Rifle barrel cleaning

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With .22 rifles, rarely.
With center fire rifles, after each range session. Just bore cleaning and a wipe inside the action and the external metal with Hoppes #9 and a bronze bore brush & patches, followed by oil.
With muzzleloaders, as soon as possible the same evening, using hot soapy water followed by dry patches, followed by Hoppes #9 and a bronze brush & patches, followed by oil.
 
My muzzleloader shoots better if I shoot it once before I take it hunting
 
I used to be very OCD and clean often, but as stated here, now I just clean when the rifle tells me to. Most of my rifles will tell me to clean in the 200 round mark, some I don't even bother at that point. With my iron sighted milsurp rifles it takes quite a while for me to see a change in accuracy big enough or frequent enough to warrant a deep clean. I just don't have the time. Now that is not to say that with my autoloaders, I won't clean the action!
 
Usually I feel fortunate to fire my dear hunting rifle more than once during the season so after sighting it in I just wipe it down after each trip, I have had a good season and used different rifles or shotguns and then cleaned them all at one time.
 
It's more important to protect the bore from moisture than be squeaky-clean. When we were varmint hunting as young adults, I didn't clean my .22-250 after each outing, just so it would shoot to the same POI. At the end of one season, I left my Rem 700 ADL in the walk-in closet, leaning next to the cast-iron sewer vent stack and forgot about it for a few winter months.

One day, I decided to check it, because I remembered that it may not have been cleaned at the end of the season (being newly married, had other priorities). Well, I could barely see light when looking through the bore!!! My heart stopped!!! My palms got sweaty!

I plugged the bore and filled it with WD 40, then left it for a couple of days. It was difficult to get it so a rod would go through, but I took it easy. The bore ended up being quite pitted.

I decided to check it out at the range and expected to see keyholes on the target, if it hit the target at all, so I hand-loaded a few rounds without being too careful about documenting the load. I got to the range, set up a large target at 200 yards, and noted that all the portable benches we used at that time were downrange, so laid down on the firing line and ripped off 5 rounds without a rest, not being very careful.

When I walked down to the target, I expected to see keyholes or missed shots, but there it was...a 5/8" group!!! Prone at 200 yds??? How the...?

I immediately tried to remember what I had loaded into those rounds a few days before!!! I still don't know.

I kept the rifle for a couple of years and it continued to shoot well, but someone was looking for one at a good price and I sold it...with full disclosure!
JP
 
I clean centerfire rifles with copper solvent after every range session. This includes using a bronze bore brush. After I am done with the copper solvent, I run a patch of mild (Hoppe’s elite) followed by a couple dry patches and a clean bore snake. I don’t want any of that copper solvent sitting in the bore.

I don’t get obsessive about a perfectly clean bore though. I feel like I am maintaining a level of copper still present in the bore that leads to consistency. For what ever reason, the clean cold bore shot in all three of my bolt guns is dead on consistently.

I don’t oil the bore, but I live in the high desert and have stainless barrels.
 
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Picher said:
It's more important to protect the bore from moisture than be squeaky-clean. When we were varmint hunting as young adults, I didn't clean my .22-250 after each outing, just so it would shoot to the same POI. At the end of one season, I left my Rem 700 ADL in the walk-in closet, leaning next to the cast-iron sewer vent stack and forgot about it for a few winter months.

One day, I decided to check it, because I remembered that it may not have been cleaned at the end of the season (being newly married, had other priorities). Well, I could barely see light when looking through the bore!!! My heart stopped!!! My palms got sweaty!

I plugged the bore and filled it with WD 40, then left it for a couple of days. It was difficult to get it so a rod would go through, but I took it easy. The bore ended up being quite pitted.

I decided to check it out at the range and expected to see keyholes on the target, if it hit the target at all, so I hand-loaded a few rounds without being too careful about documenting the load. I got to the range, set up a large target at 200 yards, and noted that all the portable benches we used at that time were downrange, so laid down on the firing line and ripped off 5 rounds without a rest, not being very careful.

When I walked down to the target, I expected to see keyholes or missed shots, but there it was...a 5/8" group!!! Prone at 200 yds??? How the...?

I immediately tried to remember what I had loaded into those rounds a few days before!!! I still don't know.

I kept the rifle for a couple of years and it continued to shoot well, but someone was looking for one at a good price and I sold it...with full disclosure!
JP
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When I bought my Type 99 it has sat by a fireplace for 70 years.....the dry air and who knows what in the barrel....you could not see down the barrel....oh well it is perfect, all matching even the dust cover mathcing.....had to have it.

so I just like you....gooped the holy hell out of it......Cleaned up pretty well, and still shoots pretty well. Amazing things they are....work with all that damage, but that one little ding on the crown and off into the weeds.
 
Due to the wax coating, .22LRs almost never rust in the bore. I've seen literally "barn" rifles that had stocks almost falling off and the exteriors look like they'd been peed-on by cows or horses, that had perfect bores, due to the wax coating on .22 rimfire bullets. (I'd have said .22LR bullets, but you never know what ammo farmers will use...either inside the barn or out.) Rimfire birdshot isn't very effective out of rifled bores.
 
