GTA
All Springer/NP/PCP Air Gun Discussion General => PCP/CO2/HPA Air Gun Gates "The Darkside" => Big Bore AirGun Gate => Topic started by: Steelhead on March 19, 2019, 12:11:03 PM
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I wanted to bring this up because I don't think enough emphasis is given to how bad big bore barrels can foul. I just responded to someone else on another board who purchased a high-end used big bore and it was totally plugged. I was inexperienced when I got my Texan and I plugged it so bad that it's a miracle I didn't do damage to the gun or myself (see the pic below) The bullets were going through the target sideways at 20'.
When I was new and trying to get info I was told: 'airgun barrels don't need to be cleaned', 'they shoot better with some lead in them', etc.
For both safety and accuracy IMO it's imperative that the barrels you should be cleaned often. What's considered 'enough' depends on the caliber, maker, and other variables. A clean barrel is a consistent barrel. The best method I have for cleaning is using a wire brush with copper wool spun into it. Dipped into Shooter's Choice lead remover this more than gets it done WHEN NOT PLUGGED. If the barrel has been neglected, it will take a long time and repeated cleanings.
I know that most experienced bb shooters know this, but I'm hoping to save a newbie or two the agony of going through an unnecessary process. There are folks getting into big bore every day and hopefully this saves someone time, money, and aggravation.
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Firelapping, firelapping and firelapping! 8)
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wow! I believe that is as bad as I have ever seen. Ya didn't cheat and take a pic of a dirty patch in the barrel did ya. LOL ;D
Yep, Big Bore shooters have been preaching this for years. And how to stop such heavy fouling from happening in the first place. A well lapped, and polished barrel is a joy.
Before I lapped my first .257 barrel, it would foul enough to ruin accuracy within 30-35 shots. Problem was, it took 5-7 shots after cleaning to settle down again. so really, only 25 or so of good accuracy.
Still, people argue that no lube is needed on the bullets. No barrel prep is needed, proper sizing is ignored by many shooters, and sadly, by both the gun manufacturers and bullets sellers alike. Rarely is it mention by the sellers of the guns themselves.
Use a good system for polishing the bbl.. Use a proper lube. Use a proper cleaning process for the type of barrel you have. And most importantly of all, size to the bore. Not 1-2-3- Thousands over like most try and do. A Max of .0003 over. No more. NAS and D-Rig and one other know this, and take care of it for you. If you have not slug your barrel, you have no business putting lead down the tube.
I have read here on the forum and other places shooter complaining of poor performance, or guns that just won't shoot and or, are completely unshootable. Really putting down the brand of gun. In most cases, it is operator error. Not a gun issue. GRRRRRR!!!
I have written many times what and how to properly prepare and feed a BB. it goes mostly ignored. A shame, as this is very important, and without this knowledge, many move on from big bores with a very bad taste in their mouths.
Steelhead, you are on the right track in part. However, as AF barrels are walther made, we don't know if they are W/L AG barrels or PB barrels and AF will not tell the truth about them one way or the other. I learned long ago to not trust much of anything they tell us.
If the AF barrel is a PB barrel, you can get away with a bronze brush. If a AG barrel, NO!
If it is a polished PB barrel, again, a huge NO-NO_ as it will ruin all the hard work put int the lapping an polishing.
Never apply the lead cleaner with the brush. They don't carry liquid well, and what they do carry runs to the bottom of the bristles. with most of the liquid being deposited at the very beginning of the push, and mostly on the bottom of the bore. Use a patch soaked with the liquid. Allow it to soak for no more than 10 minutes. (Maker says up to 15 max, as it i an acid and eating lead, you don't want it eating your barrel). Then attack with the brush, followed by a dry patch X2, then a patch with chosen oil to stop the acidic action, and one more dry. Your done. (Other cleaners take a lot more work, and many more patches). The good stuff will give you clean patches in 2 or 3 passes.
If you have to do the work from the muzzle, be careful to use a good bore saver, or make one from the spout of a plastic bottle such as the typical catchup bottles in diners, cut to fit over the rod, and able to bush into the muzzle. the crown must be protected at all cost.
these folks make the best rods and crown savers out there.
https://www.boretech.com/categories/rifle-cleaning-supplies (https://www.boretech.com/categories/rifle-cleaning-supplies)
Knife
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That's an awesome post. There are a bunch of things there that I had no idea about but I will certainly apply.
And no, that's not a dirty patch. That's the result of my first PCP being a Texan and putting about 400 shots through it without examining the barrel. Shockingly naïve, to be sure. But I use it as an example of what happens to an ignored barrel. I'm too embarrassed to say what it took to get that clean and how I did it. Wrong method, wrong chemical...you name it. Let's just say it's a miracle that it even shoots straight at all and leave it at that. It's nothing if not durable.
Given that horrific beginning to my barrel, it may do some good to firelap and recrown it.
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Interesting video with a barrel maker interview. At the end of the video he talks about using wire brushes to clean a barrel, and possible damage to the crown.
https://youtu.be/VwhOXV7lmYk
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Lets face the facts. In order to remove lead fouling from especially lands where it all mostly ends up you need something harder than lead yet softer than steel. If you have a nylon brush harder than lead then use it. There is no felt pad to remove sticken lead.
If you are worried about crowning then re-crown. I'm not.
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I don't know what is the problem in this particular case but in generally about lapping. If the barrell is rough or uneven there can be some scrathes and dents or formal uneveenness. We don't have an option to add material, only remove. And it takes a lot of work. Lapping is grinding. The only option is to remove material around scrathes, dents or possible diameter areas too big to get inside even and smooth. And that makes it hard work.
It cannot be done just polishing if the problem is missing material.
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I'm pretty sure that using a bronze brush, nylon brush or your mama's nylon stockings to clean a barrel has less to do with science or proof and more to do with belief. You know. Religion-like.
https://precisionshooter.info/bore-brushes-bronze-nylon/
It's enough to drive you batty. I think I'm going to get a piece of steel, polish it up, and then stick it in a vice on my drill press, and brush half of it with a bronze wire brush for a few hours or days, and see what happens. Hrrrmph.
