Evil lead fouling...causes and cures

[bruce381]

do this size to .358 and MAY have to have cylinder throats reamed to .358+ see Doug Guy on this forum.

[Sam Sackett]

Another thing you may try....... I have not tried this, as I don't have a problem with leading, but some say that it works.

Load up about 10 cartridges using this method:
1) Size, Prime and charge with powder as normal. Maybe a 3 grain load of Bullseye or similar.
2) Add cornmeal on top of the powder to where the base of the bullet will be.
3) Seat the bullet as normal.
4) Go out & shoot'em.

When you fire these, the pressure forces the cornmeal to scrub the junk out of the barrel. A few shots should tell you whether it works or not. As I said above, I haven't done this, just going by what others have said. YMMV

Sam Sackett

[Wooserco]

Outers used to sell an electrolytic cleaning system for removing both lead fouling and copper fouling from bores. I used to have one and it worked great. I seem to remember a number of posts about a similar home made set up.

It was called "Foul Out." Do a Google search and something should come up.

I had one in an earlier life and it worked great.

[Spin Drifter]

That's interesting. Years ago I had a cap and ball revolver that was inaccurate. Someone suggested that I reduce the load and use corn meal as filler. It worked beautifully. The gun settled down and grouped nicely although it was a pretty mild load. I ended up trading it at my local gun shop. A year of so later an acquaintance asked me if I knew anything about cap and ball guns. I said a little. He showed me his revolver and said that it was inaccurate. I recognized it as my old gun. I told him about the corn meal trick and later he told me that it worked wonders.

[Spin Drifter]

Outers used to sell an electrolytic cleaning system for removing both lead fouling and copper fouling from bores. I used to have one and it worked great. I seem to remember a number of posts about a similar home made set up.

It was called "Foul Out." Do a Google search and something should come up.

I had one in an earlier life and it worked great.

Looks like a nice way to go. It appears that they are discontinued now. I'll be curious as to what Ruger has to say about mine.

[Spin Drifter]

Follow up: I just got the gun back from Ruger. They only cleaned it. They sent it back with a test target. The group was impressive. Many times I have cleaned this gun and returned to the range only to have it shoot extremely well for a few rounds and then accuracy would deteriorate as fouling accumulated. I'm thinking that my next move will be to load some fairly mild wadcutter loads and put a few through it and see how it behaves.