Range Report Is it time to clean?

[m1ajunkie]

After reading here on the hide, I have become a huge fan of not cleaning my barrel until accuracy suffers. Pretty sure I am at/past that point but I would like to make sure that I am on the right track. My .308 SS 5r barrel in my lmt mws used to be a solid moa or less barrel. I quit shooting it in the fall due to going to my new 6.5cm barrel.

Now that I am back with the .308 barrel I am really struggling to get any group to moa and I'm getting number of "fliers" opening groups up to 1.5" at 100yds. I have swabbed the bore with hoppes 9 before, but never a copper cutting solvent. I have probably 1500-2k rounds down the bore. Can the copper fouling really cause accuracy degradation like I am getting?

I am shooting the same load I have always used, and my last range trip I came away very frustrated. Tonight I am using pro shot copper solvent 4 and am getting patch after patch to come out blue so I am hoping that will help with my issue.

 

[260shooter]

Yes copper builds up in your barrel as the round count goes up. You don't have to take it down to bare metal to get it shooting accurately again. I don't mind going 100-150 rounds without cleaning with 260 rem sized cartridges, 1500 even in 308 sounds like a little much.

 

[mobius38]

I think that it is time to clean that bad boy. Get yourself some BoreTech C4 Carbon Remover and Cu2 Copper remover and follow the dirrections. The BorTech products really works for me. On a side not I have heard some people are getting good results from K12 Copper Solvent for the really stubbern stuff.

 

[spaniel]

It really depends on the barrel. I have a factory 300WM Remington barrel that is .5 MOA, that is for ~20-25 rds. Past that it goes quickly to 1.5 MOA and needs a full copper solvent soak to recover accuracy.

 

[Killswitch Engage]

I've definitely departed from the no clean koolaid. I've went back to what I think is a common sense cleaning of every 200rds. This covers most matches that I shoot. My barrels don't exhibit any clean cold bore to fouled bore change worth meantioning and being they are hand lapped high end barrels they clean up extremely easy so not cleaning it to me makes no sense. I have went to using wipeout and very little brush as scrub. It works so well you don't have to. Give it a try.

 

[Jaeger308]

.308 with Rock Creek 5R barrel I will patch it out with butches bore shine every 50-80 rounds. It only gets a brush after 250-300 rounds. Never had accuracy issues.

 

[m1ajunkie]

Here is an update for any one interested. After a little over 2 days of using the pro shot copper solvent and a bore brush to get the copper out of my barrel, my rifle is shooting like normal again.

My load of 43 gr varget with the 175smk printed these 2 groups after I fired some privi 175gr ammo to foul the bore. These were the first 2 groups I fired today, those circles are 1" dots from 100yds: