Outer's Foul Out Opinions Wanted

[waksupi]

After spending several hours today, cleaning a badly coppered bore, it came to me that time could be better spent, if the Foul Outs work as advertised.

I have never personally used one, and would like to have imput, pro and con, from users. Also, length of time it takes to clean a badly jacket fouled bore, whatever you can think of. What is the solution that is put in the barrel? Common stuff you can buy, or is it a proprietory chemical? Would Washing Soda, like we use in reverse electrolosis, work?

[rockrat]

I have used a Foul Out. Works well on a fouled bore with the solution they send. I have also used diluted ammonia for short period. I use brass welding rods with O-rings on them to keep them away from the bore, along with the rubber stopper. On a real fouled bore, I have had to pull the brass rod and sandpaper it to take the copper off the surface, then it works pretty well again(note- these are other peoples guns-they wonder why they won't shoot very well!!)

[Jumptrap]

After spending several hours today, cleaning a badly coppered bore, it came to me that time could be better spent, if the Foul Outs work as advertised.

I have never personally used one, and would like to have imput, pro and con, from users. Also, length of time it takes to clean a badly jacket fouled bore, whatever you can think of. What is the solution that is put in the barrel? Common stuff you can buy, or is it a proprietory chemical? Would Washing Soda, like we use in reverse electrolosis, work?

Ric,

I think if you ever drop the bucks for one, you'll shake your head and wonder how the hell you ever did without it. Mine doiesn't see a lot of service because I cleaned everything up and rarely ever use jacketed bullets any more. BUT, I don't care if I use it once a year........it was money well spent. Everybody has an opinion just like a rectum....how they wipe thiers is their business. You'll yank out every gun you have...especially the clean ones.....and find out how fouled they are. i have yet to butcher any bores...to hell with the nay sayers. Plug the barrel, dump in the solution and let it work several hours or over night. The next day you have a copper plated rod! i keep doing it until no more copper is leached out. Is it all that important to have a bore squeaky clean? Not in my experience. But if you have a bad fouler...like some some super hotty....the Foul Out prevents bore wear from scrubbing and lots of elbow grease. Buy one.

[crazy mark]

Ric,
I'm writing an article on the use of them for da book. Some of the best money I have spent in my mind. It cleans copper and lead really good. The only down side is the chemicals are nasty and one should wear proper protection. If you follow directions you can't go wrong. There are instructions on the net for how to make your own but too much amps and you can have ill effects on your barrel. Mark

[walltube]

Ric,

I agree with JT in his summation. The thing flat out works.

If you have access to a well stocked welding supply dealer, stainless steel 312-316 filler rods will allow you greater flexibility by cutting them to length to suit your pistols or any other firearm with a bbl. length not exceeding the filler rod's. For example: lead accumulation in the cylinder may be addressed by cutting a 1\16" or 1\8" dia. rod that suits the cyl. length. Or, if leading is present in the forcing cone simply plug the muzzle after inserting the rod, fill with Lead-Out solution, attach 'gator clips, energise the power thingy, have a beer (or whatever). In minutes you'll see the lead accumulate on the electrode. Copper is not so dramatic, have two six packs . The preceeding of course applies to the Foul-Out II only. Oh yeah, one more note here, I bend a half inch or so 90 degree angle to the electrode that the 'gator clip may be turned away from the top strap to prevent an unwanted short.

I have not any experience with the Foul-Out III unit as of this message. But one is on my "must have" list.

Hope I've been of help.

