how to clean a nagant barrel

[acsteve]

Well, I have spent hours now using patches soaked in hoppes, butchIes, shooters choice, methanol, bronze brushes, soaking with solveits over night. The barrel is getting cleaner, but does anyone have any other solvent suggestions, I do have a rust disolver solvent which dissolves only rust and not steel. thanks The barrelis getting mostly shinny and the rifling looks better than I expected for a old russian rifle that is older than I am .

[Gtek]

Know of what you see. You may work on it a bunch more and still see dirty in the end.
What I used in past, some come clean, some do not. Strip weapon to barrel / rec. assy. I used notched corks for muzzle end to create restriction of about 90% or so.
Figure a way to clamp vertical with chamber up. Find 3/8 or 5/16 auto fuel line 2"-3".
Find funnel to fit ID. One each full tea pot full rolling boil, couple drops dish soap.
Pour slowly but fill into neck of funnel keeping barrel full till you run out. Barrel will be to hot for bare hand- have good thick leather. Water will evap very quickly, push and push wet patches soaked with Kroil. Also wipe outside, hot will suck up on outside also. Tell it good night, and next day bronze and patch with Kroil. I have had MUD come out on a few. Sometimes it is COMBLOC powder build, sometimes corrosive primer damage you will have forever. Gtek

[zomby woof]

Kroil and JB bore paste will save you lots of patches

[WILCO]

A friend of mine used a few patches of "Never Dull".

"Polishing the bore.

The Mosin Nagant is not a chrome lined barrel but you can shine it just like one. I can not stress this enough IT WILL IMPROVE ACCURACY! It is a well known fact non chrome lined barrels give the best accuracy. Most of the mil-surp rifles on the market today have been in military storage depots for 50 to 60 years. The Cosmoline they used prevented rust, but stained the bore. This can be removed and shined up improving accuracy buy using a product found in the auto section with the waxes and polish of your local Wal-Mart. The name of the product is Never Dull silver can black lettering. W hen you open it up it looks like spun cotton candy. Put your slotted cleaning tip on your rod and run it thru the bore so the slotted tip is sticking out the muzzle. Pull a jag of never dull out and work it thru the slot, the jag should be large enough to be tight fit when pulled back into the bore. Work this back and forth in the bore. When the first jag is removed it will most likely be tar black. Now run 2 clean patches thru the bore. I like to break in a new mil-surp bore by running 5 jags of Never Dull with clean patches between jags on the 5th jag I use a large clean patch to buff the bore. After shooting I always finish cleaning the bore with a jag of Never Dull and a clean patch then oil the bore."

Here's the link: http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?172428-Mosin-Accurizing

Other advice: http://ingunowners.com/forums/long_guns/140024-mosin_cleaning.html

[sisiphunter]

+1 zomby woof


I had the same issues with an old Enfield circa 1944....The best and easiest by far was KROIL made by a company called KANO. I mix it 50/50 with Barnes CR2, but Shooters choice will do the same thing, any copper remover type solvent. KROIL is in a squirt can and is kinda like WD40 on steroids. That stuff will penetrate anything you want. It seems when mixed with the solvent it makes way for the solvent and allows it to penetrate too, therefore cleaning the bore. The only thing is the Kroil and solvent will seperate when it just sits in the bottle, so you have to shake the bottle before each use.

My method is, a couple soaked patches of the stuff, let it sit for an hour or so I turn over every 15 minutes so it kinda circulates in the bore, you have to keep it pretty level, or it will just run out. Once that is done a bronze brush about 20 strokes or so, then another soaked patch and then dry patch it a few times. I had to do this twice on my Enfield, but clean as a whistle now.

You could cork the bore and fll with the mix, but I find using soaked patched uses a bit less of the mix and is just as effective in my opinion.

Another option is this stuff called brake free. It does leave a film though, so you have to clean it all out too, thats why I recommend the first mix.

good luck, Matt

[3006guns]

It's spelled "Break Free" if you need to Google it, although most sporting goods/automotive stores should have it.

