WD-40, best wad plastic remover on the market today, spray the barrel brass brush one Ga size larger, nothing better that I have ever found, plus it smells a lot better.


cdb

 

Hey, thanks, another guy told me to use a car Brake cleaner.
Thought it was a good topic to talk about at this time of year.
Mike

 

I don't really get plastic build up in my barrels, and only have one shotgun with choke tubes and it doesn't accumulate plastic either, but then I clean it after each time I shoot it.

I thought I had posted it here, but I guess not. I once did an experiment with one of my fixed choke guns and went 1,000 rounds without cleaning the barrels. Cleaned everything else, lubed everything, but left the barrels. Checked at the end of 1,000 rounds and there was no plastic build up and very little crud of any kind.

It was an interesting experiment.

 

Maybe it's that western dry climate of yours.
Back when I loaded Celotex wads and shot cover cards it was never a problem.
I just cleaned my 20-ga O/U and found enough white slime plastic in both barrels and 4-choke tubes to make up at least 1.5-wads. You could actually see how thick the undissolved plastic was on the inside of one choke tube, probably .20 thousand thick.
Maybe, just maybe, it could be the powder heat behind melting plastic on the way out.
Yes, I clean my guns after every use but only clean the barrel ID once a year.
So, this plastic is the result of some 8,000, to 10,000 thousand rounds fired through it.
The stuff I use to dissolve the plastic takes forever. That's why the post.
Mike

 

This topic has been discussed at length and on several occasions.

However, I will respond and tell you that IMO it is not as big a problem as some make it out to be. However, persistent and recurring plastic build-up is something that may require that the areas affected get polished smoother. I have used the Brownells Flex hones for many different barrels and chambers and it provides a very, very smooth finish (smoother than new) without any danger of altering the barrel dimensions.

It also stops any persistent plastic build up due to rough bore surfaces.

As for routine plastic removal on choke tubes, I use a drill on slow speed spinning any cheap non steel bore brush. Takes all of 5-10 minutes to do a full set of choke tubes. For the barrels on the rare occasion they need it, I use some carb cleaner and then any brush or steel wool ball to wipe it out.

Lately I have found the Big 45 Frontier pads do very quick work of cleaning plastic and all other detritus out easily and quickly. I buy them directly from the manufacturer and 2 pads with free shipping is cheaper than Bezos warehouse. I prefer using them now more than any other way.

BROWNELLS SHOTGUN BARREL POLISHING FLEX HONE®

Check out BROWNELLS SHOTGUN BARREL POLISHING FLEX HONE® available Online at Brownells Today and many more Shotgun Tools products are available in our Tools & Cleaning Department.

www.brownells.com

Big 45 Frontier Metal Cleaner | Remove Rust from Gun Bluing and Clean Dirty Gun Bores Easy!

A Must for Every Gun Dealer, Gunsmith, Shooter & Collector! Since 1967 - Big 45 Frontier Metal Cleaner is a must for every Gun Owner. Scientifically Alloyed - It is one of the best improvements in Gun Cleaning of the Century. &quotIt is one of the...

www.big45metalcleaner.com

 

Yes, thank you, I just looked at the Big-45 and Brownell's, bore cleaners, bore snakes, bore polishers, Hoppy's, Remington, B-C, electrodes, bore brushes, etc.
I was just thinking; for barrels & choke tubes that rarely need to be cleaned there sure are a lot of products out there to remove plastic and fowling from bore IDs.
Mike

 

WD-40 is really easy on everything, I dislike using a harsh solvent.


cdb

 

I use Barrel Buddy from ctcarrypermit.com. Jeff Lyons is the man!!

 

Thanks, I will look it up.
Mike

 

I have used the Brownells Flex hones for many different barrels and chambers and it provides a very, very smooth finish (smoother than new) without any danger of altering the barrel dimensions.

You should say "altering much". If you have ever looked at a metal surface under a microscope, it will be all jagged looking. Of course the microscope power and the degree of surface finish dictates how bad. The flex hones (well all hones regardless of what they are made of), cut the peaks off. It's the jagged peaks that grab your cleaning patches, grab the plastic, etc. Then the plastic accumulates in the valleys.

If the barrel is made via a cutting tool method, then the sharpness of the barrel reamer dictates how bad the surface finish is. A barrel that is roto-forged ends up being as smooth as the mandrel it is hammered to. When I did precision metal work, I always did the finishing cuts with a sharp cutting tool.

