How do you clean your barrels, how often, and with what?
How do you clean your barrels, how often, and with what?
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I try to clean AR precision barrels each year, and I tend to put about 500 rounds through them yearly. I've honestly not deep cleaned a chrome lined or nitrided barrel. I have a 4k on one of them, so I probably should to see what it's like.
Chromed barrels- I clean if I get sub-par accuracy just to eliminate that as a reason. Ive done it once in a few thousand rounds.
I use Roger's bore cleaner:
https://www.rogersshootingschool.com...ansolution.php
I happened to be at the school when they filmed a demo, IDK know if it is the one on the page I linked, for sure, but similar. Rogers let us use some kits to clean our pistols and I was impressed, so I both a kit and extra bore cleaning compound when I got home.
Makes me happy.
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I clean my chrome lined barrels when accuracy falls off. Usually it takes several thousands of rounds but eventually I have always needed to remove a lot of copper fouling at some point after 5000 to 7000 rounds to restore accuracy/precision. Copper solvent and patches til the blueish green goes away.
Bore snakes have done nothing for me and are mostly a waste of time in my experience. Solvents that remove copper are eventually needed. The frequency changes from barrel to barrel and changes based on the level of precision needed, however, stainless, nitride, or chrome eventually the copper has to be removed.
Slip 2000 ewl and a boresnake. After every range session or after deer season (I dont clean the barrel for deer season in any way. The day before deer season, 1 CBS zero verification is fired, then I clean it once I've taken all the deer for that season.) 5-10 pull throughs. The goal is to remove loose fouling and to deposit protective clp on the bore surface. Not scour it spotless, much less remove copper.
I dont decopper barrels. I have 1-1.5moa guns, and it would only hurt them. They shoot the same at 7500rds as they do at 750rds.
I would not decopper ANY barrel past 40% of its projected barrel life.
Last edited by WS6; 11-18-19 at 22:32.
My most shot AR is a DDM4V7 from 2012 or so. Should be over 10K rounds the next trip to the range. It has never seen bore brush in its life and the only patches I've run through it have to been to run a little lube through it. It still holds 2" or a little under at 100yds.
40% is probably a little premature for this, but 60% and out it is definite.
What happens when a barrel edges into its twilight years---and is still shooting 1-2moa, often maybe even better---is that it has considerable "fire cracking" in the throat area. This resembles a dry lake bed. THe spaces in between often fill with copper and "mask" this, functionally. When you go in there and strip out all of t he copper, the "mortar" between these "bricks" is gone, and 1 of 2 things happen. Closer to 40%, you usually just shoot terrible groups until it fills back in and the gun "settles down", and you motor on, OR, with the mortar gone, large swathes of "bricks" are ripped up and blasted down the bore, and you have, within a few dozens shots, a 1-2moa gun that is now a 3-6moa gun.
You can still clean old barrels, just don't try to take 'em down to bare metal!
My 20 year old Bushmaster has never been decoppered. I don't recall ever scrubbing the bore with a brush, but I probably have somewhere along the way.
I seldom even clean the bore. When I do, I push a few patches wet with Hoppe's followed by a few dry ones.
I clean the rifle every several hundred rounds, whenever I feel like it. Every time I clean it, I do scrub the chamber with a 38 caliber brush, followed by 38 caliber wet and then dry patches. I then run a patch down the bore, just to remove anything that process caused.
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