With some powders, I sometimes see with the borescope hard black shiny fouling even after applications of Hoppe's, Butch's Bore Shine, and Eds Red along with many passes of a new bronze brush of the correct size. The bore looks smooth and shoots just the same as when it cleans to white. It can be turned to white with lots of passes with JB or fine steel wool.>
What causes this? What is the best elixir on the market for removing?
John
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Yep, "Mine were all in the middle of the barrel and all would accumulate hard carbon fouling with all the powders tried."
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Bill -- Thanks. Will try the Montana Extreme powder solvent. You can't have too many elixirs. The first batch of 5744 fouled the least of any powder I have used. My standard for about ten years. The second batch fouled the worst I have ever used.
Ken -- The CRC brake cleaner apparently didn't make it here from Maine. Plenty more where that came from. I agree that soaking longer would have shown differences better.
Ric -- Did I say it was? Maybe. my Writing can get sloppy.
John
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John, just because it is black and shiny doesn't mean it is carbon. Ric
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did you try the crc brake cleaner i conned you into trying a couple years ago ?? heh . that is only less nasty than mek .... which is fatal if you walk by a jar of it .
might be interesting to soak some smokeless powder sample in the different solvents .... what does dupont use to melt cellulose ?? ... hey how about termites ??? ... just sayin ...
ken
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John, my experience with the black ash is parallel to yours--in fact, I quit using 5744 for just that reason; 20 or fewer shots, and it was as hard to drive a patch through the barrel (almost) as it was to drive out a stuck bullet.
I stumbled onto Montana eXtreme powder solvent, and, later, Montana Copper Killer. I now don't use anything else, and the borescope (lie detector) seems to confirm what the muscle requirement tells me is a progressively cleaner bore.
It does stink, and is heavily ammoniated; however, it is oil based, and you can even leave it overnight in the bore without worry; in fact, the instructions tell you to do so, under certain conditions. Which I sometimes do. (Is laziness a certified condition?)
Anyway, I am not guaranteeing anything, and I certainly am not sponsored by them in any way, shape, or form. Like many of us, I cringe at using any abrasive in a good shooting barrel; may not hurt, but I fail to see how it can help.
All I can say with certainty, is, it works for me. And that's the extent of my guarantee.
Bill
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. My fate is not entirely in Gods hands, if I have a weapon in mine.
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I have owned four Savage M-12 varmint weight rifles all four with the type of loose area Ken describes where a lead slug would pass with little or no resistance. Mine were all in the middle of the barrel and all would accumulate hard carbon fouling with all the powders tried. The fouling was sometimes so thick and rough that you could barely get the first patch through and cast bullets didn’t do well after plowing though the stuff. All four rifles shot jacketed bullets well ( .75” + average for 5 shot groups) but I could not get them to shoot cast well.
What I have now is different. The shiny black coating is thin with some bare steel showing through (mostly on top the lands) I know I can remove it with JB or fine steel wool but I hoped to find a solvent that would remove it without abrasives.
I am a sucker for magical elixirs and have accumulates several. The posts above have suggested some of them. I decided to try them out today. After cleaning the bore with Ed’s Red and a bronze brush. The bore looked great when peering through it from either end. But through the borescope you could see that it was coated with smooth black shiny stuff. I decided to soak the bore with each of the bore cleaners in turn giving each one ten to fifteen minutes to see if there were any signs of any of them actually dissolving the black fouling. I first tried Butch’s Bore Shine then Shooter’s Choice Lead Remover, followed by Uniquetek Premium Firearms Cleaner, KG #1 Carbon Remover, Ballistol Sportsman’s Oil and PB Blaster something I had found to be an excellent penetrating oil.
Judging from the amount of black on the dry cleaning patches pushed through after the soaking period with each elixir and an examination with the bore scope none of them produced my perhaps unrealistic goal of dissolving the fouling so it could be removed with additional dry patches. Ballistol was noticeable better than the others and required several dry patches to wipe out black residue and the PB Blaster was noticeable worse with no black at all on the first dry patch through after soaking. At the end of the short unscientific test the tops of the lands were mostly bare steel and the bottoms of the grooves were mostly coated with the black fouling. From previous experience I expect it to shoot good groups in this conditionl
Note that it wasn’t hard to achieve the clean patch shooters sometime speak of and at that point the bore looked great until you looked through the bore scope and saw it was mostly covered with a black coating.
I think the moral of this story is not to look at you bore with a bore scope.
