Varmit barrels & cleaning

[CWD]

I'm shooting a 22-250 mostly at paper and have a three part question
I bought a case of 45 gr. 4000 fps stuff because I could and because there is nothing else around these days,
so

What is best for copper fouling?
I've spent hours cleaning my rifle and still get blue/green patches with a whetted patch

Is it possible my cleaning jags/brushes are faking me out?
I'm using Shooter's Choice copper remover with a brass brush and brass jag

Do or should I need to clean my barrel during a day of shooting?
A typical day for me is 3 - 4 hrs+ and 60 to 80 rounds. I do/thought I've been cleaning after 20 rounds or so with Hoppes 9 then CLP and this takes me about 15 - 20 minutes

I've read you can clean too much, not enough and everywhere in between.
Do you bench rest guys clean your barrels during a day of shooting? Do you even shoot that many rounds?

 

[Hunter]

I've shot some of those rounds (Winchester) and found them to be as accurate as any of my 22-250 handloads.

Regarding copper fouling and cleaning, I'm no expert; however, I'll share some thoughts. First, I think my best results have come with swabbing the bore with Hoppes copper stuff (and letting it soak for several hours), followed by using a nylon brush with something stonger, e.g., CR-10 -- and drying the bore using a nylon jag. Second, I've seen some factory-class benchrest shooters shoot all day (maybe 90 shots) without cleaning, and I've seen some nice results on their targets; I've seen others (including custom-gun shooters) clean between every match (maybe 10 shots). I shoot a factory gun and usually do a light cleaning between yardages (maybe 45 shots) and can not discern any decline in accuracy by not cleaning between individual matches.

 

[.357Mag]

cleaning

CWD -

Howdy !

IMHO -

CLean more-often than once every 60+ rnds. I've shot my share of .22-250 and other .224" cal CF's. It was not uncommon to se accuracy fall-off after 25 shots; and sometimes even sooner.

At a match, many shooters may feel they'll be fine w/ cleaning te barre; as often as they like. These are also folks that are at a match that probably allows one to shoot " fouler" shots; before going for record. After barrel cleaning, they'll simply shoot a fouler or two to re-stabilize the boree; and then go for it.

At the Wetern Pennsylvania World Groundhog Shooting championship matches, they allow only one fouler shot for each days' 100, 300 & 500yd
shooting. If one DID clean at a match with those kind of rules..... AFTER having taken that one allowed fouler....one would have to be pretty sure of where shots from his cold/clean barrel will likely impact.

As a generality, there's a whole bunch of shooters that will clean when accuracy starts to fall-off; as-long-as match rules don't lean heavily against it. For these shooters, the # of shots between cleanings varies widely, for a variety of reasons.


With regards,
.357Mag

I'm shooting a 22-250 mostly at paper and have a three part question
I bought a case of 45 gr. 4000 fps stuff because I could and because there is nothing else around these days,
so

What is best for copper fouling?
I've spent hours cleaning my rifle and still get blue/green patches with a whetted patch

Is it possible my cleaning jags/brushes are faking me out?
I'm using Shooter's Choice copper remover with a brass brush and brass jag

Do or should I need to clean my barrel during a day of shooting?
A typical day for me is 3 - 4 hrs+ and 60 to 80 rounds. I do/thought I've been cleaning after 20 rounds or so with Hoppes 9 then CLP and this takes me about 15 - 20 minutes

I've read you can clean too much, not enough and everywhere in between.
Do you bench rest guys clean your barrels during a day of shooting? Do you even shoot that many rounds?

 

[abintx]

I'm shooting a 22-250 mostly at paper and have a three part question
I bought a case of 45 gr. 4000 fps stuff because I could and because there is nothing else around these days,
so

What is best for copper fouling?
I've spent hours cleaning my rifle and still get blue/green patches with a whetted patch

Is it possible my cleaning jags/brushes are faking me out?
I'm using Shooter's Choice copper remover with a brass brush and brass jag

Do or should I need to clean my barrel during a day of shooting?
A typical day for me is 3 - 4 hrs+ and 60 to 80 rounds. I do/thought I've been cleaning after 20 rounds or so with Hoppes 9 then CLP and this takes me about 15 - 20 minutes

I've read you can clean too much, not enough and everywhere in between.

Do you bench rest guys clean your barrels during a day of shooting? Do you even shoot that many rounds?

I clean my custom Benchrest barrels, between yardages [40 to 50 rounds], the day I shoot, some times the next day if I have to get home early, using Butch's Bore Shine and SWEET'S 7.62 Bore Cleaning Solvent, for general cleaning.

That's followed by 3 to 5 tight fitting patches of J-B Non-Embedding Bore Cleaning Compound [ http://www.brownells.com/gun-cleani...87_a_7c1021_a_7c083065002_d_083065025_d_10167 ] for all types of fouling including the hardest to get out ... carbon.

After using J-B on the caked-in powder residue/carbon and copper jacket fouling, clean once more to get all the J-B out.

 

[max.burgess]

shooters choice copper remover

Didn't work for me. Ive had good luck with Sweets & Barns copper remover . Good Luck

 

[Boyd Allen]

As far as copper goes, there are two variables, velocity, and the interior finish of your barrel. A third factor that is related is how you might have broken in your barrel. Beyond this, there is the issue of hard carbon deposits, which can accumulate over time, are not easily removed, and which may contribute to copper fouling.

About all that your at the range cleanings are doing is to remove some powder fouling, since Hoppe's #9 does little to remove copper, and I am not sure what CLP contributes. I do not know of any target shooters that use it for barrel cleaning.

I suggest that you substitute a more active solvent for your range cleanings, and experiment with jags and brushes that are not made of copper containing alloys to see if this changes your patch color situation. Beyond that, I would think about carefully using an abrasive cleaner such as JB or IOSSO every couple of hundred rounds, and expect to have to fire a few fouling shots to reach a stable bore condition (as far as accuracy is concerned) after doing so.

If you are cleaning at home, and have plenty of time, I would seriously look into Wipe Out, and study all of the particulars of using it properly. I think that you will like it, and it will cut way down on the number of rod strokes that you use cleaning your barrel.

Barrel cleaning is a subject that is not as simple as it might appear to be. To get a better idea of what you are doing, what rod, guide, jags, patches and brushes are you currently using?