CLR is an effective carbon cleaner

[MJB]

I would just shoot it a couple times get that barrel hot then clean it.

[SharedShots]

I tried this twice. I plugged my barrel with a foam earplug and filled the barrel with CLR and let it sit overnight. When I drained the CLR from the barrel the next morning into a clean tub, I was surprised to see the CLR was relatively clean. I don't believe letting the CLR sit for a prolonged period did anything extraordinary. The best method is to soak a patch with CLR, run it down the barrel, let it sit for 10 minutes, then use a bore brush and then clean up with a series of patches. I intend to continue following this process until there is no more carbon.

The car industry has been removing carbon buildup for as long as there have been engines. They don't use CLR so maybe and I'm just saying, maybe they know something we don't? From sparkplugs to pistons and manifolds the car people have been going at this and have figured it out pretty well, CLR isn't on their list of best ways.

CLR is mostly acids. Acids do not dissolve carbon, don't take my word for it you can look it up yourself and see.

Chemicals don't really get at carbon buildup which is why the car people go with mechanical means like the action of fluids under pressure or ultrasonic cleaners. You might be better off using a small pond pump, some carbon deposit cleaner from a car shop and circulating the liquid through the bore for a few days or; take it to a metals shop and have them tank it in an ultrasonic cleaner.

Someone takes a household chemical cleaner, goes at a gun with it and it becomes the next great thing. Sometimes it's just what someone said and its like all those fancy wrinkle creams, there is always another new one coming along.

Good luck.

[hermosabeach]

pitting

As a follow-up on CLR staining the steel, I did experience some staining on the muzzle. I removed the stain with a rag and CLR and then applied some oil to prevent further staining.

On the barrel being pitted, I don't have a bore scope to verify. I am working on the barrel every night and I am still getting carbon out. I doubt that there is any pitting, the rifle was in Western Washington State where it is really dry. Even the farm machinery out there does not rust.

Many old guns have pitting as the primers were corrosive before say 1950.

Corrosive primers were the norm back when your gun was made.

Pitted barrels are fine... not what one prays for, but most still shoot just fine.



I would be concerned that you are over cleaning your bore. If you have cleaned the barrel several times and are still getting black out, I would ask you to try to determine what is impregnated into the barrel.


If your barrel has 1,000 rounds of lead bullets fired, traditional methods might not be the solution.


there are some excellent lead removal products....

[CheapBloke]

CLR has a chemical that attracts and retains moisture.

Read somewhere on another gun forum.

[SharedShots]

CLR has a chemical that attracts and retains moisture.

Read somewhere on another gun forum.

As an observation, it seems things hit forums like sniper's hide, AR15, accurate shooter and even youtube and then like magic they show up here and go through the rounds too.

When you track some idea down to the source often it's one post somewhere that got picked up as a discussion and then got repeated over and over until it's the next shiny new thing. CLR is like that, a search shows just how it started. Someone used it and without any real comparison to other things that work really well said it was the cats meow.

And here we are, CLR for cleaning bores.

[divingin]

At some point you'll wear out the barrel from excessive cleaning. Even a patch pulled back and forth and not just once through is more like an abrasive than cleaning.

Any reference on this? A patch going up and down the barrel isn't going to be worse than running a sheet of copper over all the crap in there at a high rate of speed (with added heat.)

I remember seeing an argument against using a nylon brush that stated they were worse than bronze; proof was looking at the rod tip on an old fishing rod, where the nylon line wore it down. Obviously, nylon is much more abrasive. I didn't get a lot of comments after asking what it would have looked like using bronze wire for line.