Man Oh man...how do you clean one of these?

[AbitNutz]

So I picked up a No. 4 Mk-something Enfield and Mosin-Nagant's upity cousin a Finish M39. Both have an incredible amount of crud in the bore. I have brushed and scrubbed and brished and...well you get the idea. Can anyone recomend the best stuff to at least look like it's trying to get clean?

[Kraschenbirn]

1) Plug barrel at breech, fill bore with Hoppes #9, let sit overnight, pour out Hoppes, scrub/patch it dry. 2) Plug barrel at breech, fill bore with Sweet's 7.62, let sit for 10 minutes or so, pour out Sweet's, scrub/patch bore dry. 3) repeat as necessary.

Or, if you have access to an old Outer's 'Foul-Out' electronic cleaner, you might give it a go. Mine has, a time or two, removed considerable crud from barrels that 'looked fairly clean' after brushing and patching.

Bill

[country gent]

What have you tried so far? It may not be just the scrubbing here as some soak time to give the solvent time to work thru this old dried hard fouling. Another question is it copper or powder fouling? I have had good results with Shooters choice and kroil oil mixed 50 50. Soak bore good and let set muzzle down for 15-20 mins then wet again and brush then patch. I have heard of good results with EDs red also. The old standby Hoppes may be usefull. I have used JB bore cleaner and Isso paste but that's a lot of scrubbing as they are mechanical cleaners not chemical cleaners. But a quick run thru with JB to break up the surface and get a fresh area to start seems to allow the chemical cleaners a better working surface. I'm not a big fan of Sweets but it is effective more so jacketed fouling.

[Ray1946]

I have used some stuff called "Brakleen" brake parts cleaner. There is only one thing, you have to use this stuff OUTSIDE in the open air. I have an old Schmidt-Rubin 1889 that I used this on and it dissolved all the old dried rifle grease quick!.................

[Scharfschuetze]

If it's old and dry Cosmoline giving you the headache, boiling hot water with dish detergent will wash it out quickly when the muzzle is placed in a shallow dish or pie pan and your use a tight fitting patch to pull the water up into the barrel. The high temperature of the water will heat the barrel so that it dries quickly. Once dry, use your favorite solvent.

[too many things]

note on foul out
if the bore was pitted you will have a REAL pitted barrel after you use it

[pworley1]

Ed's Red is the best thing i have used. Be patient. Apply wait swab repeat.

[funnyjim014]

My last gunky barrel came out fairly good with plugging the chamber with a old case and letting it sit a night in krol. Clean. Night in hoppys. Clean. Night in trany fluid. Clean. The case leaks slowly so make sure the action is out of stock and in a bucket of some kind. As the stuff pools up mix em all together and try the new blend lol. It takes a lot to bust up the carbon, metal fowl ing expecially the curpro nickel fowling

[TNsailorman]

Patience is the trick. I have cleaned up some pretty ratty bores on military rifles in my days and the following is what I have developed over the years. Ed's Red, Shooter Choice, Kroil, and finally JB Bore Paste is my recipe. In that order. Ed's Red will get rid of most of the fouling. Then Shooters Choice for the copper fouling. You can mix the Shooter Choice and Kroil together on a 50-50 basis if you are in a hurry. Let set at least 1./2 hour to an hour between applications and use a good tight fitting patch and a jag, not those slotted tips that comes with cleaning kits. JB Bore Paste will remove any lingering corrosion or copper fouling and it will polish the bore which will help cleaning in the future. Be sure to use a good grade of oil in the bore (Shooters Choice, Break Free, etc.)after you are finished. my experience anyway, james

[jimb16]

Everyone keeps leaving out one important ingredient...elbow grease. No barrel will get clean without it!

[Multigunner]

Dad's Blue Jackets Manual from 1943 instructed to soak guns in aviation gasoline to remove hardened cosmoline . Ships at the time often carried catapult launched spotter planes.

[woodbutcher]

Purchased a really nice un molested 1918 Mauser for $12.00.Got it home and looked through the barrel,or at least tried to.It was UGLY.So,I got out the cleaning kit.Put a solid jag and a tight patch on it.Well, the upshot of that was a snake of cosmolene about a foot long.Dad about died laughing.Have fun says he.(WW1 vet)Well,I got a long metal trough and filled it with gas and soaked the barreled action over night.Did the patch and jag the next day.MORE cosmo.Scrubbed with a brass brush and jag and patch again.Hoppes and patch.What a beautiful bore.Took two more days to get all of the remaining cosmo off.But what a great shooter with 1933 German GI surplus.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

[AbitNutz]

I didn't think of plugging the barrel and filling it with....something. I'm going to do that....some plumbers putty or perhaps some of those cheap ear peices.

I have Hoppe's...I can get Sweets...anything better to fill the barrel with over night and then scrub, scrub, scrub?

[Multigunner]

I've plugged a .303 chamber with a plug made by pushing a 45-70 case into a common rubber eraser.
I filled the bore with Sweets copper solvent and left it over night. When I poured it out the next day it looked like burnt crankcase oil. On a badly metal fouled bore I put a patch of hair pad in a cleaning rod and placed the rod in the bore from the muzzle before pouring the solvent in to fill the bore about 1/4 the way from the plug. Every 15 minutes I withdrew the rod till near the muzzle being careful not to spill any solvent and then pushed it back down. This broke up the fouling already softened and exposed the underlying fouling. After awhile I dumped the solvent which looked like thick black goo and swabbed everything out, finishing up with a good scrubbing with JB Bore Cleaner paste. I've also used a loose patch wound with a tuft of 0000 steel wool but Dacron hair pad is best. The solvent just eats up bronze bore brushes or bronze wool.

[elk hunter]

I've had good luck with Gunslick foaming bore cleaner. Fill the bore and let it set at least one hour and brush and patch. Sometimes on really bad ones I let it set overnight and then brush and patch, repeat, repeat.

[dragon813gt]

Wipe-Out. Once you use it you won't use anything else.
http://www.sharpshootr.com/wipe-out/

[Markopolo]

I had that problem once.. used ed's red, let things soak for quite a while, then chucked up a alum cleaning rod in my cordless drill and went to town... took a couple of brushes, but that drill really worked... saved me a bunch of time... work smarter, not harder..

[waksupi]

See if you can find someone that does steam cleaning. One of the local laundromats do guns for $10 each.

[bouncer50]

I have sometimes spend up to two weeks cleaning rifle bore. You have to know metal has pores it takes time to sweat out the **** from the metal. Its take some time what work or does not work.

[opos]

Several years ago I bought several Mosins...in great shape but sewer pipe bores...the "local" So Cal Mosin group has a web site and one of the threads dealt with cleaning the bores..almost everything from soap and water to electrolysis had been tried...I've used lots of different things on old antique farm engines where they are stuck solid with rust and corrosion.

On the thread they were talking about S/W bore gel and what a "miracle worker" it was...it comes in both foaming aerosol or in 4 oz squeeze bottles..the gripe on the aerosol was the waste...so I bought the bottle of gel...saturated the bore several times and let it sit over night...it won't hurt to leave it for a long time....I'd taken the stock off so as not to stain them any more than they were...then I took a stainless steel "Tornado" brush and scrubbed the bore with that (claim is it won't harm the bore..but on a Mosin..so what?)...did this 3 days in a row and at the end of the 3rd scrubbing the bore began to show very sharp lands and grooves...some pitting but not too bad...I kept after it and in about a week I had shiny and sharp bores....they slugged at about .314 and shot like a dream...I've used the S/W premium bore gel on any number of fouled barrels and I swear by it...Amazon may have it...not sure any more.