I never learned much about carbon rings until recently and it has me wondering if chamber and throats ought to get some precautionary attention before signs of ring develop, or do some guns never develop a ring problem ? I undertand this seems to depend a lot on powders used, and I am shooting factory Prime. The rifle I wonder about has 880 down the tube and has not required cleaning of the bore for accuracy or velocity (using those as indicators). But that doesn't tell me if a ring is developing in the chamber and just not big enough to produce signs that I can detect. I don't have a borescope.
Question on when to clean
- Thread starter Apnea
- Start date
It’s always a good idea to clean before it gets dirty enough for problems occur.
Outside of normal bore cleaning I like to take a patch and soak it in boretech c4 and let it just sit on the throat right where you can first feel it engaging the lands, maybe half a patch length in. Just let the stuff sit and soak into the throat for an hour where the carbon ring develops. Then scrub it out with a bronze brush. Might take a couple times actually but it’s better to do it early than when your bullet starts engraving itself on the built up hard carbon deposits.
Outside of normal bore cleaning I like to take a patch and soak it in boretech c4 and let it just sit on the throat right where you can first feel it engaging the lands, maybe half a patch length in. Just let the stuff sit and soak into the throat for an hour where the carbon ring develops. Then scrub it out with a bronze brush. Might take a couple times actually but it’s better to do it early than when your bullet starts engraving itself on the built up hard carbon deposits.
I agree with spife7980. With my first 6.5CM barrel this year I cleaned when I felt like it. Every 500-750 rounds. Ended up being a poor practice. Zero wandered as the barrel and brake got dirty. Also had a build up in the throat of really hard carbon. I've gone to cleaning after every match. I also soak the throat every time like spife does. I have a bore scope and I've noticed the throat is not building up carbon like it was with the last barrel. My zero is staying more consistent. Precision shooting is all about consistency and cleaning more often gives me that, I know the current trend is to clean less but all of the top shooters I talk to are cleaning more often than most recommend. Take that for what its worth.
I have a similar process to what Spife described but usually use 200 rounds as my mark for cleaning.
Some calibers I shoot that are overbore like 243win and 300wm I clean more often.
I'm sure it is probably just in my head but since I started using FP-10 to oil and condition the bores of my rifles I feel like they run cleaner with less fouling build up but I'm sure everybody has their favorite snake oil.
Some calibers I shoot that are overbore like 243win and 300wm I clean more often.
I'm sure it is probably just in my head but since I started using FP-10 to oil and condition the bores of my rifles I feel like they run cleaner with less fouling build up but I'm sure everybody has their favorite snake oil.
I recently picked up a borescope, and noted that I had carbon ring buildup on barrels I thought was cleaning adequately (ie every 200 rounds). Spife's advice of soaked patch with Boretech C4 and a bronze brush is good.
A clean barrel is a happy barrel. Cleaning doesn't affect the life or performance of the barrel at all. In fact managing heat checking will extend it. And yes a fouler or two will be required after cleaning.
