Deep cleaning barrels.

[robert rex]

Tony Boyer the Benchrest Hall of Fames method. You can remove the carbon ring with a one size larger bronze brush soaked in Patch Out (or other solvent). Insert it until it just reaches the ring but not the riflings and turn a fixed short rod about 15 or 20 turns. You can find out how far to insert it by putting your bore scope to the carbon ring then pull it back a bit, put the fixed rod in and mark it with tape at your bore guide. You'll be at the ring but not the riflings.

 

[Polebridge57]

I'm a clean freak. I clean my rifles after every shooting session. Until I got a bore scope, I thought my bores were always clean to bare metal. The bore scope revealed that getting white patches out after a thorough cleaning does NOT mean that all the fouling has been removed. Copper is fairly easy to remove with regular cleaning. Baked on carbon can be extremely difficult to remove. BoreTech C4 does a decent job, just like the controversial CLP, but neither of them performs miracles on hardened carbon. IME -The only way to remove stubborn carbon is to soak the bore for days (periodic wet patches) followed by a stiff bronze brush and then using Flitz or JB.

One thing is for certain. If you aren't using a bore scope, you're just guessing about bore cleanliness. Now that you can buy a Teslong for under $100 on Amazon, there is no reason to guess anymore.

Do you recommend a rigid or a flexible bore scope?

 

[robert rex]

I have both but the $100 Teslong is fine and I use it more.

 

[Varmint Hunter]

Do you recommend a rigid or a flexible bore scope?

I use a long rigid scope. I have no experience with the flexible probs.

 

[Frogman77]

rigid teslong with bore guide flexible would be hard to manage

 

[Impulsive]

rigid teslong with bore guide flexible would be hard to manage

What?

 

[Jeff Heeg osoh]

Every barrel I've seen that hasn't been cleaned in and unknown number of years has notable pitting in it. I find these, and severely fire cracked barrels, don't tend to shoot well until the pitting is filled and smoothed out by fouling. Usually a few more shots than a good bore. JB bore paste can help with fire cracking roughness but it won't do much for pitting. All this also depends on your acceptable level of accuracy and internal ballistics. Keep shooting it until you don't like how it shoots.

jrock

Good info I would like to add - Folks when you have a rifle that just kicks butt a excellent rifle in its age and is fire cracked bad but still shoots - don't kill this old timer with a super clean. Once you do all you can do to get all that copper out and finally your patches don't show any blue on these butt kicking fire cracked barrels. You just set your barrel up for death. The next rounds fired will snag the fire cracking and rip it out. Then your barrel is junk, as jrock said you can lap it a little with bore paste Or just clean the carbon out with carbon cleaner and leave the copper in the cracks like brick mortar and keep shooting well.


JH