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Very true. However, it is not all dents and scratches. With a button rifled bbl. for instance, there can be micro chattering going on. this will cause micro lows and highs that are above the surface. A scratch i smuchlile a plowed furrow. It will have the deep valley, most times a high ridge on its sides. These catch lead. While the valleys cam become filled, it often helps. What is called seasoning a barrel. Until it becomes so full of lead that it causes additional lead to stick to it, it causes no harm. this is what is filled when we re-season a barrel. The more valleys and crevices, the more shots it takes.
The ridges however, shave off lead, and it gets worse and worse. So yes, after lapping, which causes very fine scratches in itself, polishing smooths these over and greatly increase the time, or shot count between the need to clean to restore accuracy.
I have had many customers request a satin finish. A hand rubbed finish. I have always refused. It is very popular with high end blades. However, it opens the micro pores of the steel. I reckon it doesn't matter much for a collectable safe queen. but ina knife that will actually be used, a full mirror gives corrosion a very hard time finding a place to start.
I have barrels in carbon steel here that I have mirror polished the surface and they have been in use for years. It is much harder to start corrosion on them tha even a well blued barrel. Which is itself a rusting process. And most blued barrels have the bore blued as well. So more pores have already been added, compounding the issue.
Lap and polish that bore, and it will give a lifetime of good service if cared for properly.
I will go out to the shop and get the name of a very well made, and unusually stiff synthetic bore brush. It does a very good job, and it does not have a stainless twisted wire in the center that can damage a crown.
OK, got it, It is the Montana X-Treme by Western Powers and carried by Midway shooters supply. It is higher than the typical Hoppies brush at wally world, but well worth it.
It says on the package, "NY-Tough", The worlds toughest Bristles. 8x32 thread, composite bristles.
Knife
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I'm pretty sure that using a bronze brush, nylon brush or your mama's nylon stockings to clean a barrel has less to do with science or proof and more to do with belief. You know. Religion-like.
https://precisionshooter.info/bore-brushes-bronze-nylon/ (https://precisionshooter.info/bore-brushes-bronze-nylon/)
It's enough to drive you batty. I think I'm going to get a piece of steel, polish it up, and then stick it in a vice on my drill press, and brush half of it with a bronze wire brush for a few hours or days, and see what happens. Hrrrmph.
Depend on the bronze. It can have a lot of impurities in it. Have seen very hard, highly polished tool steel scratched by simply wiping it with a shirt tail. How, micro particles of natural abrasives either in the cloth, or picked up in the environment.
One fallacy in the article is the claim that carbon is ultra hard. It is not. Not without special processes. A pencil is carbon. Graphite lubricating powder is carbon. It is ultra soft and it is not Diamond hard. It also stated that the only thing harder than carbon is a diamond. LOL, a Diamond is carbon. LOL. Seems the writer didn't know his chemistry very well. ;D
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As I’ve said many times before, I am convinced that most of the “soft touch” advice out there for cleaning steel airgun barrels and the corresponding fears of damaging the barrel is born of urban legend and possible deliberate misinformation from the firearms community, where many firearm shooters are just as scared of brushing their barrels as airgunners are for the same reasons. Born years ago from the advice of a few competition bench rest firearm shooters and gunsmiths who may have reason to mislead about how to properly clean a barrel. Or who are perhaps superstitious about their barrels.
You can find old threads from me nearly a decade ago where I questioned people on here about cleaning my .25 Mrod barrel and I chose the soft touch route. Just patches with mild oil. Eventually the barrel got so fouled it wouldn’t shoot and no amount of hard hand scrubbing or soaking could fix it. I now know that a session with the brush spun thru a drill would have likely got it cleaned out.
Make no mistake, in both large bore and some of the smaller bores, the humidity that comes with the blast of the shot, when coupled with lead dust, can cause lead to cake on to the point that the lead dust becomes like it is welded into the barrel, and when it gets to that point it takes extreme measures to clean.
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As I’ve said many times before, I am convinced that most of the “soft touch” advice out there for cleaning steel airgun barrels and the corresponding fears of damaging the barrel is born of urban legend and possible deliberate misinformation from the firearms community, where many firearm shooters are just as scared of brushing their barrels as airgunners are for the same reasons. Born years ago from the advice of a few competition bench rest firearm shooters and gunsmiths who may have reason to mislead about how to properly clean a barrel. Or who are perhaps superstitious about their barrels.
You can find old threads from me nearly a decade ago where I questioned people on here about cleaning my .25 Mrod barrel and I chose the soft touch route. Just patches with mild oil. Eventually the barrel got so fouled it wouldn’t shoot and no amount of hard hand scrubbing or soaking could fix it. I now know that a session with the brush spun thru a drill would have likely got it cleaned out.
Make no mistake, in both large bore and some of the smaller bores, the humidity that comes with the blast of the shot, when coupled with lead dust, can cause lead to cake on to the point that the lead dust becomes like it is welded into the barrel, and when it gets to that point it takes extreme measures to clean.
I’m with you Travis. Until I see a comprehensive scientific study and not just anecdotal evidence that contradicts someone else’s anecdotal evidence I remain unconvinced.
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I use nylon and brass/bronze brushes in all my barrels. I have 2 guns with Bartlien barrels. How could we hurt a barrel that is meant to shoot copper slugs at 3000+ fps with a brush.
I have no accuracy issues.
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I had the privilege of speaking to Mr Douglas of the renouned Douglas barrels many years ago about cleaning a barrel I'd bought for a custom match rifle and he told me using bronze brushes was OK but never to reverse the brush direction in the barrel because it did microscope damage to the steel. He SHOWED me microscopic photos of a test barrel that had been repeatededly cleaned that way vs a barrel cleaned with only pass through cleaning and it was ROUGHER! He had also tested different cleaning methods on bench guns to see what effected accuracy, not just ' old wives tales' or stuff
So I to always pass completely through before reversing direction.
