Shoot Dirty . . . ?

[lckytylr]

Well, I can see that it's assuredly a subject that a lot of people feel strongly about. I was hoping that I'd get some more consistency in the responses, like oil changes, every 3K miles with standard, every 5K miles with synthetic.

BUT, that doesn't mean they aren't good responses.

How about this, for those of you that feel strongly that your cleaning regimen is the correct one, how did you arrive at this system? Did you read it in a book, were you taught by Grandpa, taught by a branch of the military, YouTube . . . where did you learn to take care of a rifle.

This is a very good thread, thank you all for your responses.

 

[MudRunner2005]

I came to the conclusion based on personal experience. I've cleaned really good, then gone to the range, and my first few shots were way off, because the barrel was not fouled.

Some rifles aren't picky, and some might not need it. You just have to get to know your guns. But almost every rifle I've ever owned has needed a few fouling shots to get the consistency and accuracy back.

 

[Canadian Bushman]

My loads are developed after breaking in a barrel on a slightly copper and powder fouled bore. This is why I believe this is where they perform best.

Ive seen benchrest guys who clean every 5 to 20 shots. They always have oil in their bore, from day one. This is where their rifle performs best.

See where im going with this. I dont think one is better than the other. I know one is less work and provides a longer lasting condition to shoot in. However i think the benchrest guys maintain longer lasting barrels but they easily make up the savings in solvent and oil.

 

[SabreCross]

My loads are developed after breaking in a barrel on a slightly copper and powder fouled bore. This is why I believe this is where they perform best.

Ive seen benchrest guys who clean every 5 to 20 shots. They always have oil in their bore, from day one. This is where their rifle performs best.

See where im going with this. I dont think one is better than the other. I know one is less work and provides a longer lasting condition to shoot in. However i think the benchrest guys maintain longer lasting barrels but they easily make up the savings in solvent and oil.

I know you said you 'think,' so is this pure speculation or are their any figures to support this?

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Its an opinion.

With all the different calibers, cartridges, bullets, powders, loads, and barrels, and combinations of said componets. Its would be foolhardy to try to say one cleaning regimine offers more barrel life than another. Especially when one shooter fires 20 shots at a time and one fires five.

In my experience and understanding, from what ive seen heard and discussed, the benchrest guys who clean more often and shoot smaller strings get the best barrel life, and more shots at peak accuracy.

What you want to credit that to is highly debatable.

 

[Shane Lindsey]

Well as one of those "tards" for a few years now, I will say it is all about predictability. Before you send it, you need to be confident where it is going. You need to know your rifle.

Here's what I suggest. Shoot 20 rounds, clean only powder/carbon and then shoot again. See where your shot is. Shoot another few and do it again. If it creates a pattern it becomes predicatable.

Now clean powder/carbon and copper and shoot a cold bore. Keep the targets and make good notes on them (like one of them "tard's" data books). Constistency is everything.

Some rifles like to be clean, some like to be dirty. You have to figure out yours, that's the fun part. When hunting you may get more than one shot. If you shoot matches, you get "sighters/foulers". If you are a "tard" you may only get one much like hunting.

To the OP, sorry for the partial rant.

 

[Mikecr]

My testing led me to these notions (what I think):

If you're leaving any petroleum/cleaning products in your bore, you've probably ended up in the 'barrels need to be fouled and left fouled as long as possible' crowd. I believe some here have made sense of this in their minds as needing buildup of carbon, some of copper.
But really it's need of burning out enough cleaning residue and then establishing good enough fouling to stabilize performance.

Everything should be qualified and there are rough bores that seem to benefit(result-wise) from fouling buildups in the bore. But this is ALWAYS a limited window.

A good lapped aftermarket barrel can go longer before copper fouling out to ~80% of peak performance, then considerably less in falling to ~60%.
Now, if you've never reached the best from your barrel,(rough/poor bore, bad development/shooting) you're less likely to see what copper is doing to you. You might even get the impression that a lot of copper is 'good'..

The point blank BR folks are shooting at a level where they detect otherwise, and they can't live with ~80% performance due to copper. It appears to me the tactical/assault weapon folks couldn't detect anything without a spotter.
Sorry, that's as civil as my perspective has developed there.

