best process to clean old milserp bores?

[funnyjim014]

Just bought my self some more iron in the form of a 8mm Turkish and a 7mm Chilean 1895. I the bores don't look half bad but I have been cleaning with hoppies copper remover and it keeps coming out with black patches. Besides lots of time and hoppies anyone have and tips or shortcuts to get 100 years of crud out of em. Was thinking of plugging barrel muzzle and filling with ATF and letting it some overnight.

[JeffinNZ]

Whenever I acquire a 'new' rifle I clean the bore with Ed's Red and then some JB's then finish with the electro bore cleaner. I have had barrels back to pristine with this method.

[Outpost75]

Ed's Red or Kano Kroil, mixed with Brobst JB paste on a worn bore brush wrapped with 000 steel wool.

[funnyjim014]

I have some kroll. I'll give that a try with some fine steel wool . thanks for the info

[HangFireW8]

For an old military bore with a lot of wear, I always include a water based cleaner to handle the corrosive primer salts. I like to alternate between types of cleaners, copper and powder, oil and water based, each to get what the last one missed.

I only do a long soak in oil based solvents, though, to prevent catalyzing the primer salts and leaving it to rust.

For really long soaks I use something mild like Hoppes #9 and make an extra reservoir on top of the barrel out of electrical tape to counteract evaporation. As useless as Hoppes is for copper in standard cleaning, it will remove copper if left to soak for 3 days.

[wddodge]

I've had good success with Birchwood Casey foaming bore cleaner. Fill the bore and leave it set for an hour and patch it out. You may have to do this several times but the bore will be spotless when your finished.

Denny

[ShooterAZ]

I've had good success with Birchwood Casey foaming bore cleaner. Fill the bore and leave it set for an hour and patch it out. You may have to do this several times but the bore will be spotless when your finished.

Denny

This too.^^^

I have let the foam bore cleaners soak overnight on really crusty bores, mostly on Mosin Nagants. Followed by a soak of Kroil, and some JB's scrubbing. Wrap a patch around a tight fitting bore brush and scrub some more. I then leave the bore saturated with Hoppe's until the next time I shoot it. Then run a clean patch through and Shoot, Shoot ,Shoot, and then some with some jacketed. Shoot it until the barrel is plenty hot and then run some more Hoppe's through. Shoot the heck out of it, and it will come clean. Shooting it is the best way to clean it.

[Geezer in NH]

Sweet's 7.62 and Ed's red

[country gent]

On those old bores you may need a solvent for cutting carbon build ups more so than copper fouling. High Power rifle shooters used to use mercury quick silver engine cleaner to cut carbon build ups. At work on heavy build ups we would get a couple cans of oven cleaner to clean carbon fouled parts quickly. NNever tried it in a rifle bore though. The black patches are probably carbon fouling coming out. Jacket fouling is ussually greenish blue color. WIth a slightly loose fitting patch and jag work a good coat of kroil; shooters choice mixed 50-50 into bore let work for 10-15 mins brush and patch. repeat several times. Jb bore cleaners is an abrasive cleaner so if you use it you have to scrub soaking gains nothing. Also when you get thru the fouling to bare metal the bore may not be a pristine due to the fouling hiding pitting. There is a thing as to clean.

[SciFiJim]

I have used GoJo hand cleaner and a bronze brush. Put the end of the barrel in the can of GoJo and use the brush and cleaning rod to pump the cleaner into the barrel. It works well to clean carbon fouling. Do this until your arm gets tired, then patch it out and run a patch soaked in Ed's Red or Kroil and let it set for a while. Repeat as needed. Eventually, it will come clean.

[JeffG]

Sweets 7.62

[craig61a]

I usually start with Foaming Bore cleaner and let that sit for several days, pushing the old stuff out with a nylon brush and a patch once a day, until there is no more blue. Then I'll scrub with Hoppes and a bronze brush. Another application of FBC and a let sit to see if I get more blue.

Usually depends on how the bore looks initially.

If there is noticeable pitting, I swab the bore with a generous amount of Hoppes, then wrap a patch around a nylon brush, saturate the patch with Hoppes and apply Clover 320 grit lapping compound. I make about twenty passes, then run a few saturated patches through followed by a dry patch. This will remove any rough raised areas around the pitting and makes slugging go a lot easier also. Just be sure to use a bore guide which you will dedicate to that process so the chamber doesn't get a lot of lapping compound in it.

[leebuilder]

Morning, all good processes. Nothing beats Sweets and Ed's Red. Try a pot of boiling water too, you will probley be floored at the state of the first patch you push through.
be well

[dromia]

C2R carbon and copper cleaner, nothing else compares.