And clean from the rear if possible but ALWAYS use a chamber or muzzle guide because cleaning rod wear ruined more barrels than anything else.
And working through an apprenticeship for gunsmith I saw how lots of bad shooting guns with such wear became more accurate after 1/2" was cut off the muzzle and recrowned.
Most air rifles get cleaned from the muzzle and have short loading ports (a rifle brush is too long so use shorter pistol brushes of the right calibur) so you have to be smarter on cleaning.
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After consideration, I'm adding this:
Well, I am about to contradict a strongly held belief some shooters have with my own opinion. Judge for yourself in this debate.
To Whom It May Concern: I am not perfect and I understand no one else is either, just because I disagree with you on one thing does not make me think overall ill of you, so have the same consideration in this debate in the courtroom of the GTA jury…
Every so often I hear someone say they clean their barrels by spinning a bristle brush on the bore. And I cringe.
They claim it polishes the bore and removes all trace of fouling. I do not deny that such a bore becomes bright and shiny but is it clean?
I am posting a drawing of the rifling in a barrel. Now imagine a bronze brush is inside. The brush is just a tiny bit larger than the width of the bore at the grooves and when drug LENGTHWISE FROM ONE END TOWARDS THE OTHER you can imagine individual bristles radiating out from the center, dragging along the tops of the lands and down in the bottoms of the grooves. Note that this leaves the sides of the lands basically untouched. That part of a barrel, the side of the land, is always a problem because that’s where the inertia of the bullet vs the twist of the rifling causes the most pressure/engagement as the bullet is both driven down the barrel and spun, forcing it to follow the path of the rifling.
The 90 degree angle where the groove meets the side of the land is where the most fouling (and I include leading here) begins in a clean barrel and is the hardest to clean. Frequently a ‘clean to the naked eye’ barrel still has a wedge of crud deposited and packed into this corner. [But that might not always be bad because some rifling profiles don’t have a 90 degree and instead have the transition from the top of the land to the groove sloped (Ex: 5R rifling invented by Obermeyer and used by several premium barrel companies like Bartlein, Faxon, et.)] After a lot of back and forth passes with a brush and good solvents most of this crud can be removed from this corner. And there are chemically treated patches that convert some lead and lift it off the steel too. The chem-patches work best with a long jag and a tight patch BTW. The problem with leaving this corner full of leading is the existing leading grabs material from each passing bullet and the leading 'grows' and we all know what much of that in a barrel does to accuracy, right?
Now look at the picture again and imagine the brush sitting there in a dirty barrel. Start spinning it and you can imagine the path of an individual bristle. As the tip of the bristle passes over the top of a land or in the bottom of a groove it will be sliding on the steal, dislodging and cutting through the crud/fouling.
But what happens when it comes to the intersection of land and groove?
Let’s cover the action of dropping off the top of the land into the groove first – would you think the tip makes a 90 degree turn off the top and continues down the side? Remember, it’s spinning and so it basically jumps outward a bit then its inherent spring stiffness directs it down to the bottom of the groove, just outward from the 90 corner… it may not even touch the side of the land if the brush is spinning at any speed at all in a drill! And the depth of the corner is untouched by any bristle cleaning action. And this is going to happen in BOTH directions so reversing the spin will ALWAYS leave the 90-degree corner untouched on the ‘falling side of the land. They would shout ‘Unclean!’ in some foreign lands, haha.
Now let’s cover the situation on the other side of the groove at the next land which is rising up like a cliff from the ‘floor’ of the groove.
The tip of the bristle is where the action/cleaning occurs, right? Can the spinning bristle tip get into the 90 degree corner it’s approaching and scrape out the crud? Remember that the -brush OD is a tiny bit larger than the groove to groove diameter and it’s spinning so it will be dragging along at a backwards SLANT to the spinning direction.
What happens, and visualize this, is the backward slanting bristle’s SIDE touches FIRST against the top corner edge of the land! So the tip lifts OFF the surface of the groove and stops dragging along the groove bottom… the bristle NEVER even get (microscopically) close to the 90 degree corner where all the crud is! The side of the bristle keeps sliding on the corner of the land until the tip clears then it starts dragging on top, doing its’s job again after the ‘intermission’.
Another issue is the ‘sweeping’ bristles scrape the crud off the places they can reach (tops of lands and floor of grooves) and PUT IT INTO THE CORNERS AND THEN SORT OF PACK IT IN!?!?!?!? Have you ever tried to use a broom and sweep towards a wall?
If you dig really deep into the NRA archives (somewhere in the 60’s) I remember reading an article with PICTURES of a section of a barrel showing the crud buildup in that 90 degree corner and how it happens and different cleaning and that’s where I first got edumacated on this.
What say the jury?
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I could not possibly agree more strongly. Just thinking about it fore a moment would alleviate any idea that a spinning brush could so much as begin toe clean the grooves.
by the same token, the idea that soaking the brush in a solvent and scrubbing the barrel could work. There is not way the bristles can transfer any appreciable amount of agent to the upper parts ( 10:o'clock to 1:o'clock)
Just not possible physically.
Knife
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Ever use any of the 'foaming bore cleaners'? They sure fill the bore with just a squirt. Some work fairly well although most are mostly just for copper fouling which we don't have.
But I have wrapped a solvent wetted patch around my brushes for years then run it through the bore so it mops and brushes at the same time. The bristles just push through the cloth. Change out the patch as necessary.
