Hannibal
01-01-2018, 02:56 PM
I think most of us in the continental US are dealing with cold today. How extreme depends on where you are and what is average in your area for January, I expect. Anyway, as the title states, I'm looking for some information on protecting firearms in extreme temperatures.
I have a couple of rifles that I noticed the accuracy went down on. I blamed myself mostly, but once I acquired a bore cam, I realized that corrosion etching and the resulting copper fouling was the likely cause. I have always thought I took great care of my firearms, so I was not at all pleased with myself when I discovered this damage. It's not something you can see with the naked eye, and if I were not particularly picky in my accuracy/precision expectations, it's something many would ever notice. But when a hand-lapped custom barrel more than doubles it's average group size, it gets MY attention.
Anyway, it's -0-F here right now. Last night, the low was -20F. The air is awfully dry at about 30% humidity. But I conducted an experiment and if I leave a chunk of bar stock outside for an hour, it does indeed frost completely over when I bring it back inside. I have also observed exactly the opposite condition in August, when the temp is in the 100s, the humidity in the upper 80%, and I take the same block of steel from my temperature/humidity controlled loading room to the shooting bench, excepting it is covered with condensation as opposed to frost.
So the point of all this is, how do you owners of precision rifles/competition rifles prevent bore damage? Obviously, a good oil/grease treatment is the way to go for storage, but what about stuff you are shooting every couple of days?
Perhaps I'm obsessing over a rare occurrence. I just want to make sure it doesn't happen again, and swabbing thick oils in and out everyday becomes cumbersome, to say the least. I was using Ed's Red as a short term protectant before. But now I don't trust it.
Any constructive ideas welcome, and thanks for looking.
I have a couple of rifles that I noticed the accuracy went down on. I blamed myself mostly, but once I acquired a bore cam, I realized that corrosion etching and the resulting copper fouling was the likely cause. I have always thought I took great care of my firearms, so I was not at all pleased with myself when I discovered this damage. It's not something you can see with the naked eye, and if I were not particularly picky in my accuracy/precision expectations, it's something many would ever notice. But when a hand-lapped custom barrel more than doubles it's average group size, it gets MY attention.
Anyway, it's -0-F here right now. Last night, the low was -20F. The air is awfully dry at about 30% humidity. But I conducted an experiment and if I leave a chunk of bar stock outside for an hour, it does indeed frost completely over when I bring it back inside. I have also observed exactly the opposite condition in August, when the temp is in the 100s, the humidity in the upper 80%, and I take the same block of steel from my temperature/humidity controlled loading room to the shooting bench, excepting it is covered with condensation as opposed to frost.
So the point of all this is, how do you owners of precision rifles/competition rifles prevent bore damage? Obviously, a good oil/grease treatment is the way to go for storage, but what about stuff you are shooting every couple of days?
Perhaps I'm obsessing over a rare occurrence. I just want to make sure it doesn't happen again, and swabbing thick oils in and out everyday becomes cumbersome, to say the least. I was using Ed's Red as a short term protectant before. But now I don't trust it.
Any constructive ideas welcome, and thanks for looking.