Cleaning your rifle bore

[ovenpaa]

I suddenly realised I seem to have quite a few different bore cleaning solvents on the shelf. Ask a dozen shooters what they use to remove copper and carbon fouling with and you will get a dozen answers however which one is the most effective?

Time to find out.

We have taken batches of 155 grain SMK #2156 bullets weighed in grains to two decimal places and divided into groups of three, each group has then been dropped into a container with equal amounts of bore cleaner and agitated. At 1 hour I will undo the caps to let some air and then continue to agitate and observe for the next 7 days. At the end of the test period the bullets will be cleaned and then weighed again to see which product removed the most copper and publish the results. Not even I know the contents of each bottle as the Viking is the one that dosed each container and recorded the contents against a list. All I know is the pH of each fluid which varies from pH6 to pH13 so quite a spread.

Here they are at 15 minutes into the test. I have only used known products as opposed to home brewed things and already the results are interesting.

...to be continued.

[judders]

Will be interesting to see the results. I use PH 009, just because it's what was recommended to me initially when I first took up shooting. Have never considered using anything else.

[ovenpaa]

PH 009 is on the list so we should know in about a weeks time. What I did not mention is the bullets were all cleaned in acetone to remove and grease and have not been handled since so in theory they should be cleaner than clean things.

One other thing is all the products claim they have no ammonia in them which is interesting given that one has a pH of 13.

[20series]

Could be an interesting experiment :goodjob: i wonder if u end up with any copper coloured puddles sign01

Alan

[meles meles]

Some of the experiments are taking place deep down in the metallurgy labs under the Badgerkadamy. All proper scientific stuff for the shootin' shed.

[EagerNoSkill]

go Badger go!!!!

[EagerNoSkill]

I predict several surprises!!

[ovenpaa]

I will post another picture in an hour or so as an update. As I said before, I have no real knowledge of what is in each container however I can tell which ones had foam in. Also the normal blue tint is not a key indicator for some of the products as one of he container still has an orangy brown liquid in but the bullets have turned green.

I will set up a poll to see what people normally use, call it market research.

[ovenpaa]

It was a long hour...

Here are the samples at 4 hours.

One thing I have noticed is a couple of the sample pots of bullets show some quite serious oxidisation, in fact the look quite manky at this stage however others show quite significant 'bluing' which I always look on as a sign of copper. All I know at this stage is pots 9&10 had foam in them because it was really obvious, both were filled at the same time and then scraped level with the top of the pots to try and maintain a similar content yet one is all but empty now so the foam must have had a lot more air in it, or less dense depending on which way you look at it.

[Dougan]

I've always used 009, which does the job and I've never had any problems with getting it on my hands...will be interesting to see how it compares.

As an aside; earlier this year I changed to an environmentally friendly brass polish for my tumbling media - it was rubbish to the point that dirt was actually sticking to the cases...so I am ashamed to admit ( ) that at the Trafalgar I had a look at various other polishes and picked the one with the most 'hazard' warnings on it....on the plus side, my cases are now very shiny again