I'll tell you one way NOT to clean an MN barrel. Fill it full of Naval Jelly and let it sit for several hours, then swab out. Oh, it did a dandy job of removing the rust and some of the fouling.........but exposed every pit from Moscow to Stalingrad.

Some things are better left alone I guess. I should have stayed happy in my ignorance! Since this is a non import marked rifle I'll be looking for a better barrel in the future................

[sisiphunter]

Sorry yes, break free is correct.....my spelling mistake

[Bloodman14]

Lots of hot soapy water and a bore brush; scrub the bejabbers out of it.

[EOD3]

If the "goop" in the barrel is cosmoline, diesel will help dissolve it. If that doesn't get it all out, try some automatic transmission fluid.

DO NOT fire a round until the black-death has been removed. Once you cook it on, you'll spend all winter trying to get it out...

[koyote]

for goop (cosmoline, dragon snot, etc) WD40 works well. Really.

For cleaning out the barrel aside from that, I use, depending on details of condition and what was shot in the barrel last, hoppes, ammonia (good for corrosive ammo), break free Powder Blast, and break free CLP for my finishing patches. There are different Break Free formulas. The CLP is a good maintenance/preservative. the Powder Blast is a better one for cutting grease and residues.

[buck1]

Had the same trouble with mine . Soaked , scrubbed over and over for days and days.
I got a transmition funnel from the autopatrs store and pourded a gallon of boiling water through the bbl. Then ran several patches of oil through it wile still hot.
It was then COMPLEETLY CLEAN AND BRIGHT!! HOT water it the trick for this trouble......Buck

[Mossy Nugget]

I was turned on to this stuff called Wipe-Out by a company called Sharp Shoot R by a milsup collector at my local club, Richwood Gun & Game. It's an expanding foam that you soak the bore with. Squirt it in the muzzel 'till it comes out the breach, stuff an earplug into both ends and let sit for a day horizontally. Patch it out and repeat until you get a clean patch. My 91/30 took four days, but there was no scrubbing and hardly any effort. It went from stovepipe cruddy black to shiny but pitted. Groups went from dinner plate to softball sized, too. I got mine from Midway, I think.

[walltube]

I have been a longtime user and proponent of the electro-chemical bore cleaners for Pb and Cu fouling removal. So many gallons of Hoppes, etc., many 100 yds. of cotton patches, untold dozens metal and nylon bristle brushes. All that time consuming labor came to an end when I "discovered" the 'foamy' bore cleaners.

A 1917 production Eddystone P14's bore treated with 'GunSlick' foamy stuff presented me with a most pleasant surprise: this P14 bore actually has rifleing! I mean, deep grooves from breach to muzzle. This thing was not, after all, a smoothbore..:) As has been mentioned in a post above, there was a slightly dark lining to the silver cloud. All that excavating revealed moonscape pitting. Not deep enough to hide a goat mind you, but enough to give a history of neglect. There ought to be a law...

My youngest of two sons applied the foam to his '03A3's bore. He too was a happy shooter to see the two groove barrell come alive. A No.4 Mk.I also brought more joy to mil-surp clan.

Give it a try, I think some Ya'll may be as pleasantly surprised as are we. It is sooo easy.

Happy Easter from MS. ,
Harold

[Jack Stanley]

I'm with Walltube , if the barrel is so bad that a soaking of Kroil or a spray of wipeout doesn't give noticable results . I'll get the electric bore cleaner and not take any prisoners in the process . I had a Remington 1903 that had cupronickle fouling so bad you could just make out the rifling . It wouldn't group worth a hoot untill after about thirty hours of cleaning in segments of forty-five minutes each . As the barrel got cleaner the cleaning solution went a little longer before shutting down the action .

Of course it got out black , green , yellow and red crud as if it was stripping layers out at a time . And , it uncovered a couple large pits that didn't hurt what I expected from the accuracy .

Jack

[walltube]

Outers Foul-Out takes no prisoners :) You betcha.

