Removing lead from barrel - how to

[Ben]

John L

WELCOME TO THE FORUM ! !

Thanks for your reply to the questions.

It is my opinion that the " hub " of your problems lies with the plain base bullets at .309". The bullet must fill the throat properly ( May take a .311 " dia. cast bullet to do that ). At .309", most likely hot gases are skirting around the base of the bullet causing the majority of your leading.

It sounds as if your barrel is clean enough to shoot cast bullets cleanly right now. You've just got to change things a bit in your loading sequence.

Do you own any molds and do you cast your own .30 cal. rifle bullets yet ?

Many of us on the forum shoot 100 rounds or more of our cast loads in .30 cal. rifles without a hint of leading.

Some of that black that you're seeing is graphite and carbon, it is extremity hard to ever get all the carbon out of a barrel, ( I don't even try ).

Some rifles will shoot with Lee Liquid Alox , some won't.

I'd like to see that barrel clean and you load something like the 311291 with a good lube ( Ben's Red comes to mind ) and a gas check , sized to .311".

I'm betting that you could fire 50 rounds of the 311291 load, then push a single clean white cotton patch through your barrel and it would look mirror bright.

Ben

[dudel]

Outer's foul out is what I use on my high end target guns.

+1 on the Foul Out. Works great.

[HABCAN]

Ben........your post #61..........exactly what I was going to say, but you beat me to it: +1, Sir.

For extreme leading in a .44 revolver, for instance, we just used to load a charge of seed tapioca and fire that........cleans a bore rather well!

[opos]

Copper (really copper) Chore Boy strands....I put them around a synthetic fiber bore brush and use a couple drops of Kroil...(I would put Kroil on my cereal if I thought it would help anything...love the stuff)...cleans any light leading right up (I seldom get leading)...then I hit it with Hoppe's or CLP to do the cleaning....works for me.

[S.B.]

I saw some new fangled bore cleaner in Rifle magazine supposed to be brushless? Some for lead and other for copper.
Steve

[John L]

Ben, Thanks for your interest.

I am not casting yet, got a bunch of lead though. Thought I might find out if lead would shoot before I got the molds and other equipment.

I was trying to avoid gas checks. Willing to shoot at modest velocities. Gas checks seem too much like jackets or half-jackets.

I slugged the bores on both rifles. The Marlin was slugged twice with the same readings: 0.3095 or 0.310 and 0.3005 or 0.310. The muzzle is tight, a 0.300 ball drops through but a 0.301 hangs up and requires light pressure to move through. That seems a bit deep for Micro-Groove rifling. The Savage gave me 0.308 and 0.300. Just slugged it again and got 0.308 and 0.301. Maybe I got some spring back on that last slug (that's a joke son). The front part of the bullet to be about 0.299 inch diameter with the forward driving band about 0.308. The rear portion back to the lube groove is about 0.309 and the rear driving band with lube shows to be 0.310. I had thought that might work at 1400 fps or slower.

Do not have an alternate lube. The Ben's Red I am familiar with is a cleaning fluid and with just the ATF and kerosene a good oil. Is the lube you refer to a commercial product or mix your own?

I'll see if anybody is peddling .311 bullets. What is the weight on the 311291 bullet? That is a .311 diameter bullet out of a proprietary 291 mold number isn't it?

I got started on the light lead bullets after reading an article on 30-30 varmint loads. Thought the light bullets made a good squirrel load at just less than 1500 fps. Got the ones on top of a limb by just shooting through it. It seems like it was by Paco Kelly. As I remember he put a gas check on it and pushed it out to 3100 fps and called it a good whitetail load.

[Ben]

John L

What are you taking your cast bullet diameter measurements with ?
________________________________
Your comment :

The Ben's Red I am familiar with is a cleaning fluid

I think you're making reference to Ed's Red.
A home made bore cleaner.

Ben's Red is a cast bullet lube made with the following recipe :

50% beeswax
30% Red, Tacky Lucas High Temp Grease
10% Johnson's Paste Wax
5% Dexron II or Dexron III Trans. Fluid
5% STP Oil Treatment
______________________________

What is the weight on the 311291 bullet?

About 170 - 175 grs.

[John L]

1 (one) inch Starrett micrometer and a 6 inch caliper for larger measurements.

I found that Montana Bullet Works carries the Lyman 311291 bullet in both linotype and heat treated alloy.