Yours Truly............Harold

[JSH]

I have to throw my .02 in here. The Foul Out I used to have worked but was not as good as I had figured it would be. I had copper issues but none with lead. I picked up a can of Wipe Out around a year after I bought The FO. Long story short I just use the WO now. Two go arounds with the WO and it is clean, for really bad barrels. Any more about once a year on my FLGC guns is about all they need.
I know FLGC, but before I came over to CB's, I had accumilated about 10K of various FLGC's. Who knows maybe I can trade a few more for some molds.........
Jeff

[nelson133]

If you want to try it out, or you are cheap, make your own. The liquid is 1 part ammonia to 1 part vinegar to 2 parts water. Buy a mild steel rod and a rubber stopper that will seal the breech. Put either electrical tape or small orings along the rod to keep it from touching the barrel. Insert rod into stopper, stopper into breech, fill barrel with solution, and apply dc current through the solution by hooking up one pole of your electrical source to the barrel and another to the rod. Give it 20 minutes and see what you get. The polarity of the current is important, as you want it to flow from the barrel to the rod to plate the rod. The electrical source can be as small as a 2 d cell flashlight, I use a small trickle charge battery charger. If you don't have a rubber stopper, multiple winds of teflon tape will work. Much more and detailed information is availabe on surplusrifles.com.

[rocklock]

One thing to remember...the fouling may be in layers, especially in old milsurp rifles.

To give an example, I have a J-bore Gew 88. The bore was nothing to write home about so I decided to use the Foul-Out on it. After about 3 hours I ran a patch down the bore and pushed out quite a bit of black carbon fouling. After cleaning until the patches came out white I ran the F-O for 3 hours and another patch pushed out more black goo. About 2 days worth of this cycle revealed an excellent bore under all the crud.

[twotoescharlie]

make your own for less than ten bucks!

www.surplusrifle.com

TTC

[wills]

make your own for less than ten bucks!

www.surplusrifle.com

TTC

More specifically;

http://www.surplusrifle.com/reviews/...hesurplus2.pdf

[nvbirdman]

I love my Foul-Out.
It gets my guns squeeky clean with no labor on my part.
Do you fire 38's in your 357? Do you have trouble extracting the 357's?
If you think that cylinder is clean, try cleaning it with a Foul-Out.

[Steelshooter]

Does this formula remove lead also or just the copper? I have a foul out 2 and it came with two mixtures, one for copper and one for lead. I am about out of both and don't want to buy some more, the stuff is expensive

[walltube]

I love my Foul-Out.
It gets my guns squeeky clean with no labor on my part.
Do you fire 38's in your 357? Do you have trouble extracting the 357's?
If you think that cylinder is clean, try cleaning it with a Foul-Out.

Yep! The FO II makes it quick & easy removing the lead fouling in the cylinder after using shorter cases in your .357\.44 magnum.

My Dearly Beloved's SP101 cylinder is slightly out of register from wear & tear. This condition makes what would be a real chore to clean if it were not for the FOII. 100 rnds. of 358477 will have the underside of the top strap, forcing cone, and bbl. face\frame all crapped up with lead fouling.

My cleaning method is (was) to tilt the SP muzzle down, trigger guard up at approx. 45* with the cylinder secured open. Duct or electrician's tape is then wrapped around the frame at the bbl. This forms a sort "tank" to fill the affected area to be cleaned with cleaning solution. A short legnth of SS filler rod eletrode with its' 1" 90* bend will present itself for the 'gator clip. Fill plugged bbl. with your favorite cleaning concoction, energise the unit and watch the lead collect on the electrode. Such fun .

I hope to hell I haven't made a really simple & effective cleaning method seem complicated with my clumsy narration.

Dat mean a whole lotta verbbin' and adjectavin' be goin' on bra'. Buckshot, he know whut it is. Yo!

Yours Truly............Walltube

[anachronism]

My FOII is a wonderful device. I rarely use it anymore, not because I've found something better (I haven't), but because I don't shoot many jacketed bullets anymore. To clean your forcing cone, drill a small hole, smaller than the diameter of the rod you intend to use, through a properly sized rubber bore plug. stick your rod through the plug, add an appropriate o-ring, and position it in the bore, with about an inch or so sticking out, into the revolvers cylinder window, the cylinder is either open, or removed, of course. Fill the bore with the magic elixer from the forcing cone, and start the foul-Out. Soon, it will be all shiney clean. My Foul-Out handgun record was set by my .41 magnum Redhawk, it took three days, and six solution changes, and rod cleanings to finally conquer the jacketed fouling in that one. The .338 Remington 700 took six days, and about 14 cleanings & changes to finally get clean. This was with the old, original Foul-Out solvent that has been "improved" twice since then. Every used gunI buy gets to meet MISTER Foul-Out.

