Don't ever stick your nose up to a bottle of Sweet's bore cleaner to see what it smells like. HOLY #@%&!!

Same goes for ANY chemical... that's the first thing taught in most chem classes. I do feel your pain tho' I did the same thing with Butches Bore Shine.

Smelling salts are made with ammonia. Your reaction was to the ammonia. We could market Sweet's as an alternative to smelling salts!

I did that with a bottle of Montana Extreme. Holy Shit!!!! I thought my sinuses were gonna fall out of my head.

None of you all ever got your nuts knocked up to your eyeballs playing football! If you had BTDT then you'd know not to take a hit off an ammonia containing substance!! GHD

The best thing I have ever seen happen with Sweets occured here a few years ago.

I had one of those plastic bottles with a spout, that went down to the bottom of the bottle.

So all one has to do is squeeze it, while its upright, and the liquid comes out.

If you turn it upside down, like with a normal bottle, nothing comes out.

We had this knows-it-all man comes to shoot.

He fired a few shots, and the wanted to clean his barrel.

He turned the bottle upside down, kept squeezing, nothing came out. He shock the bottle and tried again, nothing came out.

He then held the spout pointing straight to his face, upright, and squeezed!

He face was covered in Sweets, and the rest of us laughing our heads off!

quote:

Originally posted by Collins:
Same goes for ANY chemical... that's the first thing taught in most chem classes. I do feel your pain tho' I did the same thing with Butches Bore Shine.

ANY chemical, Yup I can agree with this one, I checked a liquid by smell to see if it was gas oil. NOPE!, It was a product called Silade, for adding to mown grass to make silage, my lungs & throat were on fire!

Proper technique, I learned many years ago , Is to hold the bottle away from your nose and waft the scent towards you, with your hand.

I used to be a firefighter/haz-mat tech. At one motor vehicle accident involving a semi-tractor/trailer and a pickup, we could see haz-mat placards on the trailer and pulled up well short of the accident scene until we could figure out more what the truck was carrying.

A city officer came flying up on the scene, red lights a flashing, siren wailing and rolled right on past two firetrucks and a rescue rig.

Driving right up alongside the wrecked and leaking tractor trailer, he jumped out, took a couple of deep whiffs and hollered back, "Come on up, it's all right!"

As it turned out, the chemicals were fairly benign, but I pulled to idiot off to the side and thoroughly bitched him out!

I asked him how he knew what was leaking from the truck? He had no idea. I asked him how much he knew about hazardous chemicals? He admitted he knew little. I asked, "Did you know that cops do this type of thing so often they are called "Blue Canaries?"

He didn't understand the term until I explained that canaries used to be taken into mines and when they tipped over, the miners knew to leave because the atmosphere was poisonous!

I make it a point to never directly sniff any chemical compounds directly, using the method Grizzly stated.

You don't need sweets or any other sovent.JB alone,is what is needed.Save money too!

Isn't jb an abrasive paste?? If so I would only use it for heavy build up. I kind of think of my bore like the finish on my car. If I would wash the bugs off the front with soap and water vrs using nothing but a scotch pad or rubbing compount I think it would be better. Same goes for tar on the car...much rather use a solvent than abrasion.

Yep! Collins, Grizz and Shof have the situation sussed. Don't whiff any gun cleaning chemicals till you have read the label warnings and even the Material Safety Data Sheets. There are plenty that recommend a "well ventilated area". We have come quite a ways from the days when folks might have cleaned guns with carbon tetrachloride or tri-chlor, but there are still come solvents out there that don't do the brain cells any good.

Fortunately the pungency in Sweet's is due to amonia and most folks won't huff enough to do much damage.

Sweets smells so strong that I've never seen the need to get it close to my nose! WTF are you guys huffing bore-stuff for, anyway

I also did the same thing with Montana Extreme, and wouldn't you know about 2 seconds after i read the sticker with the warning.

quote:

Originally posted by JohnDL:
Smelling salts are made with ammonia. Your reaction was to the ammonia. We could market Sweet's as an alternative to smelling salts!

We use smelling salts all the time when handling explosives, makes the headache go away.

the only time i like using sweets is when i am badly sinus congested... about the time i am done PROPERLY cleaning a rifle, i can sometimes breathe again..

one wonders, if the village XXXXX was foolish enough to use an abrasive after every shooting session, would he wear out the throats, and then barrels in a short period of time, regardless of caliber?

hmmmm
Hey, Shootaway , don't you feel that most big bore rifles are "shot out" after 200 to 400 rounds, loosing accuracy and being shot out?

quote:

Originally posted by shootaway:
You don't need sweets or any other sovent.JB alone,is what is needed.Save money too!