Thank you for the Ben's Red formula. I am not familiar with the Lucas High Temp grease. Will have to look around unless you are selling small quantities or know someone who is.

From what I have been seeing it appears that I should have started with the heavier bullet and worked my way up to the lighter stuff. Almost everyone has a load for the 170 gr bullets and most will provide one for the 150 gr bullets. Very few that I have found post anything about the 135 gr stuff. Would the linotype 170 gr bullet fit your recommendation for starters?

[Ben]

Here is a link to a group that I fired at 100 yds. with my own 311291's.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...1291-Cup-Point

Not a hint of leading in my rifles.

As to buying Ben's Red, someone on here may have some extra that they would sell you ? You may choose to post in " Want to Buy " that you'd like to purchase some Ben's Red.

The 311291is a great general purpose cast bullet in most .30 cal. rifles ( 30/30, 308 Win., 30/40 Krag, 30-06 , etc )

[hunter12]

For extreme leading in a .44 revolver, for instance, we just used to load a charge of seed tapioca and fire that........cleans a bore rather well!

How do you do this?

[DaveInFloweryBranchGA]

I generally avoid leading by using the correct boolit diameter, appropriate for the velocity hardness, appropriate to the velocity boolit lube, quality hand loading and finally, if I've made a mistake, I can clean it up with my home made foul out.

Do a search for home made Outer's foul out. Works extremely well and is also great for cleaning the nasty out of old milsurps and making the bores look nice again if they're able.

[Flashkayak]

found 100% pure copper scrubbers by O ceder at bimart

[jcren]

It may be a regional thing, but around here you can find choreboy copper pads at all the seedy gas stations. The seedier the better. Find somewhere that you wouldn't take a leak in and the will have choreboy next to the charcoal.

[25ring]

Before you resort to using a chore boy pad try a tight patch soaked with turpentine. A fellow BPCR competitor showed me this trick years ago and it works great.The only thing that touches my BPCR rifles is turpentine and ED's red.

[BrianL]

I use ChoreBoy, dry. And another great thing, it seems the more lead I shoot, the more polished the bore is and the easier it cleans up. My 45's take about 4 passes with the brush/C.B. and they're slick as a whistle.

Cloudpeak

I had the same experience with a new Lone Wolf Glock barrel. I assumed it was because I was removing roughness

[edctexas]

I was amazed at the ability of Kroil to release the small flakes of lead that one sometimes gets. If you have a lot of leading, the copper chore boy or bronze woll on a brush will loosen the leading up, especially if you run a patch with Kroil thru the bore first. I am a recent convert to Ed's Red. It is an amazing solvent for powder residue, and shotgun wad residue. I use it in place of Hoppe's 9. Hoppe's 9 smells good but Ed's Red beats it in cleaning. The chemicals that use ammonia are for copper (j-words). These make the patches turn blue. Lead never makes the patch turn blue! More like black!

Ed C

[prickett]

Outer's foul out is what I use on my high end target guns. My barrel has never seen a brush! You clean the barrel with a soft patch soaked in your favorite powder solvent then degrease it with Gun scrubber. Plug one end of the barrel and fill it with an electrolyte. You then place a stainless steel rode in the barrel and place a clip on the rode and the barrel. The lead (or copper) is electroplated off the inside of barrel. You can use a flashlight and actually see the lead flakes coming off the barrel and floating to the rode. In just about ten minutes all the lead is off and you have a clean barrel. Then dry with a clean patch and oil.
I also tried it on some old pitted barrels. You wouldn’t believe what came out of those!

+1 for the Foul Out unit. They don't sell the solution for it anymore, but now I use this formula and get identical results: http://www.frfrogspad.com/homemade.htm#Copper

I've also tried Kroil (submerged the barrel in it for a week) and got NO useful results.

[Shuz]

Since this is a rather old thread, perhaps a lot of folks haven't bothered to go all the way to the beginning. I call your attention to my post #22 on Page 3. What could be an easier way to remove lead fouling than that?

[Dale in Louisiana]

A co-worker gifted me with about twenty pounds of mercury. I figure that's a lifetime supply if I develop a leading problem.

dale in louisiana

[Cadillo]

found 100% pure copper scrubbers by O ceder at bimart

I have and use the O Cedar pads, but when I can find the Chore Boy, I buy several. For some reason the Chore Boy pads cut the lead a lot faster than the O Cedar brand.