At the range prior to my Tikka .223’s first shot, I’ve been removing the oil leftover from barrel cleaning. But I’ve been reading about how leaving this oil in the barrel may help prevent copper buildup from the first few shots, and that some shooters will run a patch with traces of graphite down the barrel prior to shooting in order to also prevent coppering. Has anybody observed increased copper buildup or long tern issues from a dry barrel as oppossed to an oiled one or one with a trace of graphite for the first few shots? Thanks
First shot barrel oiled or dry ?
- Thread starter Fisher1
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This is rimfire section. Might want to get a mod to move it.
To answer your question, I don't think you can truly dry oil from a bore with a few patches.
You certainly don't want to leave much oil there as it can cause pressure issues and bore damage.
So my thought is to dry it but the residual oil might help with copper fowling.
To answer your question, I don't think you can truly dry oil from a bore with a few patches.
You certainly don't want to leave much oil there as it can cause pressure issues and bore damage.
So my thought is to dry it but the residual oil might help with copper fowling.
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Whatever lube you put in the barrel ain't gonna stay there long. If you have good barrel with a nice smooth bore, copper buildup won't be a problem. If you have a barrel with a less than smooth bore, nothing is going to appreciably reduce the amount of copper buildup. Shoot, I would argue that if your barrel is bad enough, some copper buildup might be good.
Clean it. Shoot it. When it gets to top accuracy, keep shooting it until the accuracy falls off. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If your a competition shooter this keep shooting until the accuracy falls off makes no sense to me.. What if the accuracy falls off in the middle of competition. This is why most UL remfire shooters shoot clean barrels. They don't want accuracy to fall off in the middle of a card. Having said that, if your not a competition shooter it really doesn't matter when accuracy falls off and you can clean whenever,
Well, nothing was mentioned about competition shooting. Besides, competition shooters aren't shooting anything generic. Theyre shooting custom rigs with very nice barrels.
It sounded like we were talking about an off the shelf rifle here. For an off the shelf rifle being shot for general purpose, I dont think a whole lot of thought is required here, unless you just like cleaning your rifle.
The question was one of whether keeping oil in the barrel reduces copper fouling. I dont think so. Clean it, run an oiled patch, followed by a dry patch and shoot when youre ready to. Adding oil to wet the bore before you shoot isn't going to do anything but cause your first shot to be off on a seasoned barrel.
As far as competition shooting goes, are you proposing that a competitive shooter begins a match with a barrel where the last thing that went down it was a cleaning patch?
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