[deepwater]

Copper cleaner patches should come out green with copper fouling. The black is powder/carbon residue, which needs to be removed before the copper cleaners can contact the copper.


deepwater

[andrew375]

Alternating applications of bore foam or nitro solvent and sweet's 7.62. All on a Nylon brush.

[edler7]

Whenever I acquire a 'new' rifle I clean the bore with Ed's Red and then some JB's then finish with the electro bore cleaner. I have had barrels back to pristine with this method.

+1 on the electro bore cleaner. You can make one out of a couple D cells, a piece of wire and 2 corks. I worked on the bore of my M1 till I thought it was clean (patches were coming out clean), then my buddy talked me into using his electric rig. The stuff that my other methods had missed and came out with the electric method was amazing.

[SciFiJim]

For those newer shooters like me, here are the directions for an Electro Bore Cleaner. It was on SurplusRifles.com, but seems to be gone now. I copied and pasted it in a Word document to save it and I am glad I did. This is not my work but I am willing to share it.


The Electric Bore Cleaner.

I tried to reduce the drawing I had made up into something that could be posted but it got too tiny to view so I'm going to assume that anybody reading this will have a general idea of a basic electric circuit with a line running out from the positive end of a battery and returning to the negative end. That is all this device really consists of. The power source is a single, "D" cell flashlight battery. I like the rechargeable ones for obvious reasons. In this circuit, a wire is run from the positive lead of the battery, through a simple ON/OFF switch, and out to a 3Ft length of wire with an alligator clip attached. From the negative pole, a wire is run to another 3 Ft length of wire with yet another alligator clip attached. This time, between the negative pole and the clip, you're going to wire in a 0-100 Milliamp DC panel meter. I like to assemble all the components in a Radio Shack 'electronic project box'. They come in all sizes and make for a neat job. Radio Shack also sells the battery holders and 3 ft test leads with alligator clips already attached. With the exception of the Panel Meter, you can probably pick up almost everything you need for the job at Radio Shack.

The next item you'll need is a 1/8 or 3/16" diameter piece of spring stock, about 3 ft in length. Usually hobby shops have this. Any kind of steel rod will do provided it doesn't have a lot of flex in it. On one end of this rod, you're going to shrink into place a length of the heat-shrink wire wrap cover -again available from Radio Shack. Harbor Freight has them as well. The ideal here is to cover about 3" of the end of the rod, including the butt end. No rod exposed on that end. Over the other end of the rod you're going to slip another length of the heat-shrink but you're not going to shrink into place. This piece of tubing will be slid up and down the rod as needed for different barrel lengths. The shrink wraps, both fixed and sliding, will keep the steel rod from grounding to the barrel. It's this rod that will receive all the copper from your barrel so polish it up well, removing any scale and oil before you get to working on it. You're almost done.

Lastly, you need some Parson's Brand Non Sudsing household ammonia. It's blue in color. Why Parsons? Dunno! The guy who designed this unit said to use it, and it only. They sell it nation-wide. Maybe it's not important. Just don't use "sudsing" ammonia.

To Use the Unit:

Clean the powder residue from your barrel. With the bolt removed, insert an appropriately sized cork into the chamber. Prop the gun with the muzzle up. Using a 10CC syringe or a small funnel pour the ammonia into the bore, leaving enough space to insert the electrode (steel rod) without overflowing. Ammonia will dull a glossy finish on a gunstock poste haste so, if it's deluxe wood, remove the barreled action. Otherwise, tie an old T-shirt around the barrel below the muzzle to catch overflow. The Ammonia will not harm the gun's blueing. No guarantees on nickel, though.

With the rod in the barrel (shrink wrapped end towards the chamber) , and the ammonia filled up to the top attach the positive lead of the unit to any metal part that is in circuit with the barrel: the trigger guard, rear sight, reciever ring...what ever. The negative end will attach to the exposed metal end of the rod. The sliding tube will lay between the rod and the barrel preventing the rod from shorting out to the barrel proper.

Flip the switch. The meter should have a brief (1-5 second) spike, then start drifting downward. It will settle out at some point. If the meter stays spiked, check to see that the exposed metal of the rod isn't touching the barrel. Don't freak out. There isn't an arc of electricity carving into your barrel. Just reposition the rod until the needle starts downward. After a few minutes you'll see the meter needle drop quite a bit. Turn off the unit, remove the rod, and wipe off the black gunk that has accumulated on the rod. It's powder residue and other junk carried over by the current. When you wipe the rod you may already see traces of copper. Reinsert the rod, top off the ammonia, and start it up again. The meter will climb up past it's previous low point. Now you can leave it alone unless you're cleaning an ancient Lee Enfield or such with 80 years of copper fouling! About 20 minutes should see a normal rifle cleaned. There will always be a few milli-amps of current passing through the solution so when the meter reads below 10MA I usually figure it's done. When done, remove the rod, pour out the ammonia. (It will be a crazy blue color) Remove the cork. Run a patch of H20 through the bore, and then patch it dry. A light patch with a drop of oil follows. Done.