I was brought up to put guns away cleaner than pulled, so I'm in the 'guns maintained perpetually pristine' crowd.
Since I need the capability of pulling a stored/clean gun and hitting well within 1/2moa as far as I'll shoot, on the first cold bore shot, I've put some efforts into doing this.
Hadn't seen these efforts over at 'the hide'..

A key step in this endeavor is dry prefouling after cleaning, and use of coated bullets(with same material). I've used WS2 for this well over 20yrs now.It works perfect, and it cleans out.
So when I clean a bore, I take it to dry white(more like light gray) metal, and then burnish in dry tungsten. My bullets are burnished with the same powder.
This is my fouling. I don't get copper or carbon build up, nor would I allow that. I don't have solvent migrating down into the action/bedding/trigger(there is none), and I don't have to burn it out before crediting my shots.

Good fouling isn't copper.
While I have offended, I am as offended, and it's my opinion.

 

[Laelkhunter]

Sorry guys, but what is WS2 ? I saw it mentioned here several times, and have no idea what it is. Thanks

 

[Canadian Bushman]

Tungsten disulfide

 

[lckytylr]

Funny you asked that, I was wondering the same thing, so I (dare I say) Google'd it and found out what it was.

What's still a little unclear is What, Why, How and How Often.

What does WS2 do for you?

Why do you use that over the other two popular options that I saw?

How do you apply it to your bullets/barrel, what equipment is necessary?

How often do you do this . . . or how long does the process take?

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate everyone's opinions and experiences.

 

[Mikecr]

There are other prefoulers; moly, HBN, graphite.
Moly changes MV, it doesn't clean out, builds up, and so it takes a good plan in using. You don't want to use moly without a diligent plan.
Graphite reduces copper buildup, but the bore has to be powder fouled with it same as without graphite(just fewer shots). I've never & haven't heard of anyone coating bullets with graphite.
I can't comment about HBN, and am waiting to see if it offers something over tungsten.
Some swear by 'Gun Juice', I don't know, it's hard to recognize reality from marketing there. Could be good.

WS2 is applied like dry moly to bullets/bore. It's slippery as eels but does not affect MV. It holds as base fouling(especially when bullets are also coated), yet it cleans out really easy.
It greatly reduces copper fouling,, around 1/5th . So if used to 2 patches of blue at ~20 shots, WS2 coating will change this to ~100 shots. If you copper foul out at ~50 shots, use of WS2 will take you to 250 at least.
Where you have a barrel that copper fouls out by 20shots, I reccommend a procedure of Tubbs Final Finish(fire lapping), and WS2. No more problems.
Very important is that tungsten fouling is similar enough to powder fouling that changes do not occur with an early number of shots fired(including the first).
This is big for a hunter who takes care of his guns.

Prefouling could be considered dirty, but it's certainly cleaner then all the junk from solvents, primers & powder. And if a sniper tells you that you have to keep Afghanistan mud in your bore, be civil, but tell him you don't need anything like that. Tell him you take care of your guns.

 

[lynxpilot]

I'm currently in the midst of a HBN (hexagonal boron nitride) experiment. I didn't even get to the schweet load using untreated bullets and bore before I started coating, so I'll likely never get to the point of being able to say it's better than not coating, or better than WS2. My preliminary results after coating a whole bunch of projectiles and then coating a spotlessly cleaned barrel show that there is virtually no copper fouling after shooting a few rounds. And the rounds were Barnes all-copper which purportedly is a softer alloy than the jacketing on most bullets, therefore subject to fouling. I'm using HBN exclusively because of the articles I read. Apparently the melting/burning point is significantly higher than WS2 and Moly. It's supposed to be slightly more slippery than Moly and a little bit less than WS2 (if I recall correctly). It's white in color and is supposed to be non-toxic.

Seems like it's frequently used to extend barrel life. It's also supposed to help the cold bore shot reflect more of what the subsequent group is going to shoot and that's the only reason I'm using it.

I'll check for copper for a few sessions, and if it isn't showing up, I'll probably just run a dry patch after each session and re-coat the barrel after a few hundred rounds.

That's just my experiment though, and it has no science or expertise behind it.