Why do my cleaning patches always come out dirty!?

[JeepHammer]

If it was made in the 100,000's then line it or rebarrel it, no issue with that.

If it's show room new, it shoots, but won't be new for long, museum piece.
Good shape, but not perfect, a collection piece.

Just one of 100,000 or more that needs refinished then fine to reline or whatever.

Anything is better than broken down & beat up.

-------

The point of the thread was cleaning...

I won't use a steel bore brush anymore since I got a magnified bore scope.
Bronze, brass or synthetic won't scratch the bore, but steel, even stainless will.
Steel leaves behind smears of dissimilar metals that cause corrosion (electrical galvanic corrosion) and bore cleaners won't remove it.

I have noticed that stiff synthetic bristles don't smash down and wad up, and when they wear they still have sharp edges since they wear on an angle during use.

The WORST thing I see done is using a steel sectional rod (screws together) and going down the bore.
It REALLY ruins the muzzle crown in a hurry.

[Kev18]

I feel like I need to clear up some stuff.

1. The rifle shoots nice. I shoot it as much as possible. It is NOT a wall hanger.

2. I never have shot copper boolits. ONLY LEAD. That doesnt mean that the previous owner never shot copper jacketed boolits though...

3. I use a copper brush but Hoppe's never came out green/blue like people are saying. Only dark grey.


Also what is fire lapping? People are talking about this. I head of people adding polish/ jewlers rouge to the boolits. If thats what it is, then I considered doing that in the past. Just ever have. I wasnt sure of the pro's and con's.

[LAGS]

Fire lapping is similar to what you said about putting Polishing Rouge on the bullets pressed in.
Midway sells a kit to coat your boolits.
I have one with all the different grits, and it has done wonders on Most rifles
But , do not Over use It.
You can wear out the throat first, then the bore.
But if used sparingly, it can help greatly.
It Will Not bring an old Pitted barrel back to new condition.
But can smooth off the edges of the pitted areas, to reduce future fouling.
But it can remove built up crud, if used properly.
Hand lapping can do the same thing.
I have made Barrel Lapping mandrels out of an old bore brush and JB Weld or bedding compound, cast in the barrel after the barrel was coated with Johnsons paste wax.
But that was done for barrels like old Mil Surps that I had nothing to loose if something didn't go right.
But so far, all worked good and smoothed out the barrel both lands and grooves and didn't increase the bore too much.
The mandrel fits that Bore exactly as indexed, and will not fit any other rifle.

[JeepHammer]

Lapping is normally done with a 'Plug' and very fine abrasive with a rod, like brushing.

Way back when, the manufacturers used wooden bullets to take machining burrs off and not gouge the barrels with those burrs.

Really fine barrels were hand lapped, just like today, but production just fired wooden bullets to take chips off, and greased for burnish.
Wooden bullets were fast & cheap.

Fire lapping, opposed to a barrel break in with common bullets, are bullets impregnated with abrasive.
It's a last ditch, last resort, tried EVERYTHING else situation to try and get a barrel shooting.
Back in the 90s several places decided to make DIY kits and a lot of good barrels got damaged...

Break in is done when barrel is brand spanning new, and it's to remove or smooth out defects. Keep in mind this is 150 years past wooden bullets, the machining is MUCH better, the steel is MUCH better, and you are trying to break sharp edges mostly.
There won't be long coils or burrs left in the barrel...
You simply fire some light bullets (at lower velocity if you reload) to break chips, then you for the biggest, heaviest bullets you can find, or simply load bullets backwards in the case so the squarer backside pressures, overloads the sharp edges...
After about 10 rounds, then you shoot normal rounds, cleaning well every 2-5 rounds for about the first 100 rounds.

A backwards copper jacket will take about any cutting/shaving edge off, the next rounds will smooth down the chip, cleaning keeps copper from wedging in and expanding the sharp edge into a micro crack, making it stick up and becoming a burr again.

It's simple, shoot, clean, shoot, clean...
Copper jacket in a CLEAN bore will break off and carry out chips,
After about 20 rounds the chips are gone, then you polish the sharp edges with more bullets.
In 100 rounds, your optics/sights should be zeroed, your groups should be settling in since the bore is about polished, and the heat expansion should be settling down, the barrel harmonics should be reaching baselines...
It's a metallurgy thing, we all know new barrels take time (rounds) to 'Settle In' but don't know why...

A burnish, scraping with well lubricated bullets often do best for old lead shooters.
It's the difference in barrel steel from then & today, the older steel was higher carbon & responds better to a good cleaning & burnish...

I'm NOT going to use the old recipes!
Seal fat, skunk grease, grave wax... NOPE!
Not digging dead bodies up!
Seems lube for cast bullets works fine for me, I'm going that way...