Safety: The fellow who designed this rig put it into print in a shooting journal some 20 years ago. The next issue, the Editor (an Ex RCBS employee) stated that he'd "heard" that this unit would etch barrels and the electricity could arc inside the barrel, and that possibly, the very iron could be sucked from the steel itself. The designer posted a retraction of the article, claiming that RCBS had threatened him with a lawsuit over what they deemed "patent infringements" on their electric bore cleaner. Well, I smelled a rat. I was in college at the time and our school had a very good chemistry lab. Long story short, with the help of the head of the Chem dept., I ran an experiment on a section of barrel where by I induced current for 120 continuous hours. Every day the section of barrel was examined for surface irregularities and weighed to the 10,000 of a gram. No change in weight showed anything being "stripped" from the steel. There was no change in surface finish. I have used this device for 20 years now on $30 junkers and $5000 collector's guns with no worries. As some of you know, I am a cast bullet junkie. Before this device I would run through quarts of "Sweets 7.62" to remove the copper fouling from each new treasure that crossed my bench. As all cast bullet shooters should know, copper fouling causes inaccuracy and leading. This "de-plating machine" has been a godsend.

By today's standards, this unit costs about $30 to assemble. Built to the specifications I outlined, it should be safe when used as described. If you change anything you're on your own. If you choose to build this unit, you do so at your own risk. Don't you hate having to read that?

[Frank46]

Don't have experience with either foam type bore cleaners or the foul out ones. Having said that I believe that both powder and jacket fouling are put down in layers over a period of time without proper cleaning. Krag 1898 sporter which looked pretty good but with a lot of copper and powder fouling. swear the rifling looked deeper each time a cleaned it. 1895 win in 30-40 krag, had some stubborn jacket fouling that took a very long time to get rid of it. especially on the tops of the lands much like lumps. Soaking with hoppe's and oversized bore brushes did the trick. And finally a BSA martini in 22rf. This one had lumps of lead all over the bore. 22rf bore brushes wouldn't even touch it. Had to use 22 rifle brushes over a very long period of time. Got specs of lead each time I scrubbed the bore. never saw lead fouling like that in a 22rf. Frank

[MtGun44]

I do an ordinary cleaning with Hoppe's and a brass brush, maybe two or three times
and then shoot it. If it shoots well, I stop. If not, I start with the electroplating
machine and that can take up to 3 or more layers off with insulating black gook
between layers. The machine will say "done", and you scrub with Hoppes and then
with acetone to remove oil so water will wet the bore and go again. A few have
been like archeological digs.

Bill

[Ricochet]

The worst I've seen was quite a few years ago when I bought a Turkish Mauser that came heavily caked with cosmoline and had a bright red dot on the left side of the stock. I knew it was a standard practice in eastern European countries to mark stocks with bright red paint that were supposed to be used for drill practice only, not shooting. This one had been used roughly and had a crudely finished stock to start with, being made during 1944. I got on newspapers on the driveway and did the best I could scrubbing off the hardened cosmoline with gasoline till I could handle it and went to work on the action and bore. The action appeared to be in fine shape, but after much scrubbing with a bronze brush and solvents, patching out and repeating, I thought I had gotten down to bare metal. The bore shone brightly, but had only gentle ripples where the lands should be. I couldn't believe a bore could be that worn out, but it did have that red marked stock. I didn't push a slug through it, but stuck a caliper in the muzzle and measured .338". Retrospectively it has a belled muzzle from poor cleaning practices, but I thought the bore was that worn. I tried shooting it just for the heck of it. Couldn't get it on paper. I asked around and got a barrel someone had taken off to make a sporter that had a fairly decent bore, acquired a barrel vise and action wrench and set out to rebarrel the old Turk. But I was unable to budge it. I decided to try heating the barrel and then use penetrating oil while still warm. I put motor oil all over the receiver ring because it would smoke by 500 degrees F, and I thought that wouldn't mess up the heat treatment. Then I put my propane torch to the breech end of the barrel. I had the barreled action stood upright, and as it got hot white smoke started coming out of the muzzle and black granular stuff fell out of the breech! I let it cool down, looked through the bore, and lo and behold, the gentle ripples were gone and there was good rifling in the breech end of the barrel! I'd baked out some stuff that many repeated solvent scrubs had left! I couldn't believe it! So I torched the rest of the barrel, the rest of the stuff baked out of the grooves, I cleaned and oiled it and forgot about changing the barrel. I realized I'd been shooting those cupronickel jacketed hot loaded Turkish 8mm bullets through a very reduced bore diameter rather than a huge worn out one as I'd thought! I took it back to the range and found now it's no tack driver with that belled muzzle but I don't have any trouble keeping it on the paper at 100 yards. I'm quite fond of that ugly old abused rifle! But I'd never imagined fouling (or preservative grease, more likely) could be that hard to scrub out and even survive shooting!