WOW, you use an abrasive ONLY when you clean your guns, or do you use oil with that, to make it "polish" better/?

If you really want to wake up in the morning, open a bottle of 28% ammonia from a blueprint machine. I keep a couple gallons on hand at all times for various duties from cleaning copper to washing windows to neutralizing water during the last boil when I'm rust blueing.

Sweet's etched holes into the muzzle of my bull barrel 243 when left over night.

KG-12 has no Ammonia and cleans Copper from bores 20X better than Sweet's.

I was a helper on the wax crew one night in 1975, and they used Ammonia as a stripper. The amount we were breathing was too much for me, but the regular waxers seemingly unaffected.

If a woman cleans a floor with Ammonia, it is ok, but if she gets the tiniest whiff of gun cleaning Ammonia, it is intolerable.

Ammonia will remove the blue from your guns. Dilute 1 part ammonia, 3 parts water, works to neutralize corrosive primer salts. But don't let it sit on the blue finish.

You stuck your nose in a bottle of Sweet's?




And I used to wonder why those packets of desiccant that come with optics etc say "Do Not Eat". I thought it was just common sense not to do stuff like that!

quote:

Originally posted by AS64:
Don't ever stick your nose up to a bottle of Sweet's bore cleaner to see what it smells like. HOLY #@%&!!

The smell doesn't bother me but the taste is just awful. HOLY #@%&!!

quote:

Originally posted by ForrestB:

quote:

Originally posted by AS64:
Don't ever stick your nose up to a bottle of Sweet's bore cleaner to see what it smells like. HOLY #@%&!!

The smell doesn't bother me but the taste is just awful. HOLY #@%&!!

You're supposed to dilute it first.

Sweets can be effective, but it can etch metal. The label warns you not to leave it in the barrel for more than 15 minutes. Clay Spencer, a noted custom gunsmith who also is a world-class bench rest shooter, recommends only leaving it in the barrel for seven minutes.

JB and USP bore pastes are also effective. The grit in the paste is harder than copper, but softer than steel, so it doesn't wear away the inside of the bore.

For really fouled bores I use USP bore paste. I run a patch of gun oil down the barrel, then wrap a patch covered with the paste around a bronze brush of the same caliber as the rifle, i.e., a .30 cal brush for a .30 cal rifle.

For regular barrel cleaning I use Bore Tech Eliminator. It dissolves copper, but doesn't have the strong ammonia smell of Sweets or Butch's or Montana Extreme. Also, you can leave it in the barrel with no long-term effects. Bore Tech even recommends running a patch wetted with the stuff through the bore after you finish cleaning to act as a preservative. I don't go that far; I finish with a patch saturated with Ezzox, which I feel is a better rust preventer.

Montana Extreme nearly killed me. I took a big whiff and almost dropped the bottle. I had grandpa take a whiff and he did drop the bottle. It busted. The whole house smelled...

Wimps, wimps, wimps.......spend a little time applying anhydrous ammonia fertilizer to farm fields and you'll really learn about ammonia!



It's absolutely neccessary in that situation to breathe with your nose only because that's the only way to prevent getting a lungful if there is an invisible leak...which there always is. I've got so many knots on my head from involuntary relexes....but I've still got my lungs and eyes.

Use Bore Tech Eliminator. It works 10 times better than that Ammonia based crap, and it won't hurt you or your gun. Bill T.

quote:

Originally posted by plainview:
Wimps, wimps, wimps.......spend a little time applying anhydrous ammonia fertilizer to farm fields and you'll really learn about ammonia!



It's absolutely neccessary in that situation to breathe with your nose only because that's the only way to prevent getting a lungful if there is an invisible leak...which there always is. I've got so many knots on my head from involuntary relexes....but I've still got my lungs and eyes.

Been there! Done that! Got gassed thorougly!!!

Still, I don't think you have really experienced amonia till you have shoveled out a hen house full of chicken manure on a hot summer day. I know what knocks a buzzard off a shit wagon!!!

Didn't you dopes learn in seventh-grade chemistry class to use your hand to waft the vapors in a bottle toward you instead of sticking your nose down it? If not, I have this bridge in Brooklyn for sale-- cheap...