Cleaning on a rainy morning

Guns, that is. The ones I used last night. Far worse things to do on a rainy morning.

When I was a kid, I took a lot of instructions on products seriously, so when they said "run more patches through until they come out clean", I tried to do it. And discovered something; depending on what you're cleaning and what you're using, you can put a whole bloody t-shirt through the bore and STILL not come out 'clean'. Used to drive me nuts.

Now, I'm a bit more reasonable. In most stuff, the bore is shiny, no visible stuff left? That's good enough, especially since I found out how much wear excessive cleaning can cause. For .22's, I used to use Break-Free, now I'm trying Eezox. Run a damp patch through, then a dry to get loose stuff out, then a wet patch and let sit a few minutes, then a couple of dry and that's it. So far, so good. The bores gleam, it's faster, and I don't wear on the rifling.

Handguns & cast bullets often leave some leading in the bore, and the best stuff I've found for this is Blue Wonder. A man at a local range recommended it to me, and he was right. Not too good on copper fouling, but for lead and powder, it's wonderful stuff. It will also work amazingly to take surface rust off steel, but in normal use won't harm blueing.

For copper fouling that needs serious work, or a bad case of leading, I take out the Outers Foul-Out. It's an electrochemical cleaner; plug the bore at the breech, put the rod and appropriate solution in, hook it up and turn it on. For copper it can take hours for a bad case, and FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS about changing solution & cleaning, but it works. Lead is considerably faster. In either case, it will leave a bore cleaned to bare steel without harming it. Now that I've found Blue Wonder I use the Foul-Out less than before, but it's still handy for those occasions I need it.

Time to wipe out barrels.