stainless steel cleaning brushes?? Harmful to a Bbl??

04 November 2003, 04:05

Frank Nowakowski

I was just given a mess of SS cleaning brushes. Mostly for pistol but some for .224 and .308" rifle.
Are they harmful to barrels?? I can imagine the idea of SS was to stop aggresive cleaners from eating phosphur brushes. But are the SS brushes TOO HARD? Can they damage a barrel??

FN in MT

04 November 2003, 04:43

bluetick

Frank
I have always been told not to use them. Two people in particular. The firearms instructor for the local sheriff's dept. and my gunsmith, who is a fairly well known guy.

Now for my thoughts. [Roll Eyes]

I would use them as a last resort. Say on really really bad copper fouling.
Only on something that I had lost all hope in. Even then I would have tried all the chemicals I could find and maybe find a foul out machine.

God Bless
Shawn

04 November 2003, 04:56

gsp

I use a set of nylon brushes from Tipton.

04 November 2003, 06:10

Rancher

Frank, I deal with Hart, Krieger and Shilen on a fairly regular basis and they all say to NOT use SS brushes in Stainless barrels.. Have heard of ss brushs ruining SS barrels in one "cleaning".

As far as CM barrels I don't know but why risk it. You can buy a dozen brass brushes from many of the vendors for $10-15....
Pat

04 November 2003, 06:31

Atkinson

Steel on steel does not make since to me..I use brass brushes in some instance but mostly Nylon these days.

04 November 2003, 10:38

Hot Core

quote:
Originally posted by Frank Nowakowski:
Can they damage a barrel??

Hey Frank, Yes they can.

Had a buddy buy a new 357Mag Ruger Security Six in the early `80s. We went out and had a fine day shooting after we had worked his trigger over.

Got back to the house, had a cool one or two and of course the phone had to interrupt. Without thinking I picked it up and was side-tracked for a couple of minutes.

Finally caught up with my buddy who had " just " picked up my revolver and jammed a Stainless Brush in the barrel. I nearly broke his arm stopping the withdraw. Got it unscrewed while it was in the Frame(past the forcing cone) and wiped it out. Took a look and saw some extremely faint scratches, which have since disappeared due to lots of Trigger Time.

I didn't even know he had a Stainless Brush in the house. Told him it looked like it would be OK and not to worry about it.

Once I explained what the problem "could have been", he got a sad look on his face and said he had just scrubbed the fool out of his new revolver with it!

Well, it scratched it up pretty good. Just shot with him about two weeks ago(20-20+ years later) and his barrel STILL has scratches in it.

Give them to someone who votes for Democrats!

04 November 2003, 15:42

Frank Nowakowski

Paul Hart from HART barrels was over today and told me to "Throw those damned things in the garbage."
I have a ton of brushes, they are cheap in bulk from Brownells. But like I mentioned these were freebies and I have a mess of them. Oh Well.

WHY do they make the darned things if they are damaging to a barrel??

Thanks for the replies...... FN in MT

04 November 2003, 15:49

hart

Work good for cleaning inside the necks of brass cases.

Hart

04 November 2003, 16:04

Major Caliber

I have used the stainless Tornado brushes in many guns, never ruined a barrel.

04 November 2003, 20:51

Ulrik Hentzer

I have heard from many gunsmiths that SS brushes are bad in SS barrels but OK in CM barrels because CM steel is harder than stainless..

06 November 2003, 19:15

hornetguy

well... to admit to doing something stupid.. I used a stainless brush on my 22 K-Hornet barrel.. it literally scrubbed steel shavings out of it.. I thought it was really removing some heavy build-up the first few strokes, then finally figured it out. It left the bore pretty heavily scraped.. I tried to polish it back out with JB Bore compound, which helped somewhat, but the accuracy just hasn't been quite the same since. It's ok, just not as good.... I have used stainless brushes on my .45 Ruger with no apparent ill effect. I think the reason it scrubbed the .22 is that the bristles are so much shorter (and stiffer) on the .22 brush than the .45. I'm still pretty sick about damaging my 285 dollar barrel, and I won't use a stainless brush on any gun anymore... it's just not worth the risk.