new to cleaning

[19K]

Corrosive ammo is corrosive because the primer compound contains salt which attracts water which creates rust. It's not worth using IMO.

[19K]

You're shooting corrosive ammo? Really? What caliber and where are you getting corrosive ammo from? Unless there's a significant price advantage or you're shooting a unique caliber that's only available with corrosive primers, I can't see any reason to shoot corrosive ammo these days...

[Ki6vsm]

People are mentioning Windex because it contains ammonia, which is effective at neutralizing those nasty salts left behind by the old-school primers containing either fulminate of mercury or potassium chlorate.

I used to use Windex back in the day for cleaning my Lee-Enfield's barrel after shooting some scary old Iraqi ammo I found at a gun show. The stuff shot okay, but it just had to have corrosive primers.

As said by a few people, hot water down the bore is one way to clean it. Special funnels were issued to some troops for the purpose of pouring boiling water down the bores.

https://www.leraa.com/british-military-funnel

[kcheung2]

To be clear, there's nothing particularly magical about hot water vs cold, it's the same chemical after all. But the reason why hot is preferred is:

1) there's less of a thermal shock when pouring hot water onto a hot barrel vs cold water on a hot barrel. There's some debate how much that really matters, (plenty of Mosins have gotten really hot in Russian winters with no ill effect) and it's also a matter of degrees (ha ha!) than an absolute. Ice cold water vs boiling water, and red hot barrels vs somewhat warm barrels, all are different factors. In my situation, if I had ice water at the range, I'd drink it first, then I'd let it warm to room temp before pouring it down my gun.

2) hot water evaporates faster. The whole purpose of pouring water down the bore is to reduce rust. Well, water causes rust. So while flushing the salts away is good, once that's done I want it evaporated as soon as possible. If I don't have hot water, then lukewarm water + a hot gun works, but if I take it too far I run into 1) again.

Along those lines, it's a good idea afterwards to store the gun vertically with the chamber open. That allows heat to rise up from the muzzle and colder air to enter from the chamber, creating a little current and cycling the water vapor out.