However, I basically operate so that I don't GET fouling so don't have to clean it out of my airgun barrels. Prevention! Efficiently lazy, my MO, haha
I start with a clean, Ballistol treated barrel and always shoot with some type of 'lube' on the slugs, than also run a patch wet with Ballistol down the bore every 50/60 shots (At the range I always take my one piece rods and the full tackle box but for the field I have used weed eater line for years to make my own field cleaning kits that fit in a mint can in my pocket, w/ repurposed eyedrop bottle of solvent and a few patches)
Or sometimes 'this' for the cleaning kit, I have several, some for kits {cleaning, tools (most the right Allen wrenches for that particular gun)} and some for big bore bullets in the field although those I sewed belt loops on.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002YWZV0G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002YWZV0G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
And you can make some great coil-able pull-through cleaning lines from Spectra/Dyneema 130 lb test for those fishermen (those of you who big game deep sea fish will probably have it already) and using that knot knowledge to make loops on the end to put a patch through.
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What say the jury?
Allow me to submit my arguments.
The question is twofold. First, does aggressive cleaning with a brush/rod like reversing direction in the barrel hurt the barrel steel in a meaningful way? Second, does cleaning with a drill bit offer you something that traditional hand scrubbing does not?
As to the first, I simply don't see how scientifically a softer metal can scratch a harder metal. It shouldn't matter whether you reverse direction in the barrel or not. Copper/brass can't stratch steel, period. That's why I have a tendency to start viewing antidotal evidence of "ah I saw this barrel hurt by it" skeptically and why it sounds more like superstition to me. Its the equivalent of starting with the presumption gravity exists and works as we understand it to here on planet Earth, and then an eyewitness coming forward stating that gravity can't work like we think it does on earth, because the eyewitness once saw an object float away in defiance of gravity. Well, is it totally impossible that gravity doesn't work like we think it does and sometimes randomly doesn't apply to some earthbound objects? Maybe. But its more likely the eyewitness is mistaken, maybe even well-meaningly so. Or the eyewitness really did see an object float away, but it had nothing to do with a failure of gravity.
I'm not saying your gunsmith/barrel maker didn't see something different on a microscopic level. But both he and you has to know how to interpret microscopic images of metal surfaces. How would any of us know, without the proper background, that something we're looking at on a microscopic level is in fact bare barrel steel and not microscopic fouling that never gets removed, but can be disturbed, on a rifle surface? And then where is the evidence that microscopic "damage" done by a brush effects a bullet's performance? And ultimately, what about changing brush direction changes the hardness of the brush so that a softer metal can scratch a harder metal, where otherwise that couldn't happen in most or any other context? There's lots of presumptions in the chain of reasoning, each of which has to be proven and reasoned out.
As to the second, I have my own anecdotal evidence to offer. Subject to the same standards as the observations of the gunsmith or barrel maker.
I bought my .25 Condor used in an arm's length transaction, from someone I didn't know. The gun shot horribly when I received it. I wasn't sure if the guy scammed me or if I was just doing something wrong, it being the first Airforce gun I've owned and only the second I had shot. I had to learn a lot of quirks about the gun to make it into the tack driver it is now.
One of the factors I dealt with early was the barrel. It was horribly fouled. Slugging the barrel with bullets and pellets revealed hardly any rifling on the projectiles and I could also see fouling with my own eyes at the crown. I cleaned the barrel for several hours over the course of several days thru traditional scrubbing sessions with a carbon fiber rod, various cleaning compounds, and brass brushes. I also scrubbed/polished it with JB Bore Paste and Kroil. The bullet on top was the result of several days worth of this sort of cleaning. An improved amount of rifling but still faint:
(https://i.imgur.com/SOoO9Lg.jpg)
There was no end to the black crud coming out of the barrel every time I'd soak and scrub. I figured the fellow had just sold me a dud or worn out barrel. I was about to order a new barrel from Airforce, just as I had threw in the towel and ordered a new barrel from Crosman years ago for my .25 Mood I talked about previously. But I remembered from my various friends in the military from different branches that they each cleaned their rifle barrels with drill chucks, and out of desperation I thought I'd try the same. The bottom bullet was the result. I didn't just spin a brush thru. I slathered it in bore paste and sent it thru from both sides. That broke the gunk.
I've since given that treatment to all of my gun barrels that I use regularly, both airgun and firearm, and the results across the board are great. Guns I thought just plain stunk as shooters (like family heirloom rifles that had never had their barrels cleaned a day in their lives) became great shooters. The only airguns I haven't done it to are my newest cheapies (my Hatsan and Gamo). Generally once I clean a barrel out that way I don't have to be that aggressive again. It becomes possible to let solvents do the work on subsequent cleanings, as if that initial run with the drill and bore paste really smooths rough spots over.
So there's my own eyewitness story about how awesome cleaning with a drill bit is. Its no more or less credible than anyone else's account about how a barrel was ruined by reversing direction with a brush or whatever. That's why in the end, we have to reason out each account to see if they make sense scientifically.
Concerning what's actually happening when that brush spins thru, I can't say. It very well could be that the brush is vibrating and thus causing the bristles to extend further than what they would on paper. Or that the vibration itself loosens the crud, allowing it to be pushed out once I start running patches thru and also pulling brushes thru traditionally to finish it off. The length of the bristles also changes during the cleaning and the brush wears down (I use 2-3 brushes per spin cleaning session). And because I come into a barrel both ways, the rifling is catching the spinning brush from both clockwise and counter clockwise directions.
All I can say is that somehow, someway, the drill gives me a deeper clean than what any standard back and to brushing ever has, as evidenced the above bullet picture from my Condor.
I think that the only real danger is using an object made of metal as hard as or harder than the barrel, or alternatively accidentally introducing a hard grit that would catch on the rod or brush and make scratches.
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Just a quick rebuttal, snap thoughts (this is fun ;D )
A. I have a 1/2" steel, 8" gong hanging on my shop wall that has holes punched in it by softer copper and lead bullets so softer metals can damage harder ones with enough kinetic energy added.
