Sweets, Not to impressed with this stuff.

been useing it for years, but 15 mins max to leave it in the bore aint doing to much. some times I get good blue patches and other times when im done gettin carbon and see copper on my lands and use sweets for 15 min it just aint doin a good job at all.

Hell old Hopps leaven it in the barrel to sit a hour or over night works better than sweets. I think my dogs pee would work better in 15 min.

I dont want to leave sweets in the barrel to long, as the intructs say. Youd think this stuff would strip that copper pronto!

Just rantin!

A guy on another site said sweets would eat the copper off a penny so I tryed it kept it wet with sweets for days and the penny was still copper plated. I use shooters choice & butches
bore shine works much better.

Well there are two common opinions with Sweets.
Either it will eat your barrel away somewhere between 15 and 17 minutes.

Or it's not worth two bob.

I have stated here somewhere that I thought my supply had been watered down, as it didn't seem to be working.

Back to the lable, there is no need to panic if you leave it in a bit longer. Without getting a bottle, I don't think it guaranties getting all copper out in one go of 15 minutes.

Heck, even the wonder goop wipe-out is left in overnight.
But just when I think Sweets isn't working, after about 3 goes of up to 30 minutes each, bingo. Depends how much layered copper in there.

Ditto JAL. Sweet's works well. If it were as strong as some would like, the EPA would ban it. Take your time, use it correctly and the copper comes out.

I've found out that Sweets works much faster when applied with a bristle brush instead of a patch.

After I use sweets, I flush the barrel out with several patches dripen wet with hoppes. Then some dry patches. Then I pull out my bore guide, because it has sweets all inside in the void spaces, and wash it in hot water, then go blow it dry with my air compressor. At the same time I swab out the chamber and throat with a 45cal or 20 ga bore mop. Then run some patches of kroil through the bare to make sure all the sweets is cleaned out.

Sweets is like any ammonia based concoction. It weakens with age or as a result of being exposed to the air. Keep the lid on and buy a new bottle every so often and it works great.

Ray

Maybe my bottle is too old, it still has the strong ammonia wiff though

I like the barnes cr-10 more than sweets.

My opinion is that Sweet's is an excellent copper solvent. I never thought so but recently I've been conducting experiments with powder and copper solvents and discovered that I had not been using Sweet's correctly.

I've got to go back and fix this https://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/645100744/m/998101744

Mr. Andre is correct. Sweets needs to be mixed with air, agitated or whipped, to work well. Then it will dissolve any copper it touches. A nylon brush is great for this.

The bottle says "Wet a loose patch with Solvent, then rub bore full length repeatly for 1 minute." The bottle is correct!. Just smearing Sweets on copper may not work, it needs to be "frothed".

I think I've found out all sorts of good stuff that I will post in the future after more testing but like Mr. JohnAL, my results are not always repeatable.

I know I can say for certain that Hoppes 9 and Sweet's 7.62 are excellent products.

John You may have something there. When I get it to "foam up" it seems to work. I used loose patches on worn out bronze brushes, then lately patch on a jag probably too tight in the bore. I used nylon brush with a patch to hold the sweets but the patch would always fly off the nylon brush.

Hoppes on a patch raped around a worn out bronse brush left in the bore and pushed 2" every hour works great and after it leaves the mussle is blue/green.

GSP7, I use sweets and let set for 10-15 minutes. Then I soak a patch in hydrogenperoxide and slowly run it through the bore and then some Butches Bore Shine. I clean my gun after 10-15 shots, so you may want to clean more often.

Here is a hydrogen peroxide method. I have not tried it because I find it's easy to remove copper.

http://www.benchrest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31104

Thanks to Mr. Gonzalez for posting his cleaning instructions.

What Andre said. Get it to foam up & you increase the effectiveness of Sweets. Also if you get the carbon out first like with MP7 it does work better.

Regards
JohnT

Yeah and someone suggested it works better warm/hot, so I leave mine in the sun, maybe 10 minutes each side. Funny how it says NOT to shake the bottle.
The Full-Bore people used to slip some in while the barrel was still hot from shooting.

quote:

Originally posted by Andre Mertens:
I've found out that Sweets works much faster when applied with a bristle brush instead of a patch.

Exactement! Wrap a patch around the brush and change and resoak as it exits barrel.

I used Sweets for years back when I was a competitive "full-bore" (AKA high-power, across the course) competitor. It worked excellently for me.

In those days, Parker-Hale bore mops were commonly available almost everywhere.

My cleaning drill was to clean the bore of powder and other carbon fouling with Hoppe's, wiping out with a dry patch or two. Then I would load a bore mop with about all the Sweets it would hold, and push it back and forth through the bore until there was a white froth both on the mop and each end of the barrel.

