made/used electronic bore cleaner

[corvette8n]

I just assembled a quickie electronic bore cleaner from a couple of flashligt batteries, a small bulb and a couple of clip leads. mixed 2 parts distilled water, 1 part ammonia, 1 part white vinegar. I let it cook for 45 minutes in an old Russian capture Mauser, dumped out the brown residue and pushed a patch through the bore, wow I tought I was cleaning a sewer, black, thick tar like residue. I cleaned with carb cleaner and cooked it again for another 45, this time I got out brown rust, the bore is still pitted, but looks a whole lot better, I may do it again. Is their a limit on how many times I should use this thing on one rifle?

[nicholst55]

I use mine (Outer's Foul-Out III) until the amount of copper being deposited on the electrode diminishes dramatically.

These sure do make cleaning a neglected bore a whole lot easier! Before I bought mine, I recall wearing out 3-4 new bore brushes, using JB Bore Paste, lots of solvent, and spending literally hours trying to get all the crud out! Now I set it up, turn it on, and return in 30 minutes to check it. Too easy!

[JeffinNZ]

Opened my eyes. I friend demonstrated one and I bought a kit immediately!

HOWEVER:

1) they are SO efficient they can clean a barrel TOO well and for cast you have to 'condition' the bore all over again.

2) there is no substitute for 'smoothing' the lumps and bumps out of a barrel with the likes of JB's. My .223 used to copper foul quite a bit but after constant cleaning with JB's the bore is WAY more tolerant of J word boolits.

For first time cleaning though electro is the way to go!!!!!

[grumpy one]

I just assembled a quickie electronic bore cleaner from a couple of flashligt batteries, a small bulb and a couple of clip leads. mixed 2 parts distilled water, 1 part ammonia, 1 part white vinegar. I let it cook for 45 minutes in an old Russian capture Mauser, dumped out the brown residue and pushed a patch through the bore, wow I tought I was cleaning a sewer, black, thick tar like residue. I cleaned with carb cleaner and cooked it again for another 45, this time I got out brown rust, the bore is still pitted, but looks a whole lot better, I may do it again. Is their a limit on how many times I should use this thing on one rifle?

Yes, there is a limit. I ran the system you describe, except with a regulated power supply instead of flashlight batteries and a current limit of around 80 milliamps, for ten hours or so because I kept getting black stuff on the patches I put through the bore. (I replaced the electrolyte and wiped the bore every hour). At the end of that time, there was a ring of "no rifling" where the end of the rubber plug reached, and the rifle would no longer shoot J-bullets except sideways. Bore slugging dimensions were unchanged, but it seems clear to me that all the black stuff on the patches was FeO, iron oxide, removed from the bore.

I don't know if the same problem exists with a genuine FoulOut, but the home made electrolyte (ammonia and vinegar in water), when exposed to considerable DC current, eats steel - though fairly slowly. From my experience I'd say don't exceed a couple of hours total exposure at any current over say 30 mA. Incidentally I used the same approach on another rifle but stopped as soon as I stopped getting brown rust in the electrolyte (i.e. two sessions of about 45 minutes) and seem to have done no harm, and some good.

[JIMinPHX]

My homemade unit has a small ammeter & potentiometer (variable resistor) on it. I turn the knob until I get about 10ma of current flowing. The current is pretty stabile while the cleaning is going on. When the current starts to go up, it's time to stop. Every time that you use the electric method, you remove a little bit of the barrel. It’s not a good thing to do on a regular basis. It’s just the lessor of two evils when you have an extreme bore-fouling problem that needs to be corrected. I use mine with straight janitor-strength ammonia & a stainless steel rod that is supported by o-rings.

[eka]

I made one and used a lantern battery for power. I've used it on all my rifles, but honestly haven't been overly impressed with what I've gotten out of my barrels. It works OK, but I've heard of people getting amazing amounts of gunk out of "clean" barrels, but it just hasn't happened that way for me. Still nice to have the option though, just in case.

Keith

[hydraulic]

I have a small battery charger with a dial from 3 to 12 volts. Says 2 amps on it. How many volts should I set it on?

[tpic402]

look at surplusrifle.com they have instructions for a home built unit works great, the light will brighten up when it gets clean I usually only run mine on dirty bores and only for about 20 to 30 min. works great be careful you can transfer barrel metal as well as fouling to your cleaning rod.

[Uncle Grinch]

I was curious about making one of these some time ago. Since I had an '09 Argentine with a very bad bore and was going to replace it with another military barrel, I decided to try it on it.

Started out with a 6 volt lantern battery, with so-so results, so I jumped up to a fence charger. Now that thing really pulled some crud out. It would literally boil over and get hot. It made the bore clean enough so the patches looked fairly good coming out, but the bore looked much worse than before. It ate the thing up!

Fear not....the Argie now has a very good replacement barrel and is back to mil spec.

[eka]

Uncle,

Do you think you actually removed barrel metal, or just removed the layers of copper so you could finally see what the barrel really looked like? Like you, I have noticed that when I get what I thought was a rough bore clean, I find it usually looks a little worse. This months Shooting Times has a really straight forward article in the gunsmithing section on how to create a lead lap and hand lap a rough barrel. I'd like to give that a try one of these days when the right candidate barrel comes along.

Keith

[Uncle Grinch]

Uncle,

Do you think you actually removed barrel metal, or just removed the layers of copper so you could finally see what the barrel really looked like? Like you, I have noticed that when I get what I thought was a rough bore clean, I find it usually looks a little worse. This months Shooting Times has a really straight forward article in the gunsmithing section on how to create a lead lap and hand lap a rough barrel. I'd like to give that a try one of these days when the right candidate barrel comes along.

Keith

Keith,

I believe it did a very good job of loosening the embedded crud in the eroded bore and possibly did break some marginal bore loose that was adjacent to the pits.

Like I said though, the patches came out clean, although the bore was much rougher. I think the fence charger provided too much juice/current.

Good luck on your lapping project.