The example Mr. Douglas told me was how a small woman wearing high heels put tons of force into a tiny contact point and so there were stories of floors damaged by the concentrated force under the point of the heel. Knives cut the same way actually, concentrated force into a small area. On the barrel damage he said that when the bristles, which were all leaning back from the direction of travel were reversed they had to go straight then start to lean the other direction and although the bristles did bend a bit they were stiff enough to cause huge force which was concentrated into the small diameter tip of the wire bristle. He also mentioned that the numerous bristles opposing each other kept the bristles in hard contact with the barrel. Hey, he was an expert and I was only there to pick up a barrel and spent less than an hour there. I trusted him and although I am usually a doubter I figured maybe it was possible. He said a barrel lost accuracy and was more prone to fouling if usually cleaned like that.
B. Back when I was a Field Service Tech for General Electric Aeroderivative Power Systems I sometimes had to take a borescope to various parts of the world to look inside customers jet engines. Sometimes I came straight home from the airport and because I was just passing through to the next location the next day I would keep it with me so a couple of times I used it to look at 60x inside some of my barrels and a few friends guns too. And I can tell you that a lot of them had fouling in the angle of the groove and the side of the land, even if the barrel looked clean by eye. That's an observed fact to me even if it's anecdotal hearsay to someone else who has not seen it personally.
I can agree that what you could see was clean and when slugged it showed the rifling better and even shot better but I still believe there was remaining fouling packed into the rifling corners that act as seeds for new fouling to form on.
Good debate though ;)
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Ok, now that we've had a few opinions, and anecdotal evidence, I have one more thing to throw into the mix.
How does hardness of bullet affect the fouling of a barrel at any given FPS?
I shoot primarily home cast pure lead bullets in my .257's, .457, .458, .575 big bores. Should I avoid pure lead to help with leading? If so, what mix of lead and tin or antimony or ? should I use to improve fouling, and yet keep my accuracy?
;D
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The harder than lead alloy, the less the fouling.
BUT:
1. at least 1% tin improves castability, the greater the tin percent, the harder the bullet ( to a certain point of diminishing returns)
2. Most people report harder bullets in air rifles are less accurate [It has been true for me, I heard it but tried it anyway and found above Brinell 9 I did lose accuracy. I try to cast at around 7.5 to 8]
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Bullfrog In looking at the bullets you put up, it is clear that only the top of the lands marked the bullet. No groove marks are evident. Further, If you will look at the edge of the rifling mark on the middle land mar,, you will plainly see a rounded edge, showing the presents of lead fouling in the corner of the grooves. And pointing out exactly what we were trying to explain to yo.
And as far as knowing metals, and what can and cannot happen, you should know that my background is in metallurgy, which sir, "IS a Science".
Mr Frog, in this case, yes, a rotating brush will remove fouling from the lands, and the very top of the sides of the transition from lands to grooves. It cannot however, reach the bottom 90% angle of the grooves.
All the "I Think" in the world, will not change the physics.
Knife
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Lead is your friend, lead is your enemy.
.257 Texan after about 50 shots. Ran a patch with Shooters Choice, let soak ten minutes, ran a nylon brush half a dozen times, ran another patch soaked in shooters choice. Ran a dry patch. Ran another patch soaked in Shooters Choice.
I have more work to do.
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Twice I have written this, and twice the computer has erased it. GRRRRR!!!
B.F. On the subject of a softer material abrading a harder material, you state it is science that says it can't. Well, it can, and will,
For an extreme example, let's look at eh case of the Hubble Space Telescope. For the final polish, NASA tech's. used their bare finger tips, adn Thumb pads to polish the lens by simply rubbing it with them. Now the Lens is much harder than any barrel steel. Harder than Heat treated high Speed or Cobalt steel for that matter. Yet it did indeed cut the material on a microscopic level.
The material in JB paste is softer than barrel steel, yet it does indeed abrade it. I make my own from Damatious Earth. It is again, softer than the steel. (as is Flitz Metal Polish).
these things are the type of things the lyman wouldn't
normally think about but , B.F. this is Science. Not simply "think" or "in my opinion". LOL!
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Bought a crappy $30 bore scope but there’s enough information that you can see shiny bits.
Texan https://youtu.be/EzHfIHJztcQ
Citrus https://youtu.be/zkUhO4v-hrk
This is after much cleaning. Gah. >:(
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Knife, friend, you're straw-manning me! You're arguing something I'm not. I'm not saying that the be-all-end-all of cleaning is using a drill bit and that you should only clean with a drill bit. What I'm arguing is that "soft touch" doesn't work in the long run because lead gunk can become too entrenched to remove with patches or easy brushing alone, and getting hard core doesn't seem to have hurt my barrels.
I'm not necessarily seeing what you are Knife when I look at the bottom bullet, except that I can see that the rifling is rounded. Nor do I even remember if the bottom bullet was representative of when I was done cleaning overall or simply when I was done with the drill bit. But presuming the pattern shows that the barrel isn't yet totally clean, that doesn't invalidate my point. It doesn't matter whether the hard fouling in the Condor was on the lands or the grooves. What matters is that it couldn't be removed thru patches, solvent, or regular brushing or polishing. Not for days' worth of scrubbing or several over-night soaks in solvent. The top bullet did not and could not become the bottom bullet until I gave the barrel a good spinning with a brush and bore paste.
The lesson is two-fold. First, that sometimes lead cannot be removed without intense mechanical scraping. Far more intense than what the talking heads on pellet gun blogs or Youtube channels are comfortable discussing. Second, that such intense mechanical scraping doesn't hurt a steel barrel if done with common sense.
As for softer metals scratching or not scratching harder metals, you can't compare metal to glass because there's a lot more going that's different between the two besides which is harder. The Hubble doesn't have a lens per-se. It has a series of mirrors that were polished in stages with diamonds, lasers, and finally by hand. One main mirror then some corrective mirrors to fix the mistake they made on the main mirror by giving it the wrong concave. There's no comparison between polishing a space telescope glass mirror and a copper brush inside of a steel gun barrel.