I'd let it sit 10-15 minutes, then patch it out with the big .30 military patches (2-1/4x2-1/4 square of heavy cotton) wrapped around a P-H jag. Lastly, I'd follow with two wet patches of any neutral solvent, and again patch the whole schmear dry, including the locking lug recesses and chamber.

I don't know that the bore was absolutely clean of copper as I never owned a bore-scope. But it was clean enough to earn and keep a Master classification firing issue military 7.62 ammo.


BTW: It will also eat the plastic covering right off of a Parker-Hale rod. I have several absolutely bare ones to prove that.

Well if the bore is prone to fouling excessively . Use the Foul Out 3 rod by Outers !.

If the bores are just normal ugly I use Kroil !. I fill the bore let it set over night or a couple of minutes depends on barrel SS or Steel , Chrome bore and condition of bore .

It depends on my time frame for cleaning to .

I also find using Mil-C-372B combined with Shooters choice ( Copper Out )cleans anything out of the bore quickly like with a swab and brush followed by a wet then dry patches .

Kind of like Auto's if it gets you from A to B and doesn't brake down it works for me .

I don't need to make some Yacht payment for a high dollar snake oil company .

Shoot straight know your target . ...

Yep, Sweets needs to be worked up into a froth. At that point you don't even need a tight patch or brush. I just demonstrated to a fellow shooter that it will quickly work when frothed on his copper fouled barrel using a loose patch on an Otis coated pull-thru cable:

I secured the rifle in a cradle and removed the bolt before he started timing. When the timing started;
-I pulled one loose fitting patch soaked w/ "Steve's Squeeze" that I homemake by the gallon for around $20. (note- it works great on carbon/powder fouling but not on copper).
-After taking a sip of coffee, I put a bore sized brush on the cable and pulled it through 3 times to loosen the fouling. I then put the slotted tip back on and pulled through one dry patch.
-After a second sip of coffee, I put a clean loose fitting patch on the slotted tip then soaked it w/ Sweets. I pushed the handle end of the cable out through the muzzle, then slipped on a cable sized delrin muzzle guide. I pulled the wet patch through to the muzzle then began to short stroke it about an inch or so back and forth while slowly moving it from the muzzle back to the breach and back again. This really works up a froth removing lots of copper fouling.
-I took a third sip of coffee and replaced the bright blue patch w/ another Sweets soaked patch reapeating the frothing short stroke cycle.
-It took only three patches/cycles to remove all detectible copper fouling.
-I again sipped coffee, then pulled one loose dry patch to remove the bulk of the Sweets. One loose wet patch w/ "Squeeze" which flushes the remaining Sweets. One double snug patch to dry the bore, followed by one loose patch w/ Mil-tec.

I was done in less than 15 minutes w/ the total material cost amounting to virtually nothing.

GVA

I have a gun vice that holds my gun barrel pointed down and just inches off the floor. I cut off the bottom of a plastic coke bottle (now called the catcher)and put a bore mop on my cleaning rod. I send the mop down the barrel and soak it when it comes out and is in the catcher. I start stroking the bore mop up and down the barrel and pretty soon the blue and black foam starts flowing out. You guys are right...get it frothy and it cleans like crazy.

quote:

Originally posted by John in SC:
My opinion is that Sweet's is an excellent copper solvent. I never thought so but recently I've been conducting experiments with powder and copper solvents and discovered that I had not been using Sweet's correctly.

I've got to go back and fix this https://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/645100744/m/998101744

Mr. Andre is correct. Sweets needs to be mixed with air, agitated or whipped, to work well. Then it will dissolve any copper it touches. A nylon brush is great for this.

The bottle says "Wet a loose patch with Solvent, then rub bore full length repeatly for 1 minute." The bottle is correct!. Just smearing Sweets on copper may not work, it needs to be "frothed".

I think I've found out all sorts of good stuff that I will post in the future after more testing but like Mr. JohnAL, my results are not always repeatable.

I know I can say for certain that Hoppes 9 and Sweet's 7.62 are excellent products.

John is a 100% correct on the need to froth Sweets.........I find a bristle brush is best.

Remove the Sweets with Hoppes and if you have the time oil the bore as the Sweets will dry out the bore steel and you could get pressure spikes.....patch out the oil........and you are good to go.

Blair, use denatured alcohol (metho) to remove Sweets. This will ensure that the Sweets is completely removed from the BBL prior to adding any other solvent, as unfortunate side effects can occurs when sweets in mixed with other solvents. Like pitted BBLs, etc.

Sweets: the solvent that proudly wears the title of "Does not play well with others"...

Sweets will save you money by reducing the number of patches and the amount of solvent and time needed to remove copper from your bore.I use it on a bore mop with a patch and shortstroke.I repeat the process three or four times and most of the copper is gone.I then use a patch on a brush with SC solvent or sweets to remove some more.I might repeat this step.I then finish off all the remaining copper with JB on a patch,on a copper brush.I repeat this step once or twice.My bore is now clean.