[tdoyka]

i use gunslick foaming bore cleaner, sweets 7.62 and shooters choice to clean the barrel completely out. i also use a nylon brush. read the instructions.

1. use gunslick
2. use sweets
3. use shooters
4. repeat 1-4

i cleaned my 1898 spr armory in 30-40 krag about 7-8 hours a day. i thought it was clean after day 3. i thought the patches were coming out white(after the gunslick, sweets and shooters), so i, meaning dad(i had a stroke, right arm don't work), put thru a lead slug. the slug came out, but before that, it "cleaned" out more black stuff and copper and... back to cleaning. 2 or 3 days later the barrel came out clean, even after the slug came out:bigsmyl2:.

[mac1911]

I am also surprised how well hot dish soapy water gets things clean.
For that first scrub down I use a brush and hot soapy water. It gets a good amount of gunk out. I then use a foaming boar cleaner and let it sit.
I have used the DIY electro bore cleaning way. Works well, down side is it really gets the crud out of all the crevices and pits. Last rifle I did it on was a mosin
It took about 100 rounds to get that Shine back and regain some accuracy.

For copper I found Sweets to work the best but it gives me a headache even outside.
Been using break free foaming copper fouling remover. Does the job.

[HangFireW8]

Cupra Nickel fouling is in a class of its own. Electrolysis is the easiest way to attack it.

[broomhandle]

Hi Fellows,

I have a M/N 91 that had bore like a black hole on space. I could barely see any rifling. Cleaned the bore with various products like Sweets, Hoppes#9 & Blue Wonder. Gave it a usual cleaning & removed lots of crud. Went through three layers of green & black stuff!
Looked a little better, shot it hot & cleaned at the range more stuff came out of the bore! Must have spent about 8 hours cleaning patch's were still green or black.
Shot it some more cleaned again, more stuff came out. I now had dull lands but the groves were cruddy.

Borrowed my pals Electronic bore cleaner, used it twice, the steel rod was covered with stuff that looked like black tooth paste... gritty.... brushed the bore as recommended in the instructions. It looked better! Final clean- the indicator light came on- to tell me it was finished.
The result was a sharp bore the had some patch drag spots, which were removed with JB's Bore paste. The rifle now shoot very well!

I wonder how much of a pressure raise & bullet swage, I was developing with all the extra crud in that barrel?

I would use the electronic bore cleaner FIRST if I get another barrel from hell!

Enjoy our hobby,
broomhandle

[Clark]

I have been messing with military bores since 1965.
I no longer worry about them.
I do not waste my time with military barrels or military ammo or components from military ammo.
With military or commercial sporting rifles, I usually take off the barrel and put on a #3 taper Shilen select match barrel.
I cut an inch off either end of the barrel, cut threads and cut chamber.
To reduce Copper fouling I use IMR-4451 [same speed as H4350] or IMR-4166 [same speed as IMR-4895].
I clean the bore with KG-1, KG-12, Witches Brew [like Flitz and Kroil combined], and Alcohol.

In October i shot a whitetail doe at 629 yards with a Mauser, using the above mods.

[Good Cheer]

A while back I obtained a really nice 6.5 Dutch carbine. The rifling looked nice. And iron fell out in chunks when cleaned with bore solvent.

[smilie=s:

[funnyjim014]

Well im makimg progress with krol and #9copperfouling remover by letting it soak. Im thinking of using some GM top engine cleaner but its harsh stuff and would have to protect or remove wood. Weuse it to disolve carbon buildup that builds up on intake valves and it does a great job at softening that gunk up it should work here

[gwpercle]

My 1895 7X57 , had a rough looking bore but a brass brush, wrapped with 0000 steel wool and smeared with J-B bore cleaning paste cleaned it up nicely after 4 sessions of scrubbing.
Soaking with anything , in between scrubbing will help.
Do give the J-B bore cleaning paste a try, it is a really fine abrasive and smooths out any rust spots and rough patches . My barrel is still not perfectly shiney, it shows a frosted appearance, but it will shoot just fine.
Gary

[alamogunr]

I posed a similar question on a milsurp collector's board. Those guys are used to cleaning abused bores. The situations is not the same but lots of good info. Look here:

http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?407195-Corroded-Mosin-Nagant-91-30&p=3419739#post3419739