Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Some really good cleaning brushes

One problem with cast bullets is that they can leave lead fouling in the bore. And sometimes it's a pain to get out. Aside from hooking up the FoulOut the best lead cleaner I've found is Blue Wonder and a good bronze brush, but even with it can take a while and a lot of scrubbing.

Week or two ago I was looking through the Brownell's site and ran across their Double-Tuff bore brushes(#084-142-144 for .45 caliber). They're a thicker, stiffer brush for heavy fouling. Since I was getting some other stuff I added a three-pack to the order.

Just tried them out. Took the Kimber .45 and the .455 Webley out to shoot, and the Kimber had the usual amount of fouling from the cast bullets. Process with Blue Wonder is to saturate a brush and run it through the bore five or six times, add more cleaner and repeat, let sit about ten minutes, brush, then use patches to clean the bore. It usually takes several repeats of this to get the fouling out; with this brush it took one. There may have been traces left, but they were not visible. This brush really did make a difference.

Webley shot as well as usual. The new grips really are better than the originals(to my hands, at least); bit more work at it and I should be able to checker well enough to keep things better aligned. One of the things I ordered was some replacement cutters for the tools, the originals having dulled with use. For some things, if you did this a lot, the carbide cutters would be well worth it.

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