Seems like the experiment should be simple. Find a knife made of a steel comparable to a rifle barrel steel. Then take a copper brush and run it over as hard as you can by hand and see if you can dig out scratches in the knife. Not superficial scratches in the knife's finish. The finish doesn't have anything to do with the steel. Scratch the steel, and scratch it will real scratches that are big and deep enough that they would reasonably effect the bullet. Not microscopic swirls that probably would have no effect. If you can do that, you can reasonably presume that a brush in a rifle barrel could do the same. If you can't, then it would suggest I'm likely right when I say that the copper brush itself (not counting any grit it may pick up), can't hurt barrel steel.
Now Kinetic mentioned something that seemed like it makes sense, at least on paper. Obviously a copper bullet can shoot thru a steel plate depending on the thickness. We all understand that a bullet having its energy forced into a plate, where the bullet may be carrying 1 ton of energy and the bullet is acting a bit like a dowel where all of that energy is being focused into one defined area (remember Mr. Rogers stabbing a potato with a straw to teach about dowels?), that's going to be physically different than brushing copper over a steel surface. But if the bristles get pushed straight down into the steel like a bullet being shot into steel, would those bristles penetrate if they had enough energy? We would need to be able to reasonably guess how much energy is being forced into those bristles when they're being reversed inside the barrel.
Also, I forgot to state that when I spin a brush thru, I usually wrap the brush in copper Choir Boy strands. I didn't do that on the Condor though first time I tried the technique. I noticed my barrels get cleaner with the Choir Boy.
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Lead is your friend, lead is your enemy.
.257 Texan after about 50 shots. Ran a patch with Shooters Choice, let soak ten minutes, ran a nylon brush half a dozen times, ran another patch soaked in shooters choice. Ran a dry patch. Ran another patch soaked in Shooters Choice.
I have more work to do.
Wow, that's some severe lead fouling!
Only time I have seen a gun foul that fast (50 shots) is when there are traces of lead left in the bore, even though it "looks clean". The invisible leading on the surface of the steel then 'galls' (metal is transferred from one surface to another, just like when screw threads gall/jam) the next bullets fired and it builds up quick again. The only solution is to make sure the lead is totally removed so no 'seeds' are left. And if you look at photomicrographs of a steel surface you will see lots of porosity and if a cut surface, jagged peaks and valleys. A centerfire barrel has the copper bullet and carbon to smooth down and fill that surface roughness but we don't get that. A rough barrel in an air rifle may need to be lapped to A. Get everything down to bare steel and B. Smooth away that microscopic mountain range.
KnifeMaker (and others) can attest to how his rifles fouled less after lapping / polishing.
I also have found that for barrels that are not lapped or not going to be lapped the Lead Removal chemically treated cloth WORK! Don't just read where it removes carbon from stainless steel... It removes all the bore lead to, IF used correctly.
I buy the KleenBore Lead Away because you get 100 square inches to cut patches from, the Birchwood Casey gives you a smaller amount for the same price. https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/solvents-degreasers/solvents/lead-remover-cloth-prod59702.aspx (https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/solvents-degreasers/solvents/lead-remover-cloth-prod59702.aspx)
The next thing in using it is you have to pressure it into the 90 degree angle of the land and groove where the line of fouling gets missed by brushes and slotted tip patches. I found you have to use something like this https://www.opticsplanet.com/tipton-ultra-jag.html (https://www.opticsplanet.com/tipton-ultra-jag.html). Tight patch on the jag and run it completely through and back again 3 or 4 times, flip the patch and do it again 3 or 4 times then discard that patch. That's why a package of cloth lasts years, you don't need much.
And I don't have to do this again, shooting session after shooting session as long as I never let the barrel get loaded up again. I've got rifles it's been done to once and thousands of rounds with the bore wiped every 50 or 60 shots with Ballistol and properly lubed bullets and the leading never comes back.
After the lead away chem patch treatment then I use regular cleaning to finish up and get the chemical out of the barrel.
There is one thing I sometimes also do one time also, after the deep Lead Away cleaning... I take 30 or 35 bullets and put JB Bore Cleaner paste in the grooves and shoot them to polish the bore.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en-US&ie=UTF-8&source=android-browser&q=kleenbore+lead+away (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en-US&ie=UTF-8&source=android-browser&q=kleenbore+lead+away)
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Well, I'm lost here. If a mind is not willing to be opened it cannot learn.
there is no such thng as a barrel steel as hard as a knife steel. Barrel steel is inthe Rockwell range of 42 to 47 rockwell. Very soft in the scheme of things.
Yes, a soft material can arbade a hard material. We have brass that is very abrasive. Lead is added to make it easier to machine, and not wear tooling so quickly. Bronze is much harder, and more abrasive yet.
No you don't have to scrape the lead out. There are now modern chemicals that do a fine job for us. We are no longer in the 1800's. But unless one is willing to learn, it is all for nothing.
Come on BullFrog, be a shooter, learn, and don't
' change your name to bull head. LOL
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Come on BullFrog, be a shooter, learn, and don't
' change your name to bull head. LOL
Hey, that could apply to you as well. You could be just as wrong as you think I am!
Yes, a soft material can arbade a hard material.
You said "material." The question is really can softer "metal" remove harder "metal."
No you don't have to scrape the lead out. There are now modern chemicals that do a fine job for us. We are no longer in the 1800's. But unless one is willing to learn, it is all for nothing.
But I have soaked my barrels for days, and sometimes solvents won't remove some lead deposits. The harshest I've tried has been Shooter's Choice. Sometimes nothing works. What's you're explanation as to why sometimes multi-day soaks don't work? There has to be one.
If knife steel is too hard, then try it on a barrel. Surely you have an extra barrel laying around. Try to damage one by brushing with a copper brush.
I have a couple of extra Mrod .25 barrels laying around. Why don't I give one of them *(&^ with a copper brush and see if it can scratch it in any meaningful way? Would doing it on the outside of the barrel be just as valid as doing it on the inside so that the results can be seen?