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Shooting corrosive ammo I clean at the range before I leave.

Non-corrosive centerfire my normal process is to get the bore and gas system wet with CLP before I leave the range. I always wipe the bore before I shoot again and relube the action of needed.

Every thousand rounds or about yearly I’ll do a detail strip and clean plus hit the bore with bore foam to decopper.

I’m shooting action rifle matches with reasonable size steel targets and not going for group size with the rifles.

BSW
 
Nature Boy said:
I clean mine after every shooting session. Letting hard carbon build up in the first few inches of the barrel only makes it harder to get out later, particularly in the grooves.
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Amen to that. There was never a truer statement. And I might add, you need to use a bore cleaner that will indeed get out the carbon. I'm dealing with cleaning some really hard, baked-on carbon from a rifle that had never seen anything but Hoppe's #9 for its 50+ year life. After looking in it with a borescope I recently purchased, I found lots of copper, and hard carbon ahead of the chamber, that Hoppe's had not even touched, even though it was cleaned thoroughly after each shoot. The copper has come out fairly easily with a good copper cleaner, but the hard, baked-on carbon is proving very, very difficult to completely remove.
 
JDinFbg said:
Amen to that. There was never a truer statement. And I might add, you need to use a bore cleaner that will indeed get out the carbon. I'm dealing with cleaning some really hard, baked-on carbon from a rifle that had never seen anything but Hoppe's #9 for its 50+ year life. After looking in it with a borescope I recently purchased, I found lots of copper, and hard carbon ahead of the chamber, that Hoppe's had not even touched, even though it was cleaned thoroughly after each shoot. The copper has come out fairly easily with a good copper cleaner, but the hard, baked-on carbon is proving very, very difficult to completely remove.
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IOSSO and JB cleaning compound is about as good as it gets. I like the little VFG felt bore specific cleaning patches for either product. I get them from Brownell’s. Though a worn out brush with flannel patches wrapped around them work pretty good. Some fine grip Clover Leaf lapping compound would be a last resort. I have a friend who has used it to lap a few barrels that refused to shoot, with good results. I think he had 900 and maybe 1200 or even 1500 grit. If you have a problem barrel, what do you have to loose?
 
Pivot Dr said:
IOSSO and JB cleaning compound is about as good as it gets. I like the little VFG felt bore specific cleaning patches for either product. I get them from Brownell’s. Though a worn out brush with flannel patches wrapped around them work pretty good. Some fine grip Clover Leaf lapping compound would be a last resort. I have a friend who has used it to lap a few barrels that refused to shoot, with good results. I think he had 900 and maybe 1200 or even 1500 grit. If you have a problem barrel, what do you have to loose?
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I ordered some JB this morning and should receive tomorrow. I have a lot of worn out bore brushes so will just plan to wrap a flannel patch around it. Mine is not a 'problem barrel' and will do 0.4" 5-shot groups at 100 yds., but just discovered it has a lot of hard, baked-on carbon ahead of the chamber. That Teslong borescope I purchased has really created a lot of work for me.
 
JDinFbg said:
Amen to that. There was never a truer statement. And I might add, you need to use a bore cleaner that will indeed get out the carbon. I'm dealing with cleaning some really hard, baked-on carbon from a rifle that had never seen anything but Hoppe's #9 for its 50+ year life. After looking in it with a borescope I recently purchased, I found lots of copper, and hard carbon ahead of the chamber, that Hoppe's had not even touched, even though it was cleaned thoroughly after each shoot. The copper has come out fairly easily with a good copper cleaner, but the hard, baked-on carbon is proving very, very difficult to completely remove.
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Is that hard carbon or throat erosion?

With small bore high velocity calibers throat erosion happens fast even if it doesn’t impact accuracy until much later.

I’ve got several 556 rifles that look horrible using a borescope that shoot perfectly fine.

BSW
 
briansmithwins said:
Is that hard carbon or throat erosion?
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It's hard carbon. It extends well past the throat. It started off black on the lands and grooves several inches ahead of the chamber, but the hard to get at stuff is now just in the grooves. The grooves started out solid black, but now look like railroad tracks with two black bands running lengthwise down the edges of the grooves. I definitely can now see machining marks in the barrel steel from when it was made and will see if some JB Bore Paste can smooth those out a little. I've used the Tubb's Final Finish bullets on a couple of other rifles, but they had really bad, pitted bores. I might end up having to use those on this 6mm Remington, but hope to skip that step. Right now I'm short on powders of just about every type and none can be had, so I'd like not to waste what I have shooting the series of lapping bullets. As I noted in Post #37, the rifle shoots well, I'd just like to get it cleaned up and hopefully keep it that way.
 
I’ve had really, really good results with the Break Free bore foam. It’s the best cleaner I’ve found for hard baked on carbon. It’s also removes copper fouling.

BSW
 
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