Whats the best way to remove plastic fouling/residue?
Whats the best way to remove plastic fouling/residue?
Are you loyal to the constitution or the “institution”?
Ed's Red original recipe with acetone.Originally Posted by Paul Blackburn
In my experience, the best thing for removing ALL fouling is a TORNADO brush. The first time I used one, I was amazed! After cleaning my smooth bore with a standard brush, I could still visibly see lead and plastic fouling in the barrel. I broke out the tornado and with one pass, I could hear the residue hitting the wall behind my cleaning bench. 2-3 passes and the barrel was shiny as new!
Only use it on smooth bores though…
I read online that the only place WD-40 should be used on a gun is in a shotgun bore to dissolve wad fouling. I spray it down the bore, leave the barrel muzzle down in a paper towel in a trash can while I clean the rest of the gun. Then a few passes with a Tornado brush followed by patches on a jag till the bore is clean.
It works for me.
I clean the bore on my guns once a year using one of Brownells' chuckable cleaning rods, a pretty powerful cordless drill, and an assortment of tornado brushes and nylon brushes.
Sheer brute force and a tornado brush can do a whole lot to clean the bore.
Boretech's shotgun blend is a good solvent to use as it helps to lift plastic residue away from the bore as well as the typical lead and carbon you find from shotgun shells. Foaming bore cleanser from GunSlick works pretty well, too.
I'll usually put some Boretech on a mop or hit the bore with the foam and run it through the barrel and let it sit for a while to do some work. Then I'll run a tornado brush through with the chuckable cleaning rod, then maybe a nylon brush, and then I'll wrap the tornado brush in a patch and run that through the bore. Generally it's pretty clean then.
De-leading a barrel that's seen a lot of slugs and no maintenance is a much less pleasant task.
One thing you can do to help reduce the need for a lot of cleaning is to run a boresnake with a little bit of solvent like the Boretech Shotgun blend through the barrel while it's still warm/hot. Just doing that before you put the gun back in the case will keep a lot of that shit from latching on to your bore hard enough to need a scrubbing. Prevention by frequently hitting your warm barrel with a boresnake is probably much better medicine than pounds of tornado brush cure.
I've also seen clients use those CleanShot shotgun shells at the end of the day and i've been surprised at how effective they are.
Bean bag rounds are also pretty good at scrubbing the bore ballistically.
Last edited by TCinVA; 06-05-2022 at 11:28 AM.
3/15/2016
WD-40 is great for getting water out of places you don't want it on the gun, and it tends to creep and penetrate fairly well...but it's pretty awful to rely on as a primary lubricant.
I suspect what it's doing for you in the bore is getting underneath the polymer that's melted to the barrel of your gun, helping it leave when the tornado brush hits it. Kroil and Ed's Red are used for similar purposes.
3/15/2016
Yep, it’s cheap, readily available and burrows under crap.
I’ve seen guns where it was used in the action and over years turned into varnish so I feel like I need to reiterate that I only use it in shotgun bores and then wipe it out. That’s just my old firearms instructor CDO rising to the surface.
Over the weekend I made some of the Ed's Red and it worked wonders removing the plastic fowling. The trick seems to be soaking a long mop and letting it soak inside the barrel.
Are you loyal to the constitution or the “institution”?
Same here.
The first indication a bad guy should have that I'm dangerous is when his
disembodied soul is looking down at his own corpse wondering what happened.
Funny how so many gun folks are so black or white with WD40. It has its uses when used properly. It can be used as a cleaner, but not as a lube. And DON’T get in on o-rings! I learned that lesson as a kid trying to clean my paintball gun. Got WD on the o-rings and they swelled up like balloons!
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