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I believe I will unfollow this thread as it is not...
May all here have a good day today, a better day tomorrow and keep up that trend
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I had the privilege of speaking to Mr Douglas of the renouned Douglas barrels many years ago about cleaning a barrel I'd bought for a custom match rifle and he told me using bronze brushes was OK but never to reverse the brush direction in the barrel because it did microscope damage to the steel. He SHOWED me microscopic photos of a test barrel that had been repeatededly cleaned that way vs a barrel cleaned with only pass through cleaning and it was ROUGHER! He had also tested different cleaning methods on bench guns to see what effected accuracy, not just ' old wives tales' or stuff
So I to always pass completely through before reversing direction.
And clean from the rear if possible but ALWAYS use a chamber or muzzle guide because cleaning rod wear ruined more barrels than anything else.
And working through an apprenticeship for gunsmith I saw how lots of bad shooting guns with such wear became more accurate after 1/2" was cut off the muzzle and recrowned.
Most air rifles get cleaned from the muzzle and have short loading ports (a rifle brush is too long so use shorter pistol brushes of the right calibur) so you have to be smarter on cleaning.
I guess I'm going south to a hotter climate because I not only advocate cleaning from the muzzle I've been doing it for years. Oh, I reverse direction mid-bore too...
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Barrel wear related to cleaning....
Most airgun barrels are made from low carbon DOM tubing. Tubings is reamed to final dimension and button rifled. Low carbon steel is very soft and has poor dent and abrasion resistance. This describes all LW airgun barrels and most others. Some airgun barrels are hammer forged from low carbon DOM; the cold forming does increase the material density and surface hardness some, but low carbon steel durability can't be substantially increased without the addition of carbon (carburizing or case hardening). The last common option for low carbon DOM is cut rifling. It seems that cut rifling has gone the way of the Dodo bird with the exception of extremely high grade competition barrels from makers like Krieger and Bartlein.
Firearm barrels are generally made from two variants of steel. (excluding black powder barrels which are usually low carbon). 4150 chrome moly or 416R stainless steel. Chrome moly is known for its extreme toughness and wear resistance and 416 is known for is resistance to flame erosion and ability to hold an ultra fine finish. It is important to note, both these materials are well suited for heat treatment and are of the type that through hardens unlike the surface hardening that carburizing brings to low carbon steels.
TJ barrels or more accurately liners (they are meant to re-line burned out firearm barrels) are a bit of an outlier, they are hammer forged from 4130 chrome moly tubing. This gives them similar properties to 4150 firearms barrels but not exactly.
Where am I going with this? Some types barrels are mores prone to damage from cleaning than others.
Airgun barrels - As stated above, DOM low carbon is very soft and abrades easily; this is where the never clean and never use a brush comes from. Never clean and never brush really don't belong together; they don't go hand in hand. Never clean comes from the extremely low contact area of a diabolo pellet and the diabolo pellet is the defacto projectile for airguns. While this can be true with a high quality barrel with an excellent internal finish it certainly is false for a poor quality barrel with a rough interior. A good quality barrel can go thousands of rounds with pellets and a poor one could be in the hundreds. Also poor ones seem to perform poorly after cleaning and require some seasoning (leading) to perform optimally. No brushing comes from the the potential damage due to the extreme soft nature of low carbon steel but it is not the brush material itself that does the damage; more on that later.
Firearm barrels - Made from materials with superior properties along with heat treatment they have a much higher level of abrasion resistance than low carbon. Chrome moly is more wear resistant than 416 stainless, this is why it's prominent in in applications with high rates of use and stainless is preferred for applications where throat erosion from hot gas and high pressure is problematic. There are other characteristics that are important for each material; for the purpose of barrel wear and damage, it is safe to say there are both superior to low carbon airgun barrels.
TJ Liners - Hammer forged from normalized (stress relieved through tempering to stress from the tube forming process) chrome moly share similar wear resistance as 4150 barrels made from heat treated and tempered bar stock. Although not heat treated, the natural properties of chrome moly combined with the hammer forging process give a similar result in surface hardness.
Now that we know the differences in the types of barrels let's look at mechanism that "wears out" your barrel during cleaning. Is it the brass that scratches and wears on the barrel or maybe it's the rod if it's able to rub on internal surfaces? Relatively soft brass can not scratch steel, not even soft ones; nylon can not scratch either but somehow overzealous cleaning will wear your barrel? The real culprit is grit, dust, debris that embeds in the brass or nylon brush that causes the damage. Hard materials that are embedded into softer substrates are science of all abrasives. In reality, it's environmental contamination embedding into your cleaning equipment that is responsible wear.
How can this be avoided? Always clean with something like a soft patch first to wipe out any grit or debris from the field. Clean your brass or nylon brushes constantly to remove and grit they have brushed out of the barrel. Brake cleaner in the aerosol can works well for this. Most importantly, use NON EMBEDDING materials for your cleaning equipment. Some materials embed particles easily, lead comes to mind (this is why lead is used for lapping, it will hold the abrasive particles in place so they can work efficiently), brass embeds but not as easily as lead. Nylon is known for its ability to reject imbedding to some extent but unfortunately is it poor at scrubbing out lead. Use rods made of hardened steel (hardened steel rejects imbedding) or use one with a non embedding coating. Of course use a guide to eliminate as much contact as possible.
Low carbon barrels are more prone to damage and wear simply because they are softer and less wear resistant. The superior materials used in firearms barrels are far less prone to wear and damage from cleaning but are not immune. They key to make sure that you are not embedding dirt, dust, etc into you cleaning tools and LET THE SOLVENT DO THE WORK. With a little common sense and knowledge all barrels can be cleaned with brushes from any end with any combinations of stokes.
Tom
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Thank you Tom, the "Voice of Reason" 8)
I too am going to forgo this thread as it far too much like trying to talk to a teenager. GRRRR!!!
