Last Saturday I recieved a new Taurus PT-1911; I shot it for function using the same ammo i had made up for a Ruger Redhawk. After 40 rounds of cast boolit ammo(Flawless function BTW) I took the 1911 into the garage to clean it up and was astonished to see that the bore was so leaded up that the rifling lands were barely visible--what followed was several hours of patching, soaking, scrubbing, repeating. Used foaming cleaner(wipe-out), all the tricks; wore out 2 45-cal brushes too.
Towards the end of this marathon, as I was getting down to bare barrel steel and having worn my only 2 45-cal brushes to the point they were all but useless for the chore, I dug down to the bottom of my cleaning supplies and pulled out my hoard of "Kleen Bore lead away(tm)" gun cleaning patches. These are a thicker than normal patch impregnated with something that not only removes lead but smells good too!
Using this product I was able to finally and completely remove the last stubborn traces(and some bigger "globs") of lead in the bore.
So, sorry to be long-winded, the point of this is that I'm thinking that someone here on this forum might be able to tell me what is is in these patches that works so well to remove lead from steel?
The patches have a (to me) pleasant smell, kinda like coconut oil; if whatever magic juice is in them could be bottled I'd sure like to make some! The patches are available but they cost $6.99 for a package of 10 1.25x1.25-inch patches.
Any suggestions? This stuff really does the trick!