I shoot lead & smoke poles myself, and I never get a snow white patch, but the rifles are clean and they shoot well.
Not everyone uses lubricated bullets anymore...
You can't do anything about the damage already done, the pits & defects the steel had from the factory.

You can clean it, bake a little lube down with pressure, swab the barrel with oil and it's good.
The patch won't come out clean, but the bore is protected and somewhat protected from future lead.

To a degree, it's the same principal as firing fouling shots before you shoot for score.
In the military, We used to fire fouling shots before field missions, the cold bore shot went where we wanted it, even a week later when we fired in the field.

There are as many ideas about how, and what to use to clean as there are shooters.
This is what I've figured out in the last 50 years or so, take it for what it's worth.

[Shawlerbrook]

Definitely tread lightly. You can do much more harm than good with spinning brushes and/or aggressive cleaners. On many old guns a 100% clean bore is not necessary for good shooting. I generally use a good borelight and the eye test. If the bore looks good and you are only getting a little gray on the patches, then give it a shooting test. Definitely agree with MostlyLeverGuns above.

[JeepHammer]

As to fire lapping with abrasive bullets...
Keep in mind the highest pressure is applied to the lands of the rifling, so the rifling is ground down much more than the lands.
The edges of the lands, the sharp edges that bite into the bullet to form the bullet, get the worst of fire lapping.

Hand lapping is done with a FITTED 'Plug',
A plug that's been fitted to both the lands & grooves.

I plug the barrel, use a brass/bronze brush and pour hard lead around the brush.
It's perfectly formed to the entire bore & rifling.
Then I add abrasive, and look for the 'Tight Spot' in the bore, the spot where the bullet gets undersized, and work those tight spots out by hand.
Then I switch to a much finer abrasive and polish the entire length of the bore.

This LEAVES the lands and edges on the rifling, it just evens them out since the plug is fitted to that rifling and not a random round slug being forced down the barrel.
I can FEEL every defect and work it when hand lapping...

Keep in mind the new steels are SUPER compared to 1800/early 1900 steels (pre WWII in particular), and the machining tools today leave very few, and very small defects, so hand lapping of barrels has pretty much gone by the wayside.
It's so good that simple break in with bullets & cleaning does a good job.

(This excludes the AR clone import barrels that seem to be made of concrete rebar & machined with a broken brick, nothing can help them. You pay $299 for an AR clone, what can you really expect?)

[JeepHammer]

Definitely tread lightly. You can do much more harm than good with spinning brushes and/or aggressive cleaners. On many old guns a 100% clean bore is not necessary for good shooting. I generally use a good borelight and the eye test. If the bore looks good and you are only getting a little gray on the patches, then give it a shooting test. Definitely agree with MostlyLeverGuns above.

Exactly.
A one piece rod, with bearings in the handle so the rod can rotate with rifling and elbow grease...
Solvents help remove lead, but the older steel needs immediate protection from oxygen to prevent rust.
Cleaning in old times was about removing corrosives from primers & actual black powder.

Keep in mind that old time black powder was shipped in anything BUT metal containers.
Wood casks & barrels, waxed canvas, cardboard, it would eat it's way out of metal containers,and that was before it was fired & had the primer corrosives added to it...

Modern 'Black Powder' isn't made like it was back then & can be shipped in metal containers.

Us old cartridge collectors know the old black powder can and will eat it's way out of brass, steel didn't stand a chance.

There is a reason good bores in old black powder guns are rare, either from use/firing or from black powder eating the bore away.
Now if the rifling is clean & clear, it's good enough even if you don't get a snow white patch out of it...

[Crowkiller]

I've had good luck using the foaming bore cleaners on old milsurps that were really fouled layer after layer. Carbon then jacket fouling and so on. The foaming action seemed to get the crud loosened easier than anything I have ever tried.

Wipeout bore cleaner helps, but I've decided I won't ever get a white patch out of some old rifles.
And you really don't need to. Get the metal fouling and most of the powder fouling and it should shoot well.

[JeepHammer]

Wipeout bore cleaner helps, but I've decided I won't ever get a white patch out of some old rifles.
And you really don't need to. Get the metal fouling and most of the powder fouling and it should shoot well.

Yup!
Get the goop & metal out, oil it and call it a day.
If you can see the square edge at the bottom of the rifling where it meets the groove with a bore light, then you are probably as good as you can without electrical plating cleaning.
(And I want YOU to clean my rifles! )

When it's 100+ years old, there are going to be pits, scratches & chatter marks, just a fact of life.
I've seen some so bad you couldn't see the grooves at all for the fouling! They almost look like a smoothbore...

