Do chemicals such as PB Blaster add anything to cleaning a barrel? I was wondering if they would help to loosen the fouling debris from the pores of the steel and enable it to be wiped away? Any negative side effects to using a penetrant such as PB Blaster?

Andy

I have a can of that stuff. It will really loosen a rusted nut or bolt, but I have never tried it for cleaning guns. I doubt there are any side effects. The stuff is a drippy petroleum distillate, not an acid. It's more of a light oil that can get into the tiny cracks you create when you bang on a rusted nut after you spray said nut with the stuff. If it got into the tiny pores in a barrel, I'd be thinking about what will happen to it when the heat and pressure of shoving bullets down the bore causes the stuff to coke up in those pores. Can I get it out? Will it cause big clouds of smoke as it burns? Will it harden into creosote-like deposits found in chimneys? Let your conscience be your guide...

I like to mix about 1/3 of Kroil to Butch's Bore Shine or Shooters choice.

quote:

Originally posted by Gube204:
I like to mix about 1/3 of Kroil to Butch's Bore Shine or Shooters choice.

Another vote here for Kroil/Shooter's Choice mixture.

Learned that trick years ago!

I've been using a 1/2 and half mixture of Kroil/Shooter's choice since way back when it was called Marksman's Choice. It seemed to me that it worked pretty well as long as you had the time for it to sit in the barrel. This was not always the case in small matches where there is a very short time between relays. I was then introduced to the JB products, which also seemed to work well, but did not require a lot of sitting in the barrel time. I began using the Kroil/Shooters Choice followed by the JB (Bore Bright between relays and Bore Cleaner at the end of the match) followed by the Kroil mixture again and patched until dry.

This was before I got a borescope. So far, The latter (JB) method is the only one I have found to get bores completely clean when viewed with the scope. Bore Tech Eliminator seems to be a good substitute for the Kroil/SC mixture and does not stink.

It appears to me that all advertising and marketing aside, there is still no free lunch. Fouling, especially medium to heavy copper fouling requires elbow grease to remove, especially if you do not care to subject your barrels to ammonia. There is a very good essay concerning the proper use of JB cleaner that one of the Brownell's techs wrote. This describes the same method I learned and I know a lot of other BR shooters use, except I have never had much luck using Parker Hale Jags. Some people like them; I can't get them to work with a bore smaller than .308 but a regular spear type jag works ok for me and other folks I know.

"there ain't no free lunch. Fouling... takes elbow grease to clean."

Amen!