I have tried just about all the cleaners on the market or copper cutters.

I see some here love shooters choice, but I would have to work for hours to get out the copper from RUM's with shooters choice. Its just so weak a copper cutter. I put hopps benchrest in this catagory too.

So I turn to sweets or CR10. CR10 if not tended too can really screw up a barrel. It can cause surface rust in 10 min. Ok, now sweets don't seem near as bad. They say (and they say alot) that the rust that occures is the water in the CR10, not the ammonia, the ammonia only speeds up the hydroscopic reaction? I would love to know for sure.

Ok, so I use wipe out. Seem to have good results, can't say I ever seen surface rust. Even though I am shocked after sitting two days with several applications. But not sure if it actually cleans out all the copper. I used wipeout for a few years now. And thought my barrel was clean, but saw copper strips at the top one inch of the barrel. So I bore scoped and still some copper. But my patches were clean. Only thing I used to get that copper strips out was JB's bore bright or the real original. But JB's scares me. It is abrasive.

So looking for the next latest greatest. Montana Extreme. What do you guys thing? Copper Melt, butches? Some say montana has no water in it. So its aggresive like CR10 but won't surface rust your barrels in minutes. Need some educated opinions.

There is a reason why am thinking about this. I just had a gun bore scoped, and it had small pits in it. It only has 700 rounds thru it. I may be my well used dewey rod. But I used wipeout for two years on this gun. And always cleaned it until there was only faint blue with sweets. Hopeing there wasn't a reaction between the sweets and wipeout. I always put 4 patches thru before changing cleaners. Sometimes used brake cleaner between solvents. I have dozens of guns, and never had this problem particularly.

There was a period where I didn't clean so aggresively. I would use shooters choice only, and left most of the copper in it. Would only spend 15 min on the barrel max. I then decided to decopper and thats where I had to go to the real heavy duty JB's. And as everyone knows JBs leaves that thick black residue and can be hard to remove all the way. I know with medocre cleaning you can end up with layer of hardened carbon and copper. And the carbon has by products that can pit.

Just trying to figure out the mystery so it doesn't happen again. Still shoots ok. Just fouls more

The proper way of cleaning a rifle barrel and what product to use can be debated much like so much else in this shooting world we enjoy. I've got a shelf full of solvents which claim to be the best. I've never been able to determine which one is best. I did learn something several years ago though that changed my attitude. I was determined to get the bore of an '06 as perfectly clean as i could, and I did. Then it went from a 1/2" shooter to a 2" shooter and it took alot of rounds thru it before it would shoot again. A 'pro' told me i made the bore 'too slick'. Since then, I still clean my rifles well after shooting and concentrate more on getting the carbon out, and put 'em away. I think if you're putting some solvent down the bore, you're doing the rifle a favor. I don't know how many times i've talked to guys at the range who were having a hard time getting their rifles to shoot, and when asked when was the last time they cleaned the bore, the usual response goes like, "uh, geez, I don't really know". I recall one guy who was shooting a custom made 25-06 and when I pulled out the bolt and looked down the barrel, it looked like a thunderstorm over the badlands. He claimed he had never cleaned the barrel because someone had told him his rifle would shoot better if he left it alone. After cleaning his rifle for him as good as possible, the pits were obvious to the naked eye. I tried to gently tell him the barrel was shot.

Most of the time, I use a homebrew of Ed's Red which doesn't do anything for metal fouling. When I needed to remove the copper fouling, I used Sweet's until I ran out and couldn't replace it loacally. Gunsmith reccomended Pro Shot Copper Solvent IV which, according to him, was safer to use than Sweet's. I tried it and it worked fine to clean the bore of carbon and metal fouling quickly.

quote:

Originally posted by bigcountry:
So looking for the next latest greatest. Montana Extreme. What do you guys thing? Copper Melt, butches? Some say montana has no water in it. So its aggresive like CR10 but won't surface rust your barrels in minutes. Need some educated opinions.

Very good stuff and yes it won't rust your barrel,it's oil based not water based.

The Montana X-Treme Copper Cream is also very good.

I have been using the new Montana X-Treme BMG 50 this year and think it works pretty good.It is very strong also

Hey God Bless ya too Tiny.

Thanks guys, thats what I was looking for.

See here's the deal. Once at the range, I was cleaning wiht CR10 and all the sudden they called a cease fire. So here i am trying to get out the CR10 and this old fart officer yelled, "don't touch the firearms", I figured no big deal. Cease fires only last 10 min or less. Well, this one lasted like 25 min. So when they let us go back to shootin and me cleaning, I had surface rust coming out.

So since then I was lookng for simular strong ammonia based cleaner but without the water.

Thanks guys.

I am a freak about cleaning a rifle barrel. I've tried everything, UNTIL, I tried the foaming bore cleaners. Just for yucks, clean one of your rifles with anything you like. Once it's clean, spend $6 and buy a can of foaming bore cleaner. Squirt it down the barrel, chamber to muzzle, leave it for one hour, the patch the bore. I don't think you'll ever go back to the the "conventional" cleaning method again. Good luck.

I couldn't agree more! The foaming bore cleaner are the bomb! I tried Wipeout a couple years ago and haven't used anything else since. I don't need to! I love technology.

One patch of sweets, let sit for a minute or two, run a copper brush down bore and out of muzzle and wet with Butches bore shine, run copper brush twice for every shot and keep wet with butches. Wet patch with Butches bore shine, until clean, then dry patch. One last patch with lock ease liquid graphite(so you don't shoot over dry bore).

2) Every 40-50 shots use isso paste and wet patch out with isso gun oil. Use a nylon brush when doing this.

This is much different than JB's. I would never use JB's.

Lube the Bolt with Bolt lube correctly ( 4 spots is what I do).

You will never have a problem.


Always clean a gun BEFORE the first shot!

I have always used Hoppe's #9 and Hoppe's #9 Bench Rest Copper Solvent. These have done a good job over the years with the regular solvent taking care of the usual fouling and the copper formula for the worst copper and lead fouling.

I used to hate the smell but I have come to look foward to cleaning with them, perhaps this is a bad thing? If so then let me be bad.

I will find out how they do with bad copper fouling since I am going to start loading Barnes X 180's in my 30/06 AI.

I have also used Ballistol and like it ok, it really does well on boots and door locks. It makes the boots soft and locks work smoothly.

Tiny, is there a whole lot of difference between the montana cream and the Montana BMG?