You don’t see this too often...

[CWLONGSHOT]

On a CAST BULLET SITE anyhow...



Sweets & JB made short work of cleaning my 8MM last night.

I don’t shoot cast in it and it likes Sierras 175 Spitzer on top of 4064.

I was giving hunting rifles a final clean before the season opener next week.

Fouling shots today or tomorrow aft work.

CW

 

[Spindrift]

Good luck on your hunt!

 

[Ian]

I usually have to do that when I first obtain a used gun, to remove the sins of the previous owner and get it ready for cast bullets....

 

[CWLONGSHOT]

I have thought about casting for this. But due to my 30 cal failures Ill stick with my 35+ sizes. They work for me.
CW

 

[Spindrift]

The nice thing about casting smaller caliber bullets, is the amount of bullets you get from a pot of lead
You are obviously doing fine with your .35+ cast bullets though.

 

[358156 hp]

Dillon makes a bore cleaner?

 

[Brad]

Dillon makes a bore cleaner?

They do.

Lee makes one too but word is that half the people feel it works fine while others claim it makes the bore dirtier.

 

[L Ross]

Pushed 16 patches, both sides, with Montana Extreme through a 1906 vintage .33 Winchester 1886 and they were just as blue. More patches to push yet.

 

[Brad]

I thought someone just added too much Cu to the alloy

 

[Walks]

About 30yrs ago a Buddy brought his 12yr old boy to the range with us. 100yrds, 100 benches all full. He gave his kid a Brand new Howa 1500 in 22-250 and a 60rd box of ammo. At the end of line break. Kid started shooting, We worked mounting a new scope on a Rifle. Old one came out of the case with a separated reticle.

Line breaks were 24 minutes apart. Kid screamed, we turned around. Burned hand on blazing hot bbl. He'd emptied the 60rd box in about 5 minutes.

He still carried the burn scar 6yrs later when he left home.

That rifle sat in a Cleaning cradle on my bench for over three months before I got all the copper out of it.
Fixed a 60watt bulb (The good incandescent kind) in a foil hood over the bbl to warm it up. Used the New Hoppe's #9 Copper Cleaner.
Get up in the morning go out to garage, turn on light. 45min later push 3 wet patches through bore, dry patch, wet patch. Turn off light, go to work. Come home 10-11hrs later, stop in garage turn on light. Eat dinner, watch some news. Go out to garage, clean rifle.
Rinse, repeat. Every day for THREE MONTHS.

Still can't remember why I had to clean the rifle.

 

[Ian]

Hoppe's copper remover is extremely mild stuff. So is Shooter's Choice. It took me the whole long process of breaking in a 5.56x45 bolt action to finally learn to quit forcing it and just let the chemicals work. Once in the morning, wet patch, dry patch, wet patch, set in cradle upside-down, go to work, repear when I got home but index 90⁰, once more before bed, and so on. Five to ten shot's worth of accumulation would be gone by the next weekend, sometimes by Thursday.

For all my serious, just bought it used, three owner's worth of filth and copper like 6,400-layer Damascus, I use electro-chemical warfare in the form of an Outers Foul-Out III and brushing with a solution of water and detergent or Simple Green when the "clean" light comes on. The voltage drops off when the exposed copper goes away, but there's usually more hiding under the grunge and it must be removed separately and then back at it with the FO. 3-4 cycles of this will remove even the worst copper fouling.

 

[Walks]

I've learned to use J-B Bore Cleaner since then. And the lighter polish before shooting a new rifle.

 

[Ian]

That JB stuff does a good job. It's especially handy for cleaning up rough, Mellonized barrels.

 

[Walks]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is a "mellonized" bbl, please ?

 

[Ian]

Trade name for a ferritic nitrocarburizing process that makes a hard, black surface on steel. You see it on a lot of AR-15 barrels these days. I'm used to seeing it on distributor gears for use with hardened, roller camshafts. The challenge with it in gun barrels is it doesn't really wear at all and the surface isn't smooth, so it grabs copper and lead like sandpaper. JB knocks just enough of the peaks off to reduce the fouling accumulation considerably.

 

[Ian]

I think I misspelled it, should be one "L".

 

[RBHarter]

Melonite I think . It's like nitride case hardening done on cam and crank shafts and aircraft cylinders .

 

[Brad]

My preferred copper remover is TM Solution.

TM SOLUTIONS BORE CLEANER | Brownells

Carefully blended high-performance maintenance products work together to clean any type of gun, protect it from the ravages of corrosion, and keep ...

www.brownells.com

Clean bore normally then dry. Use a wet brush to coat the bore well and leave overnight. Swab it out with more wet patches.
No ammonia so no stink.

 

[Spindrift]

I have the impression that light copper wash will disappear if I shoot some cast bullets. And that would be my favourite copper fouling agent

 

[Brad]

Shooting lead over copper will tend to remove the copper. That is if the copper isn’t excessive. A well worn milsurp requires some pretty extreme measures.