I'm too old for such nonsense. 8)
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Thank you Tom, the "Voice of Reason" 8)
I too am going to forgo this thread as it far too much like trying to talk to a teenager. GRRRR!!!
I'm too old for such nonsense. 8)
But Tom backed me up. He clearly said a brass brush won’t scratch a barrel, but an abraisive grit might. That’s what I’ve clearly been saying.
Its not fair for you or Kinetic to get upset just because I’m not agreeing with you. My mind is open, but I’m not willing to accept an assertion that contradicts my experience just because you say so, no more than I expect you to do the same with my assertion. What I’m saying is, show me proof. Seems like brushing a barrel hard with a brush would be a doable experiment.
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Now that we know the differences in the types of barrels let's look at mechanism that "wears out" your barrel during cleaning. Is it the brass that scratches and wears on the barrel or maybe it's the rod if it's able to rub on internal surfaces? Relatively soft brass can not scratch steel, not even soft ones; nylon can not scratch either but somehow overzealous cleaning will wear your barrel? The real culprit is grit, dust, debris that embeds in the brass or nylon brush that causes the damage. Hard materials that are embedded into softer substrates are science of all abrasives. In reality, it's environmental contamination embedding into your cleaning equipment that is responsible wear.
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Tom, I have experienced some circumstances where solvent didn’t seem to loosen up my lead (and plenty of other times where it has). What would be some reasons where solvent may not do the trick? On those hard cases I have plugged the barrel and left the solvent in overnight. I have used Shooter’s Choice before. These days I use Hoppes just because its what I have and I have a tendency to get it all over my hands. I remember the Shooter’s Choice to be pretty harsh.
What I can said about the hard cases is that the barrels were neglected and not brushed in years.
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This is a great thread. I think a mighty fine sticky could be made from this.
I dreamt about cleaning barrels last night, then woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. Hello insomnia.
Anywho, went back to reading more on the subject, and found some awesome arguments, ummm I mean debates, in the Centerfire world on using everything from copper, bronze and (Eeeeeek!) stainless steel wool. Perhaps my favorite was the fussing about using JB Bore Cleaner.
No one anywhere has offered up any scientific proof of what works the best on a leaded up barrel or what causes the most or least damage.
Ohhhh just like motor oil threads in the car and truck forums we really haven’t addressed the super important magic barrel lubrications. I bet there’s some magic lube that that prevents all fouling!
Way back when I was a young feller, a way older machinist (who was missing a finger due a lathe accident) shared with me his super magic personal concoction of lead, Teflon, and other things he wouldn’t share with me. I always suspected a bit of bacon fat, but he took the secret to his grave. Anyway this was by his own estimation the finest anti-seize that money couldn’t buy, and prevented galling of steel bolts in Moto Guzzi soft aluminum engine parts. He also swore by its prevention of damage of the clutch plates to engine gear splines. It was guaranteed not to run, and destroy the friction properties of those metal impregnated clutch plates.
But I’ve gotta say, there’s some valuable information in this thread and I’ll bookmark it.
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OK, because a fellow GTA member sent me a private message I'm going return here to comment on an effective lead removal tool but emphasize the safety issue.
Yes, you can use a 50/50 mixture of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar and it will strip the lead out of any barrel in minuets. 3 to 4 works
The peroxide acts as a catalyst which causes the solution to remove the lead and converts it into lead acetate crystals. The vapors are extremely hazardous and the lead acetate solution easily passes through your skin and it is TOXIC! Repeat, TOXIC
I HAVE used it (in the past) but I wear nitrile gloves and pour the used solution into an old battery that's going for disposal as the recycling center can handle the solution when they drain the batteries. DO NOT POUR IT DOWN THE DRAIN OR INTO THE LAND!!!!!
It will also take the bluing off any external surface
It's corrosive to aluminum. (and has to be neutralized as it continues to corrode/weaken long term if just wiped or casually washed off)
If you leave it to soak for 15 or 20 minutes it can pit some barrels, left overnight it will ruin any barrel.
I do not recommend using this!!!!!
Hey, if you don't want to use the treated lead removal patches, Shooters Choice Lead Remover works too (weakly IMHO, but it works) https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/solvents-degreasers/bore-solvents/4-oz-lead-remover-sku934004004-13899-33311.aspx?cm_mmc=cse-_-Itwine-_-shopzilla-_-934-004-004&utm_medium=cse&utm_source=connexity&utm_campaign=itwine&utm_content=934-004-004 (https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/solvents-degreasers/bore-solvents/4-oz-lead-remover-sku934004004-13899-33311.aspx?cm_mmc=cse-_-Itwine-_-shopzilla-_-934-004-004&utm_medium=cse&utm_source=connexity&utm_campaign=itwine&utm_content=934-004-004)
And finally, wrapping a piece of Chore Boy around a brush helps strip out the bulk lead on a really fouled bore so then you can use the more deep cleaning methods.
As per barrel lubrication, what a can of worms to open! QVTom did suggest Accuracy Oil in another thread which is working for multiple shooters (including me) but I am also testing multiple other things like Hi-Tek and Rooster Jacket coatings.
Bye
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The Lewis lead remover tool use to be popular in Handgunning years ago. don't know much of anything about it.
Knife
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I'm no bigbore expert by any means, but for maintenance cleanings I have been using boresnakes sprayed with BreakFree CLP. I use this for all my airguns. Works great on my Badger. I've been cleaning it every 50 shots or so. Not due to accuracy issues though. Just for good measure. Takes me about 3-4 shots to get her back on point. However I just cleaned my .25 RS2 after maybe, two years cause accuracy became an issue.
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Different opinions on cleaning an AG barrel shouldn’t be that frustrating, as one persons actions won’t affect the others reality.
I try to get my coworkers to believe in using anti seize. In an industrial environment on the ocean, I always try to use something, even if it’s just Moly grease spun out of a sheave next to me. No dice.
Who gets to use the torch to cut off the 4” nut? This guy.