if it eats rifling.
If all of that looks positive, and the Foul Out fails, I will try the vinegar.
It may turn out that the vinegar (acetic acid) is a poor mans Foul Out for the lead. Acetic acid is fairly mild in the concentration found in vinegar, so it may well do no harm to the weapon.

A word of warning about caustics and acids in gun barrels:
A friend (No, it really wasn't me!) that worked for an electronics company tried removing copper fouling from a weapon with ferric chloride, which is used for etching copper off of circuit boards.
He just knew that it was going to take the copper right out of that bore with NO scrubbing.
He left it in the bore a about as long as he would have left a circut board in the solution, and came back to a weapon that was not only copper free, but devoid of rifling as well.
You see, Ferric Chloride etches steel too.
 
As an aside, I've heard of using ferric chloride to give stainless steel the battleship grey hue seen on certain Ruger releases. Any comments?
 
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