Bore lights are cheap, good cleaning rods aren't too expensive, and when you worry about cleaning, you are more than likely doing a darn fine job!
Semantics & theoretical 'Perfect' aside, if you are worried, and clean often, it's probably 99% of 'Perfect', honestly.
The guys that clean regularly, I have to use a magnified bore scope to find residue of any kind, they do a GREAT job, if not 'Perfect'!

The really bad ones people just don't worry about cleaning, or clean at all.
I've heard "Well, I swab it once in a while", which means never...
I know it's never because I have to start with an undersized cleaning brush to get started!

[Kev18]

I can see the riflings fine in the bore. The barrel has pits but shoots good. I dont want you guys to think I never cleaned it, because I have plenty times just not good enough it seems.

[JeepHammer]

If you can see the 'Root' of the rifling upright, then you did a GREAT job.

Some rifling has a square cut at the root, some is more rounded, the muzzle will usually tell you...
If you see the root without lead/copper, then it's better than most.

Scratches, chatter marks (wash board looking gouges), pits, all common and all exactly none of your fault if you clean regularly.

Pits are imperfections in the steel that rot out or break away once the bore is drilled & rifled,
Or,
They are where corrosion attacked when a previous owner had the rifle.

Chatter marks are from tooling when the barrel was made, and unless you drilled the blank for size and cut the rifling, it's not your fault.

Deep scratches are usually from burrs the first bullets took off and dragged down the barrel.
A new barrel that gets cleaned down to bare metal usually has these burrs worked off by the back & forth movement of the cleaning brush/jag.

Small scratches are commonly from burned powder residue.
We don't see nearly as much scratching as we did, modern powders that burn into finer carbon.
Small scratches can be from smaller burrs left behind during machining, and again, not much you can do if you didn't make the barrel.

[BigEyeBob]

Brass choreboy pot scrubber on an old brush ,coat liberally with oil or eds red and scrub the barrel back and forth a few times ,Then use flannel patches to clean out the crud . I used 0000 steel wool wrapped around and old bore brush on a 303/25 barrel that had never been cleaned ,plenty of engine oil , and plenty of elbow grease . Cleaned it up pretty good ,but the barrel was badly pitted from using mercuric primers .**** thing still shot 2"groups at 100yards ,pretty good seeing the rifling was pretty much gone from most of the barrel apart from some remnants for about 8 " back from the muzzle .

[Crowkiller]

I found a lot of inner peace when I decided perfect was perfect but good enough is good enough with barrel cleaning. I accept a lot more crud left in my 85 year old Mauser barrel than in a 10 year old Hart barrel. The old Mauser started with jet black crud dripping out when the Wipeout was first applied. I'm happy with grey, especially since it shoots well.

[EDG]

Use a good lead solvent and let it sit in the barrel for 2 or 3 weeks then clean and reapply. Let set another 2 or 3 weeks.

Elemental lead is very corrosion resistant which means the solvent chemicals do not remove the lead residue very fast. That is why the lead plates can live in the acid solution of your car battery for years.

When an old barrel has a lot of tool marks it picks up lead in the crevices and it takes the solvent a long time to get rid of it. You can scrub for ever and half of what you remove may be the barrel steel.
When I clean my BPCR rifles I let them sit a week to 3 weeks with solvent acting on the lead.
Upon inspection of the bore I can see rough textured areas where the solvent has corroded the lead deposits. Wiping with a coarse synthetic patch or a bore brush will often remove a lot of the chemically attacked lead deposit leaving the leaded area smaller. Another application and several weeks will make it smaller still. A little time and patience will eventually get it out without spending a lot of time scrubbing.

[Kev18]

I let it sit for almost 2 days. The patches still came out dirty.

1.first Hoppes patch

2. dry patch

3. dry patch

4. Rem oil patch to protect the barrel from rusting... still grey.

[Kev18]

Here, I took a picture of the riflings best I can...

[Crowkiller]

Looks almost like a ring of pitting in there. Pits just seem to hold gunk to keep showing up on patches.

[Bazoo]

You didn't mention if you brushed it? Butch Fisher's general rule was one brush stroke for every round fired since the last cleaning. If it's been neglected I'd brush for 10 minutes or so with hoppes as many sessions as it took to satisfy me.

[LAGS]

I agree with the Brushing.
If you haven't used a bore brush, then try it especially on those rough spots.
If it still looks the same, then you might want to try Having it Hand lapped.
But Fire lapping at this point, will polish the entire barrel.
And just Skim over those rough spots
Hand lapping can be done better on the specific rough Areas first then the entire length of the bore.
Especially if the pitted areas are the tight spots.

[Kev18]

I used a copper brush, before my first patch.