I use Hoppe's No. 9 on all my firearms. I have a huge bottle of it that will last me for years.
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I use Hoppe's No. 9 on all my firearms. I have a huge bottle of it that will last me for years.
I happen to know that the hyper volocity test labs at WSTF use copious amounts of Hoppes #9 to clean their extremely long and expensive barrels.
Just saying
Do you think I'd be better off ditching the Hoppes and just using CLP for everything?
Anyone used the Barnes CR-10? I got some to try but haven't used it yet. I've heard it's pretty aggressive. Maybe I should stick with Hoppe's, at least on my chrome bored guns. Any thoughts?
Also, not to get nit-picky, but I have the Hoppes 9 Solvent and nowhere on my bottles does it say prevents rust.
I saw on the website the same bottle with the wording, "prevents rust". But mine don't. Does anyone else have experience with this?
*EDIT* I noticed on my large bottle of Hoppes it does say prevents rust, but not on the smaller bottles.
I wouldnt worry at all using Hoppes No 9 solvent. The only problems I've heard of were related to nickel plating not hard chrome. Nickel doesnt plate to steel. The steel is copper plated first, then nickel plated. If left soaking overnight in Hoppes, it would get through the pores of the nickel and disolve the copper that bonded it to the steel, then the nickel would peel. I think the amount of ammonia in Hoppes has been reduced over time. I believe the issue of Hoppes and nickel plating was addressed at one time in The American Rifleman magazine when they received a number of questions about it over time, and a few guys that soaked parts and had nickel flake or peel.
I've cleaned several nickel guns (several S&W's, a Colt SAA) exclusively with Hoppes, I never left them soaking in it or the bores left wet with it. They were all fine.
Hoppes is a decent cleaning solvent. Not as agressive on copper bore fouling as other things, but it does clean corrosive priming residue pretty well. I dont have anything scientific, but having used both I think Hoppes is a better cleaning solvent than CLP.
Elmer Keith wrote that when shooting military matches, he'd clean the bore of his 1903 Springfield with Hoppes, leave the bore damp with it (no oil), then shoot again the next day and didnt have any problems. This was in the days of corrosive primers, which Hoppes was intended to be used with.
The root cause of the issue is correct, the ammonia attacked the copper undercoat. However, nickel plates to steel just fine. The issue is that every flaw is highlighted. Copper undercoat allows a perfect nickel plate over an imperfect substrate by covering the imperfections. For this reason, most, if not all bright finish, non-drawn products, such as guns and faucet parts(last I knew) have a copper undercoat.
With modern coatings such as nickel boron, and nickel teflon, there is no copper undercoat and any gun cleaning chemical won't touch it.
Thanks for the technical correction on nickel/copper. Interesting info.