Copper removal

[popper]

New Henry barrel with ~ 30 rnds through it. Was checking for leading this morning. Cheap borescope with no mirror. First look before shooting, no orange. I did put 3 cast rnds through it yesterday.

 

[Tomme boy]

I hate the smell of hoppes.

I don't know what is in the foaming stuff but it does not smell like ammonia one bit. I think it works better than sweets, and that has been the standard for tuff bad copper removal.

 

[Winelover]

I hate the smell of hoppes.

 

[popper]

I guess maybe I'm concerned about the copper now? Used to get some barely blue patches in 30/30 and 308 (regular hoppe's) when using jacketed, but it shot and looked OK. Probably 200 rnds in each of amax and ftx. Did it cause my cast to lose accuracy? As I can actually see it now, is it too much? Looks to be in the grooves. Hardly ever use a brush but I've got kroil I can try also. Shot 7 Win 150 coreloc and 10 Fed fusion 150s, then 15 amax and 3 GC cast. Cleaned after the first 2 outings, just slightly dirty patches. Same this time but looked with the scope and orange in a few spots. Want to break in the barrel and then shoot cast but I got a lot of jacketed bullets left.

 

[Ian]

New Henry barrel with ~ 30 rnds through it. Was checking for leading this morning. Cheap borescope with no mirror. First look before shooting, no orange. I did put 3 cast rnds through it yesterday.

View attachment 28152

Copper is on top of the lands diwn the middle. Lead wash in the corners of the grooves. It's clean down the middle of the grooves and external corners of the lands, typical.

 

[popper]

Is it a major problem? Never had any copper problem before.

 

[RBHarter]

I had 2 that gave me fits with leading.......3 actually . 1 because I was doing really dumb stuff getting the slide to lock with formed brass , 32 Rem is not "just a rimless 32 WS" ......
Another I had a lot going on but the 25 yr of copper fouling didn't help in the "Prima Donna" Savage 110 .
The pre owned HP9 FEG was a true victim of copper fouling soldering lead fouling in place . Once spotlessly free of copper it was fouling free and remained so .

Everything else I used Barnes ???? on or soaked over night in Kroil and run the wool wrapped brush through a few times and patched dry .

Having seen bad things happen with oil brand changes in high miles engines I did a test in several arms through the years . If you or a previous owner was/is a dedicated user of a particular solvent use a different one when you do that deep clean . At first you'll be "where'd that come from" , followed by why isn't this cleaning up . Then there's the "the stuff I've been using ain't getting it done" .......in a couple years you'll switch back and do it all over again thinking " this stuff is great why'd I stop using it" ......
I don't know what it's called but it basically the carbon gets stabilized with that solvent and all you pick up is the loose dust and oxides , when you introduce the new solvent it breaks up the old one . It gets even weirder when there's layers of fouling that you think you got only to find there's lead under the copper under the lead and there's hard carbon in-between and under it all .

 

[RicinYakima]

IMHO, the best thing is boiling water, and a lot of it. Brass brush and patches and only then use your snake oil stuff. Layers of carbon, fouling and plating take a lot of work. Enjoy it, it is part of the game.

 

[CWLONGSHOT]

Winelover, you are probably the only person I've ever heard of that didn't love the smell of Hoppes #9! Even women like it!

I liked "Outers" solvent better for smell. Its also tied to my earliest recollections as Pop used it. I have his cleaning kits in the red tin boxes. ( dont use & not for copper)

I find most "foaming" cleaners somewhat better then liquids. IMHO its because they simply make more/better contact with debris/fouling.
Gel styles also have been an improvement & for same reasons. Liquids flow away providing less in contact time to work.

CW

 

[Bret4207]

Okay, slight tangent based upon Bret's comment. And this is about somebody from his neck of the woods, Lowville. My cousin's father-in-law, John was a great guy. Worked a farm all his life and also had a full time job as a hospital orderly. Unfortunately, he developed Alzheimer's as he got older and my cousin took him in to live with them. Wife had dies years before. John was fine by himself and my cousin had chickens so he would tend the chickens and do other stuff around the house while my cousing Marc and his wife were at work. One day Marc comes home and when John greats him he smells strange. Marc thinks he smells like exhaust. He asks John what he did that day and he responds it had been a typical day. But Marc was concerned that he might be getting into other stuff and not remembering. Marc was afraid he would burn the house down.

So, this went on for quite a while. John continues to have this strange smell coming off him, but claims he is not doing anything different. Marc keeps checking the garage for any changes and finds nothing.

Then one morning Marc happens to be headed to the shower and looks into John's room. There he is, standing in front of the mirror, spraying his armpits with a can of WD-40. It is both a sad and hysterical story at the same time. Poor John's mind was going away, but he was still happy as a clam and knew he needed to put on deodorant every morning. Marc has no idea how he managed to find the WD-40 and start using it as deodorant. But he'd probably been using it for over a month.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

Jeeze, but did it work? One less can of stuff to have around, and so handy for a thousand other uses!

 

[Bret4207]

I had 2 that gave me fits with leading.......3 actually . 1 because I was doing really dumb stuff getting the slide to lock with formed brass , 32 Rem is not "just a rimless 32 WS" ......
Another I had a lot going on but the 25 yr of copper fouling didn't help in the "Prima Donna" Savage 110 .
The pre owned HP9 FEG was a true victim of copper fouling soldering lead fouling in place . Once spotlessly free of copper it was fouling free and remained so .

Everything else I used Barnes ???? on or soaked over night in Kroil and run the wool wrapped brush through a few times and patched dry .

Having seen bad things happen with oil brand changes in high miles engines I did a test in several arms through the years . If you or a previous owner was/is a dedicated user of a particular solvent use a different one when you do that deep clean . At first you'll be "where'd that come from" , followed by why isn't this cleaning up . Then there's the "the stuff I've been using ain't getting it done" .......in a couple years you'll switch back and do it all over again thinking " this stuff is great why'd I stop using it" ......
I don't know what it's called but it basically the carbon gets stabilized with that solvent and all you pick up is the loose dust and oxides , when you introduce the new solvent it breaks up the old one . It gets even weirder when there's layers of fouling that you think you got only to find there's lead under the copper under the lead and there's hard carbon in-between and under it all .

Some of the reasons I still like 4/0 steel wool and any solvent. Mechanical removal, although very slight, I think helps get through those stabilized layers. The 4/0 is the sacrificial element, it won't hurt the barrel, just polish it. Add that to the variety of magic snake oil products available and usually you get success after some time.

 

[Bret4207]

Hoppes #9, G96, Break Free, that mint smelling stuff I haven't seen in years, all friendly and welcome smells. The ones I don't like are PB Blaster (everyone seems to use it for everything now and it doesn't work IME), WD40 pretty much, 3-1 Oil and that stuff that smells like burnt 90Wt, can't remember the name. But if they work, I don't care!

 

[Ian]

IMHO, the best thing is boiling water, and a lot of it. Brass brush and patches and only then use your snake oil stuff. Layers of carbon, fouling and plating take a lot of work. Enjoy it, it is part of the game.

Alternating layers of carbon and copper is why the Outers Foul Out gets some bad reviews. You have to stop after tue first cycle slows down and then go after the newly-exposed carbon to expose deeper copper fouling and then go back to the reverse plating operation, sometimes several times.

 

[RicinYakima]

Alternating layers of carbon and copper is why the Outers Foul Out gets some bad reviews. You have to stop after tue first cycle slows down and then go after the newly-exposed carbon to expose deeper copper fouling and then go back to the reverse plating operation, sometimes several times.

Yep, and that is why boiling water is so effective.