cleaning bore

[Bounty Hunter]

i have acquired an old sako 222 mag. the man who owned it has been gone foe thirteen years, so that means that it hasn't been cleaned in at least that long and probably longer, the outside looks great but the barrel looked awfully dirty, so i started. i've never seen fouling like this. i'm on my second day with a trash can full of blue-green patches and it is getting a little bit better but not much. i'm using shooters choice and blue wonder. i think i'm on my third brush, i've even gone to a .243 brush to get more scrubbing action. has anyone ever seen one this bad and what might i do to speed up the process.

thanks

B H

[Rocky Raab]

Maybe.

The problem with really bad fouling is that it's composed of many, many alternating layers of powder and bullet jacket fouling. Take out the top layer of copper, and the layer of powder fouling underneath remains. Remove that and the copper layer under THAT remains. And so forth...

There are two ways to proceed. You can soak the bore with a solvent that's pretty good at removing both copper AND powder fouling, or you can attack each layer in turn with a product that's really good at that.

Of the dual-purpose solvents, the one that gets the highest praise by gunsmiths, benchrest shooters and others is Butch's Bore Shine. They say it's far superior to any other dual-use product. Next best might be Sweet's.

Plug the chamber and fill the bore with Butch's. Let it soak NO LONGER than the label directions say. Dump it and brush. Repeat if needed.

The layer-by-layer approach can be tried with a heavy-duty copper solvent like Barnes CR-10 or Sweet's. Plus a dedicated powder solvent like Shooter's Choice or a mild abrasive like JB Paste.

One final method is to use an electronic coper remover to "reverse plate" the copper onto a cleaning rod. The Outers system is great. But you may have to use it multiple times, getting at the protective powder fouling with solvents in between electronic treatments.

Final note: never dunk a brush into a bottle of solvent - the used gunk on the brush will "kill" your solvent. Drip it on, preferably from a small plastic dispenser. Also, if you use a copper solvent and bronze brushes, you'll see blue patches forever, because you are dissolving the brush INTO the bore.

[Bounty Hunter]

thanks rocky

looks like i was only doing several things incorrectly 1) dipping my brush in the shooters choice and 2) using a copper brush. it's peculiar though cause i did at least think of the copper brush use so i took my .223 and ran the same brush w/ shooters choice through it and had no blue-green at all. well any way i'll follow your suggestions and go from there.

THANKS

BH

[Evan03]

if it were me i wouldnt get to worked up about getting it clean to a new like bore.

id just fill the bore with outers foaming bore cleaner let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes. then scrub the bore out with brush then hit it with some dry patches. then repeat ounce or twice more and take it out and see how it shoots

if it shoots good after that id leave it and get on my twice a year bore cleaning schedule. if its shooting as good as i like i would not attemp to get anymore fouling out. acuracy might fade off after that and it may need to be fouled back up to shoot tight again.

[gumpokc]

something else that i have had good usage out of with heavily fouled bores is navel jelly.

follow the directions, use gloves, do _not_ scrub with a brush until you've gotten the jelly out.