Lead Removal Test - and Hoppe's #9 O-ring Soak Test

[rsterne]

Using the information in those two links together, the only material listed with "satisfactory" resistance to all four products in Hoppe's #9 is PTFE (Telfon)….

The ingredients are:
Ethyl Alcohol 15-40%
Kerosene 15-40%
Amyl Acetate (Banana Oil)  5-10%
Ammonium Hydroxide 1-5%

Ammonium Hydroxide in the compatability list is "concentrated", not the less than 5% as in the Hoppe's....
Buna-N rates "satisfactory" for the first two (the major ingredients), but "unsatisfactory" for the latter two....
Ethylene-Propylene (EP) rates "satisfactory" for three of the components, but "unsatisfactory" for kerosene (a major ingredient)….
Fluor-Elastomer (Viton) has one rating each of "satisfactory" (kerosene), "fair", "severe effects" and "unsatisfactory"

IMO, for it's resistance to Hoppe's #9, from that chart, Buna-N is a better choice than EP or Viton.... Teflon O-rings would be too hard, no?.... I have never heard of them being used for a breech seal....

Bob

[triggertreat]

I use to use the Hoppe's #9, but have switched over to the Shooter's Choice Lead remover.  I find it works better and faster for me.

I've also switched my pellet lube from FP-10 to Modern Spartan Accuracy oil.  It's more of a Nano-tech barrel treatment, but works quite well for both.  Like many others, I have tried all of the popular lubes and techniques as well.

As far as the breech O-rings, I don't sweat them as they are cheap and easy to replace.  When I do decide it's time to clean the barrels, they get a good scrubbing with a brush and rod along with a fresh O-ring afterwards.

I do use a pull through or a Bore Snake routinely for light barrel maintenance, and with that and using the lube, barrel cleanings are far and few between.

[nervoustrigger]

Bob, here's a good reference I saved a while back.  Warco's chemical resistance guide.  It characterizes the compatibility of 14 different seal materials to some 600+ chemicals.  FWIW, I don't see anything that is ideally suited to Hoppe's No 9.  As you stated, PTFE would be too hard to be useful for a breech/bolt O-ring.

[rsterne]

"Ideal" may not be required unless you are soaking the O-ring in it for a prolonged time.... IMO the Buna-N seem to be "OK" for relatively short exposure during cleaning.... which is fortunate, because they are the most common (and what I use all the time) for breech seals....

Bob

[nervoustrigger]

Yeah I get that...I was just pointing out that unlike the Sterlitech reference which includes just 4 seal materials, the Warco reference has 14 and none of them is ideally suited either.

[T3PRanch]

I did switch to all polyurethane o-rings for my Marauder rebuilds. They seem to resist scrapes and abrasion of assembly much better. I have not had a Marauder leak since I switched.


The Harbor Freight HNBR I had "around" were from some I purchased as replacements in some automotive refrigeration seals. Just thought I would try them one day on an airgun when I did not have the correct seal and was very dissapointed.


I get most of my seals from The O-Ring Store now.

[KnifeMaker]

Thurmond, I switched to the same o rings.  I already had some here fro the o ring store that I purchased for the Shoebox of old. They were not high enough quality for the rigors fo the SB, however, they are very suited to breech duties.       


This is particularly important as I made a new bolt/probe  for the RS II, and incorporated the o ring in the probe rather than the breech. As it has to pass thru the mag it seemed like a good idea at the time.


Norman o rings were destroyed in a few hundred shots. The first Poly o ring has been in use for a few thousand now, and shows no wear what so ever. 


Mike

[Model25]

Bob, the older Hoppe's 9 had Benzene in it. As I recall Benzene and Buna-n are not compatible. So, did the Hoppe's 9 you tested list  Benzene as an ingredient?
Take care, Mike

[Norcal]

The next lube tested was aerosol Slick 50 OneLube (not the auto engine stuff) and it worked perfectly keeping the bores of "soldered on lead", plus cleaning the bore when needed was/is (I still use OneLube) a simple matter of pulling through a patch moistened with RemOil followed by a couple dry patches.

What's your procedure for applying the Slick 50? Ace Hardware supposedly has it in a 12oz can for $4.99 so think I'll give it a shot.

[Kinetic45^]

Put 50 or so in a Ziploc bag and squirt one or maybe two pumps in then kneed around until the bullets are all coated.

[nced]

Using the information in those two links together, the only material listed with "satisfactory" resistance to all four products in Hoppe's #9 is PTFE (Telfon)….

The ingredients are:
Ethyl Alcohol 15-40%
Kerosene 15-40%
Amyl Acetate (Banana Oil)  5-10%
Ammonium Hydroxide 1-5%

Ammonium Hydroxide in the compatability list is "concentrated", not the less than 5% as in the Hoppe's....
Buna-N rates "satisfactory" for the first two (the major ingredients), but "unsatisfactory" for the latter two....
Ethylene-Propylene (EP) rates "satisfactory" for three of the components, but "unsatisfactory" for kerosene (a major ingredient)….
Fluor-Elastomer (Viton) has one rating each of "satisfactory" (kerosene), "fair", "severe effects" and "unsatisfactory"

IMO, for it's resistance to Hoppe's #9, from that chart, Buna-N is a better choice than EP or Viton.... Teflon O-rings would be too hard, no?.... I have never heard of them being used for a breech seal....

Bob

"Buna-N is a better choice than EP or Viton..."
The Viton orings were used with my home made oring sealed piston caps (not breech seals) so contact with Hoppes #9 wouldn't be an issue. The reason I use mil spec Viton orings for piston cap sealing is because the shelf life of Viton is practically un-limited (Buna-N only has a 10 year shelf life). Another issue is that Viton has a much greater resistance to heat than Buna-N. Buna N has a temperature resistance up to about 120 °C. and Viton has a temperature resistance up to about 300 °C so Viton is more resistant to high compression temperatures in my piston guns. LOL, I've had Viton orings in my R9 outlast a couple good aftermarket main springs so it's not a big deal to replace a 10 cent oring when needed. My brother had the same Viton oring in his .177 R9 for 4 seasons shooting roughly 10,000 shots per season (a 1250 count box of CPLs per month for about 10 months during a season). Here are a couple oring sealed piston caps with Viton orings........


LOL......the tests were done over a few days so I figured that less than an hour removing pellet fouling really isn't a big deal! Anywhoo.......after my brother used Hoppes #9 to clear out the CPL fouling in his bore and had no adverse with his factory HW breech seal for years afterward. The only issue with using #9 for bore clearing would be a factory HW95 breech seal which is why it was deliberately soaked in straight #9 for a few days as a test. Later, just for grins I tossed in a Viton oring to see if it would be affected, not that it's used as a breech seal. This pic shows both the HW factory breech seal and a Viton oring after the 5 day test. Also there is a new Viton oring shown next to the soaked oring only to show that the soaked oring didn't swell relative to a new ring from the package..........


Anywhoo.....the only purpose of the #9 test was to determine if using the bore solvent in a HW break barrel for less than an hour would degrade the breech seal. My brothers' R9 had it's accuracy restored after "CPL fouling removal via Hoppes #9" and he had no breech seal issues with the gun for the several years I still lived in West Virginia and would squirrel hunt with him.

There are some PTFE clad silicone orings available for chemical processing where the PTFE resists the chemicals but the core gives the oring some resistance to set but since the cheap Viton orings were adequate for my purposes I never tried the PTFE coated orings........
https://www.allorings.com/teflon-encapsulated-o-rings