[lovedogs]

You won't need one every day, but when you need one nothing works better. Can be a little slow on copper sometimes but really works fast and completely on lead. Be careful about "building your own" and making up your own chemicals. Also, they work best if you use the right grade of stainless rods, like what they come with. If memory serves, they are 340 grade stainless and they conduct the electricity at the rate the machine was designed to work at. Folks at Outer's are helpful and their chemistry people quite knowledgeable.

[garandsrus]

Hi,

I built my own unit and it works great.... It is a little different from the link above, but similar. I bought all the parts at radio shack.

I have cleaned several rifle bore's with one set of two DD batteries and they are still going strong. I really like this for the Garand since you have to clean from the muzzle if you use a cleaning rod.

I have only used it for removing copper fowling.

To remove lead in stainless handguns, I use (from http://www.frfrogspad.com/homemade.htm#Lead) :

A 50/50 mix of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide (the common drug store variety) and white vinegar. Plug the bore, fill it up using a dropper or syringe and let it stand for 5-10 minutes. (Do not let it stand for too long.) You may get some foaming so protect the barrel's external finish as this solution is not kind to bluing--so take appropriate precautions. Drain and wipe out the black muck that used to be lead and then immediately clean well with bore cleaner.

This works really well also...

John

[PatMarlin]

I broke down an bought one this past year as I was having a hard time getting a few of my rifles down to bare metal. It worked great, and all the heavy ram rod brusing can't be the best thing for your bore.

The chemicals are extremely mild, with vinegar being the primary solution in one, and the other close to windex. Nothing nasty there.

Funny thing though- My 1917 enfield produced small lead flakes when I empty'd out the solution. I thought it was supposed to adhear to the rod. Any thoughts on that?

[David R]

OK, that is my project for today, to go out and get a rod. I have O rings, and the household chemicals. I even have a flashlight that fell off the fridge and broke the head off. All that is left are two copper strips coming out from the base that holds the batteries, so all I have to do is solder some wire and alagator clips on em.

Been wanting to do this for a long time, thanks for the push.

David

[David R]

OK, I bought a 1/8" 3' steel rod at the hardware store. I taped it so it doesn't touch the barrel , mixed up water, amonia, and viniger 2 to 1 to 1.

I read back about polarity, and decided to try it both ways. With + on the electrode, it draws 25 milliamps and works slow. With - on the electrode, it draws 90 milliamps and bubbles as soon as I hook it up. It seems more gunk goes to the rod with + electrode.

Well, the first few times I left it on for 20 minutes, pulled out the rod and coldn't believe the gunk on the rod. I wiped it off, changed the solution and put it back in again. With the electrode +, I had to clean the rod off with sandpaper. All was getting is a bunch of dark green to black gunk that turned brown after it dried. Next I left it in for 1 hour. I continued for about 6 hours. Still getting gunk on the rod, lots of it. The stuff almost filled the space from the rod to the barrel. After the 6 hours and a total of around 10 cleanings of the rod I was still getting gunk on the rod, but I quit. I put the gun in my cleaning vice and ran some hoppies soaked patches through it. It took 10 patches before they stopped coming out totally black. Then I pushed a nylon brush through the barrel. It felt real odd, with LOTS of resistance is some places and a little less in others. After investagating, I realized the brush was binding where the tape was on the rod. I could see the fouling had not been removed where the tape was, so today I am going to put the rod in upside down. This way, the tape will be in a different spot.

This is on my 1917 enfield that I thought I had clean. I wasn't even close.

I will report on how it shoots later today.

My savage 340 in 30-30 is next, then the 1891 arg mauser, then my Savage 24v...............

David

[trooperdan]

David, I think it is pretty important to keep the polarity correct. The positive should go to the rod and nagative on the barrel. I'd be pretty leery of running it reversed.