Re: Our own Copper Solvent Test
This is an old thread, but I am resurrecting it because it is always so relevant.
When it comes to cleaning in general, we have tradeoffs... the more cleaning we do, the more of a chance we have of damaging the bore through mechanical action. Solvents allows us to use chemistry to do more with less... basically, clean more while running fewer patches. But we might have just traded mechnical damage for chemical damage.
So it seems to me, with solvents, we have an effectiveness tradeoff. We are trading potential ease in cleaning for potential chemical damage. A solvent can be too good... something that is great at dissolving copper might be good at dissolving iron, or worse, selectively dissolving Chromium, Molybedenum, or Nickel that would have the impact of softening the steel.
For that reason, I am a little bit fearful of a solvent that works really really well as measured by Kombayotch's test.
I guess I could also see how well these solvents work on a chunk of stainless, but that wouldn't address the potential weakening of the steel through the selective leaching of molecules in a gun barrel. Does anyone have any suggestions for testing this? It seems to be the other end of the equation.