Sal Soda for rifle barrel cleaning

[Char-Gar]

I have a neat little book written in 1916 entitled Fundamentals ofMilitary Service by Captian Lincoln C. Andrews, U.S. Cavlary. It covers about every topic you can imagine regarding Army matters. In the section on small arms cleaning, he says to use sal soda to clean rifle barrels after firing.

According to Google, sal soda is sodium carbonate and when hydrated (mixed with water) is a general cleaning solution. Anybody have any experience with this stuff for cleaning rifle barrels with corrosive primers? He does say, that if sal soda is unavilable Hoppe's No. 9 can be substituted.

To remove metal fouling and lead from barrels he says to:

Pulverize and mix 2 medium heaping spoonfuls of ammonium persulphate with 1 of ammonium carbonate (ordance spoon); add 3/8 pint of ammonia and 1/4 pint of water. stirring throughly; stand at least 1/2 hour before use. Cork the breech end of the barrel and let stand for 30 minutes, remove and wipe dry.

Lots of interesting stuff from how to clean a field range (stove) to guard duty, to how to conduct a patrol and on and on and on.

[waksupi]

Sodium carbonate is plain old washing soda, available in most grocery stores.

[Buckshot]

...............My wife, Donna worked for the Defense Audio Visual Agency for several years, which was located on Norton AFB in San Bernardino, CA. They were the largest government film repository west of the Mississippi. Her job was in transferring film to Beta tapes. After that the film went to reclaimation where the silver was reclaimed and the film then was sent to a recycler.

About 6 months before she was rifted (and a year before the whole thing was shut down and moved) they got about 20 copies of a book the size of a large city's phone book. Each page was filled with columns of film catalog numbers for films to be delivered to a major reclaimation company in Los Angeles where the film would be shredded, silver reclaimed and the balance recycled. She said that for a couple months she and a few other people spent their entire workday in the stacks pulling film boxes and loading them on flatbeds, like those at home improvement places.

They'd then move them to the loading dock and throw the boxed film into those large roll-on, roll-off trash containers. When they filled one they started on the next. She said the films dated from the early 1900's to fairly current, and covered most any subject you could imagine, from aviation to veterinary.

..................Buckshot

[Multigunner]

Heres a site with free pdf download of "Farrow's Manual of Military Training"
http://www.archive.org/details/farrowsmanualmi00farrgoog

All sorts of old time stuff in there.

The Internet Archive makes available free downloads of public domain books, usually 1910 vintage or earlier. Some go back to the 16th century.

Volunteers scan the books found in major librarys and convert them to PDF and other formats.
Best to choose B&W PDF since many of the books have aged till the print isn't easy to read against the yellowed or brown tinted old paper.

[Char-Gar]

Water is the primo stuff to dissolve and remove the salts left by corrosive primers. Sodium carbonate when mixed with water is a general cleaning agent that works better than soap/detergents on oil and grease strain in clothing.

I suspect that the old army method of cleaning rifle barrels with sal soda (hydrated sodium carbonate) would work as well or better than the traditional soapy water.

I was just wondering if anybody had heard of using this stuff to clean rifle barrels before?

[Char-Gar]

Multigunner.. I followed the link to Farrows book published in 1919 and he gave the same instructions as Lincoln to cleaning rifle barrels. He instructions were longer and told how to prepare the "soda solution". It was 2 heaping teaspoons of sal soda into 1 pint of hot water.

So, I gather the use of sal soda solution was pretty much standard in the old army. Both Lincoln and Farrow were pretty strong on removing the metal fouling as well.

[WineMan]

That mix of Ammonium Persulfate etc. sounds like the "Ammonia Dope" mentioned in Hatcher's Notebook for removing the cupro-nickle fouling in the bores of Springfields. Apparently it worked great but any contact with air and the barrel would corrode rapidly, hence the plug and rubber tube on the muzzle. Old stuff was really corrosive and it was supposed to be made up fresh each time. The barrel had to be rinsed out as soon as emptied and quickly oiled.

Wineman.

[spqrzilla]

The date indicates it was written at a time when the real cause of corrosion from corrosive priming was not fully understood. It sounds like it was an attempt to address a theory that was later disproved - that the new smokeless powder left acids in the barrel.

[Multigunner]

The date indicates it was written at a time when the real cause of corrosion from corrosive priming was not fully understood. It sounds like it was an attempt to address a theory that was later disproved - that the new smokeless powder left acids in the barrel.

Some Smokeless powders did create Nitrous Acids as a product of combustion, but the effect was miniscule compared to the hydro-scopic salts left by the primer.
The nitrious acids caused 'Chemical Erosion" rather than Corrosion. A sort of superheated acid washing of the steel, the effect was limited to the burning time in the bore while shooting.
Black Powder fouling and bullet lubes partly protected the bores of BP era rifles from primer residues, the unlubed bullets and lesser amount of fouling of smokeless cartridges let the primer salts go to work much faster, so it appeared the powders were the source.
Also simple soap and water cleaning of BP fouling washed away the dissolved salts with the powder fouling.