John
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i did one barrel that was really bad with the black buildup ... about 2/3 down the barrel .... it was a top grade shilen in 22-250 ... it had a slightly loose spot there ... shilens replaced it on our word , excellent service . it would build up in 10 shots and the quarter inch groups started growing ... had to brush with rem-clean, jb, etc ., shooter's choice didn't do it . be great for coyotes, bad for pdogs . sorry don't remember the powder .
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I guess because I clean at the range while my rifles are still warm, I haven't personally encountered this problem. I rarely fire more than 20 rounds without swabbing out the bore. 3 wet patches, 2 dry patches then a wet patch, plug the chamber with a shotgun patch and rack it. Repeat before casing it and clean again when I get home. I tried most of the solvents out there: Hoppes, Breakfree, Kroil, M-Pro-7, Ed's Red, REM Clean. Even Sweets. All work well if used in a timely fashion. If you're going to wait a week ? That's much harder.
Just my 2 cents.
Long time Caster/Reloader, Getting back into it after almost 10yrs. Life Member NRA 40+yrs, Life S.A.S.S. #375. Does this mean a description of me as a fumble-fingered knuckle-draggin' baboon. I also drool in my sleep. I firmly believe that true happiness is a warm gun. Did I mention how much I HATE auto-correct on this blasted tablet.
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Push a tight fitting brush through your bore from the breech to the muzzle and pull back when the brush stops as locks itself in the bore you have found the carbon. Usually in the back 1/3 of the bore to just in front of the chamber. JB, Kroil, Carbon remover and lots of elbow grease once removed it pays to check now and then.
Good Luck!
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John, I agree with "lotech" on this issue. A couple of years ago we worked out way through the soft black fouling from shooting ball powders with deterrent coatings at pressures less than they were designed to operate. But the hard black shiny stuff seems to be just plain carbon residue, from what I can tell. I have no lab since I retired so even with a sample, I would just be guessing. On my varmint rifle, .223, I just get "most" of it out with JB's around a wire brush with paper towel wrap. Ric
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If I understand the description of the problem posted in the original question, it's a hard carbon fouling. In my experience, the type of powder used makes no difference.
There are products that are claimed to remove this buildup; I've tried many, though none recently. All have been ineffective. However, and in partial defense of carbon removers, some probably work if the buildup is minimal. The big problem here is that few notice or are concerned with carbon fouling until it becomes a hardened coating in the grooves, often much worse an inch or two ahead of the throat. Easy to see with a borescope, impossible without one.
Carbon fouling can certainly affect accuracy. I don't know about pressure, but I guess if the buildup is severe, pressures would also rise. I'm no expert on any of this, but carbon fouling seems to worsen with velocity and chamber pressure. I don't recall it being a particular problem with cast bullet rifles, but I don't shoot high pressure loads and my rifle velocities don't exceed about 1,800 feet per second.
The only method I've found to remove hard carbon fouling is with JB Bore Paste and a lot of scrubbing.
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I bet the fine abrasives in Rem-Clean and 00 fine bronze wool would work better than most solvents. Remington recommends oiling bore before using Rem-Clean...Kroil penetrating oil may work perfectly.
00 Fine Bronze wool breaks easier than Steel wool, so you will have to rewrap your cleaning brush again after about two uses.
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I attribute some of this type of fowling to the use of spherical (ball) type powders. The worst offenders in my usage was W680 and to a some extent H335 and BLC-2 powders. My method in bore cleaning is the use of a good quality solvent and a brush wrapped with strands of copper from ChoreBoy scouring pads (much as described by OU812). I don't own a bore scope so whatever constitutes clean using this method didn't change the accuracy of a good accurate rifle,
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A snug fitting brush wrapped with fine bronze wool works quicker than most methods. I use M Pro 7 water based solvent. Is it better...I do not know. I know it will not attack and soften epoxy bedding.
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I wonder if this has any relation to the hard black coating or stain in the barrel of my Husky 9.3X57mm. It came with the rifle when I got it from Simpson Ltd. Any Ideas?
B.E.Brickey
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What powders ? I've never seen or heard of this before. Are you using one of the new powders like: Superformance or Leverevolution ? Or one of the new "anti-copper" powders ? Or the IMR Enduron powders ?
Details, details !!!!
Long time Caster/Reloader, Getting back into it after almost 10yrs. Life Member NRA 40+yrs, Life S.A.S.S. #375. Does this mean a description of me as a fumble-fingered knuckle-draggin' baboon. I also drool in my sleep. I firmly believe that true happiness is a warm gun. Did I mention how much I HATE auto-correct on this blasted tablet.
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