Super-Easy DIY Wood Large Bore Cleaning Rods Using A 9mm Shell

[Liberty1776]

I need a sturdy one-piece cleaning rod for my 20-inch double barrel shotguns. Also, our SASS club handed out 3/8-inch dowels with handles as participation gifts.

(Sometimes you need to push obstructions out of the barrel, like when a .38 shell is accidentally loaded into a .44 rifle. Hey, it happens. NOTE: a .38 Spl shell drops all the way into a .44 Mag chamber, and cannot be fired, and totally locks up the rifle. Don't ask me how I know. But I digress.) But back to cleaning rods.

The thought dawned on me that a 3/8-inch wood dowel rod, cut to 24 inches, would be the ideal length for the effort needed to push mops, brushes and cleaning jags down the 20-inch 12-ga barrel.

But I wanted the rod to be the larger 5/16-27 thread for shotgun-sized cleaning accessories.

How to put sturdy threads on the end of a wooden rod?

Turns out a 9mm Luger shell fits over a 3/8" rod perfectly. And with only a bit of sanding to reduce diameter, a .32ACP shell also fits. This gives you a brass cap to support the threads.

Deprime the 9mm (or .32 ACP) shell and epoxy it to the end of the dowel.

After the epoxy sets up, drill a Number 30 or a Number 29 hole through the empty primer hole into the wood about a half inch. (The slightly smaller Number 30 allows for better threads in brass.)

Thread the hole with an 8-32 tap.

Presto. You have a cleaning rod that can accept all normal 8-32 cleaning accessories.

And by screwing in a brass 8-32 to 5/16-27 adapter, which seats nicely against the bottom of the shell -- offering excellent support -- I can now use it for larger calibers like .44 Mag, .45 Colt/ACP or S&W 500 bores, up to 12 ga shotgun.

The soft wood shaft and brass tip will not harm barrels.

Took all of 15 minutes to build (including the 5-minute epoxy to set), for pennies. Make 'em to custom lengths if desired.

If you wanted it even sturdier, a 7/16-inch or 1/2-inch dowel and a .45ACP shell might work. (Haven't tried it.)

EDIT: I got a 5/16-27 tap and drilled a Letter I hole though the primer pocket in a .45 ACP shell. You get serious threads there -- about 1/4" deep. Lot of brass in a .45 ACP head.
The shell fits nicely over a 7/16" dowel. Now I don't have to use the shotgun adapter to hold shotgun sized accessories.

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These are 9mm shells on 3/8" dowels:
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[Shawlerbrook]

Very ingenious.

[Gewehr-Guy]

Good idea ! I'm going to make a couple short rods for revolver and cylinder cleaning.

[Burnt Fingers]

Wood rods work great for shotguns. I would never use a wooden rod in a rifle or handgun.

If you break one you'll likely pay the devil to get them out.

[Liberty1776]

Right you are, Gewehr-Guy. Even the shortest cleaning rods are too long for cleaning revolver cylinders easily.

My wife's SASS revolvers are .32 H&R Mag Single Sixes; mine are .357 Vaqueros or .45 Colts, depending on my mood.

That's a lot of cylinders to scrub. A shorter rod would be very handy, maybe with a small wooden ball on the pushing end. I've saved some old wooden-ball drawer-pulls for such a time as this.

For the .32 H&R cylinder, perhaps I could fit a .25 ACP to a 1/4 inch dowel.

Never throw anything away, is my motto. (Much to the wife's chagrin....)

[wilecoyote]

...I agree...a short section of brass or steel rod, coated with plastic electric shrinking tube, threaded at both ends to keep wooden or plastic ball as handle and the cleaning tool on the other side

[pworley1]

Very nice work. I use 48" hard wood dowels of varying sizes with six grooves cut around them at the end to hold my patches.

[Liberty1776]

Made a couple of shorter rods with old drawer pulls as ball-ends. One is the cutoff from the longer 3/8 rod (well, actually the dowel was more like 11/32 inch).

The other is a 1/4 inch dowel, with a .25 ACP shell epoxied on the end.

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Thought struck me that I could thread for that oddball milstd 8-36 threads on a custom rod, if I can locate a tap that size.

[Wayne Smith]

Places that supply muzzle loader shooters like Track of the Wolf have straight grain dowel rods. You might look there for your dowels. They also have the ends already threaded.

[garandsrus]

Great idea! I made a 50 cal muzzle loading ram rod from a piece of 3/8” cold rolled steel rod found at the hardware store. I made a brass crown protector that goes about 1/2” inside the barrel so that the rod won’t touch the muzzle and threaded the other end for accessories. It works great and doesn’t flex when seating a bullet. It’s heavy but for the range it doesn’t matter.