Microscopic fissures do open and close according to heat and pressures so microscopic residues could be trapped below the surface of the steel or under layers of metal fouling and not be pushed out by a patch in regular cleaning. So unless the salts were totally dissolved they could cause rusting days or weeks later when atmospheric humidity got to them.
Rifles greased and put in storage without first removing all metal fouling could rust away under the metal fouling, if aged cosmoline hardened and shrank away from the bore surface.
The British relied on hot water poured down the bore with a funnel, six pints were recommended. But from the sad state of many Enfield barrels I've seen water alone just wasn't enough to do the trick, even if followed up by oiling the bore.

If you don't get the metal fouling out corrosive primer salts can still eat up your bore no matter how much hot water you used.

[ilcop22]

I've been given some good advice about desalting old rifles using the water and soda method. I also do electrolysis rust and fouling removal on older gun parts and bores which involves the use of a water and washing soda solution.

I use that same solution type to boil small parts for cosmo and fouling removal. The stuff worked then and works just as well now.

[Mk42gunner]

Water is the primo stuff to dissolve and remove the salts left by corrosive primers. Sodium carbonate when mixed with water is a general cleaning agent that works better than soap/detergents on oil and grease strain in clothing.

I suspect that the old army method of cleaning rifle barrels with sal soda (hydrated sodium carbonate) would work as well or better than the traditional soapy water.

I was just wondering if anybody had heard of using this stuff to clean rifle barrels before?

By the timeI got to my first ship, (1987) we were using CLP to clean the bore on the 5"/54 guns. Most of the older Gunner's Mates told me that they had used soda and water prior to CLP becoming the authorized bore cleaner. Never having heard of washing soda, I always thought they used baking soda.

Robert

[Bret4207]

I love the old texts that recommend you walk down to the "druggist" and obtain "a jigger of quicksilver" (mercury) or an ounce of something no one in living memory has seen in person in the last century or 35 grains of suretokillyouifyouevenlookatit. Those old pharmacies must have been something.

Maybe I'll go to Walgreens and see if they'll sell me 2 ounces of lampblack...

[Char-Gar]

I don't think lampblack was purchased, but harvested from the chimney's of your oil lamps. At least that is what I always assumed and assumption is often wrong.

[Bret4207]

Ah, Charles, you young whippersnapper! In my possession, somewhere, is an ancient glass container of "Murrays Lampblack". Maybe it's "Murphys", whatever, I haven't seen it in 20 years. It's something my Dad got from an old gun crank. They used it for stock work IIRC.

Truth is stranger than fiction....

[Char-Gar]

Bret.. Somewhere in the dimmer portions of my memory bank is an old photo or drawing of a stockmaker, smoking the metal of a rifle over a lamp without a chimmey, prior to a fitting. It was used just like I/we now use Prussian Blue.

I think lampblack could also be mixed with a little oil to form a paste used again like we now use Prussian Blue.

I stand corrected about the commercial availability of lamp black.

[btroj]

Bret- you would be surprised at how many people still come into pharmacies and ask for oldie but goodies. Not daily or weekly but enough to surprise me.

In 20 years I have never used a poison register but did work in a pharmacy that actually did have one.

Brad

[Multigunner]

I love the old texts that recommend you walk down to the "druggist" and obtain "a jigger of quicksilver" (mercury) or an ounce of something no one in living memory has seen in person in the last century or 35 grains of suretokillyouifyouevenlookatit. Those old pharmacies must have been something.

Maybe I'll go to Walgreens and see if they'll sell me 2 ounces of lampblack...

An old Pharmaci near here, now long gone after the building was first turned into a hardware store for many years, Had a huge glass canister marked Cocaine, with a big scoop they used when mixing various elixers that used cocaine as the major active ingrediant.

I once tried to fill a list of chemicals suggested for hot bath bluing at a paint supply store, and the owner went off the deep end, much of the list was then on a list of drug manufacturing materials. same happened when I inquired about anhydrous Ammonia, which is now a major chemical used in mass production of crystal meth.
Meth cookers have been stealing tanks of ammonia from large farms. Got no idea what the farmers use it for.

[DIRT Farmer]

We have been known to use anhydrous ammonia to stop dogs from chasing equipment to backing off tailgaters. What it is realy used for is fertliser, for the nitrogen in corn. anhydrous (with out water) binds with water when injected in soil and corn gets the nitrogen in it. in other words it binds with water where it finds it and boils at -270 ferinhite. spill a little on you and it flash frezes. A lot of meth heads must be missing parts frozen off.