Re: what do you think of bore snakes?
Mike Lucas makes a great bore guide at a good price. Dewey coated one piece rods are what I see/hear most guys using/recommend. I've been a habitual over cleaner that is going to experiment with cleaning a lot less and see how it goes.
As to the bore snake, it's been covered pretty well, it's of no help with a stuck case etc. Most of us are not benchrest shooters, we don't consider a barrel shot out or garbage when it starts shooting 0.2" groups at 100 yards. Those guys throw out barrels that many of us would kill to have. I think the whole dragging contamination back through the barrel is over thinking it. The Bore snake probably has way less PSI applied to the bore in it than a snug fitting patch does and I'd be willing to bet you could put some solvent on a brush brush the dirty barrel, run a patch down it, take that contaminated patch and run it in the barrel till your arm fell off and you wouldn't ruin the barrel.
Now if you have mud/sand/etc. in your barrel sure that coated on a bore snake or anything is a bad idea to drag down the barrel repeatedly. For typical barrel fowling and the little bit of copper/powder/fouling the brush is going to take off and put into the bore snake.....there's no way that's any more harmful to the barrel than the bronze brush is after it's first pass down the barrel with solvent on it, that contamination is pooling in the barrel solvent and that brush is grinding it back into the barrel, that patch is doing the same thing when it starts down the barrel it's contaminated the first 1" of the barrel and dragging it down the rest.
I don't think they do a very good job cleaning, but I do use them at the end of a range day, and usually only for one pass, I wouldn't sit there and try to totally clean a barrel with one. I do think it's also a good idea to clean the bore snakes out now and then.
Bottom line is cleaning is a HUGE controversy as is anything related to it, you will read important people in the shooting arena telling you everything from never clean to clean every 5-10 shots all the time. Myself the more and more I read on it I think it's safe to say people do more damage over cleaning than under. For benchrest shooters sure, they clean frequently for the most part because they need every 0.01" of group accuracy they can get. They throw barrels out that shoot 0.2" and many of their barrels only "last" them 300-500 rounds for peak accuracy.
If one of my barrels goes from 0.4" to 0.5" at 100 yards I could care less, that's still more than enough for my needs. So if the gun still shoots well and accuracy has not fallen off I'm going to avoid frequent heavy cleaning. If it's going to be in a case for a few months sure do a full cleaning, but if I'm going back to the range with it in a couple weeks I'm not worried about it any more