The only negative is not disolving layers of carbon or other non-metallic fouling between cupro-nickle, etc. layers. That reqiures scrubbing with Hoppes and the like. Foaming cleaners disolve all but lead. Foul-Out handles that with ease.

The 1st. application of GunSlick foam to the P14 after a 3 hr. soak loosened stuff that resembled a much overdue 100,000 mile oil change. That was first patch, second push through a lovely cobalt blue. Two-three passes with a Hoppe soaked patch and a 2nd. foam shot at chamber's end for another 3 hrs. More of the same heavy black stuff as first patch push through. Less blue with 2nd. Just to see what, I put the Foul-Out to work. One hr. later, a brazing rod in appearance was the SS cleaner rod. A look down the bore displayed rifling like an emerging, long sunken vessel. Very dark grooves. More foam for an over night stay.

Next morning's 1st. patch was light green-blue in color. Lands were now bright, grooves still gloomy looking. Another two hr. foam soak followed by some scrubbing brought to light the moon scape atop the lands and in the grooves. But there was rifeling to see. A trip to the range validated all my efforts, no more patterns. Real groups, a bit scattered, but a group. But joy was not to be, the NOE 316299 leaded badly. Some measuring showed that a .317 diameter boolit, at minimum, was now neccsessary for any semblance of accuracy. All that fouling made for a "tighter" bore ha-ha-ha!
Like I say, there ought to be law...

[DJ1]

+1 for the JB Bore Paste, then clean with Ed's Red.

[RonE]

I scrubbed mine with a brush and patches. (which didn't work as well as I had expected) What worked best was shooting 20 rounds and then cleaning it. Seemed to clean up pretty good after it had been recently shot until it was just above warm.

[gnoahhh]

Here is what I did as a last-ditch desperate measure to rid a 1903 barrel of ancient fouling. It was a method described in something written by Phil Sharpe. I corked the chamber shut and filled the bore with Stronger Ammonia (the Real McCoy, not the stuff you find in the supermarket), and corked it. Let sit for an hour and uncorked it and dumped it. It worked but oh-my-god I did a couple things wrong. First, I did it in the bathtub. No big deal there as it was handy for dumping it out afterward. Second, I found that I couldn't hold my breath long enough to complete the dumping and flushing-out process. One whiff of that stuff and I was knocked out cold. My wife found me and freaked out. No lasting effect other than a giant goose egg where I hit my head when falling. If you ever try that trick do it outdoors and wear a respirator (or practice holding your breath a really long time!).

It did do a super job of removing decades-worth of jacket fouling though.

[MtGun44]

Yep, I did the layer archeological dig into my barrel a couple times. The best (worst) was
a US 1917 Enfield. Layers of carbon crud between the various colors of metallic fouling,
but eventually there was a steel surface the whole length of the barrel, shiny, too! I had
to stop and scrup out the globs of carbon crud when the electrical stripper (Foul Out 2)
stopped working. Scrub out the crud, acetone to dry and start the electrical cleaning
again.

Bill

[argie1891]

my ruger 06 stopped shooting good groups, it was shooting one to 1.5 inch groups all the time.. i started cleaning and found a layer of copper over a layer of carbon over a layer of copper etc. i spent several months running a patch of hoppes number 9 down the bore and leaving it till i thought about it again. they repeated the process. i took at least 25 to 30 times to get everything out to bare metal.. it again shoots 1 to 1.5 inch groups. I thought i was cleaning it but i bought the rifle new in 1974 and found out i was not doing a good job of getting the copper fouling out. as it wasnt hunting season i just wet the bore let sit and ran a patch down and wet it again with hoppes. finally it came out clean. argie1891

[acsteve]

thanks for the help to all, scrubbing made it shinny throughout, tha I tried fire lapping with an ACP case full of trail boss. The bore looks good, and it does shoot well.

[390ish]

with a "new" milsurp, I usually go with the foaming cleaners, then clean as usual after neturalizing with hoppes.