A couple light passes with the fine bore hone might take out a few .0001's of an inch, maybe creeping to .001 (this can actually vary as I am speculating, as I have never honed a shotgun barrel, but have polished lots and lots of parts, including parts for the guidance system of a missile, which had to be really polished to work correctly [35 year old technology])

If a person hones their barrel repeatedly, eventually it will alter the size. The amount of course depends on how often and for how many passes the hone is used, and the hardness of the metal itself, along with the original surface finish.

But once again the alteration is going to be measured in .001's of an inch (or fractions thereof) , not .010's of an inch. Normal manufacturing methods and tolerances can account in that much variation in a barrel depending on where it is at in the manufacturing run and the intervals of cutting tool changes.

As an upside, the smoother the bore, the less pressure and higher velocity it delivers due to the reduction in friction, as friction is just the jagged peaks dragging against each other.

A "smoother" looking and feeling barrel (or any surface) looks shinier because there a many more (but finer) peaks and valleys to reflect the light. If you have ever felt and looked at gage blocks, they don't look that "that" shiney, actually a kind of dull finish, but they are lapped so smooth to a dimension that they can be "wrung" together and molecular adhesion keeps them locked together. In a shop, if you ever used a carbide tip micrometer on the shop's steel gage blocks, you were fired as the carbide tips would destroy the finish.

With the development of ceramics, gage blocks are now made of that material for even longer life and wear resistance.

Gage Block Basics

Gage blocks are length standards used in dimensional measurement. Learn about their properties, use & proper maintenance in this post.

www.michelli.com

Here is a good explanation of surface finish.

Surface Roughness Explained | Ra Roughness Chart

Read our comprehensive engineer's guide to surface roughness, explaining its associated symbols and the ways it can be measured

get-it-made.co.uk

This is the quote from Brownells, notice the words "cut" and "abrasive".

Hundreds of abrasive "balls" mounted on a flexible shaft - the fastest, easiest way we've come across to clean and polish older barrels or put a mirror polish in new ones. For used barrels, the Medium-Coarse hone, followed by the Fine, removes rough and tight spots and brings the bore to a bright finish that you can see and feel . . . just run a patch through it before and after; the difference is amazing! We found too, that we could feel tight spots during honing and spend extra time on them until they were evened out. On new barrels, the Fine hone by itself will bring the factory finish up to a beautiful, mirror-bright finish that's a real customer pleaser. Easy to use: chuck in a variable speed electric drill; wet the hone with Flex Hone® oil; start the drill and insert the hone into the barrel from the breech end (if possible). As it cuts, a slurry of abrasive and oil develops to help speed the cutting action. Flex Hone® available (shown below) in sets and individual hones for 10, 12, 16 and 20 gauge barrels as well as .410 bore. Also, special-sized hones for 10, 12, 16, 20 gauge chambers and .410 bore. Instructions walk you through the steps for a perfect job. (You MUST use Flex Hone® oil - all other oils will destroy the abrasive "balls" and void our guarantee!)

 

Well, all of my guns have chromed impregnated barrels from Beretta to Rizzini, that should be pretty smooth. But the choke tubes are machined stainless steel and that's where 90% of the plastic build up occurs in my guns, especially at the feed end. I wish I took pictures before I cleaned them, that would start a panic from people buying bore cleaners at the store.
One partially dissolved flake came out of the skeet tube about 1/4" by 3/8", I mic-ed it at .16-Th., I wonder what it was before I started with bore cleaner?
I'm not crazy about those bore abrasive brushes, I think they will leave grooves.
I would rather buy or use a 3-blade cylinder hone if they make one for 20/28 gauge.
Mike

 

I appreciate your experience in hones is vastly more than mine but since the flex hones system being discussed is not rigid and sized for the bore size, I don't see how you can EVER make any noticeable/practical dimensional change in a shotgun barrel. Certainly not using the grits that are provided by Brownells.

To support my comment I can tell you that one of the first people that put me on to these flex hones was a now deceased double gunsmith, Buck Hamlin. We got to know each other well after a 30 year association. He explained to me that even when altering a gun barrel to open the choke somewhat; he could not use the flex hone system.

Why? Because it would never remove metal to the point he could measure it and thus did not change the choke any. He did use them after he had already achieved the desired dimensional change with a traditional hone to smooth the cuts it made.

I believe him because I have tried sanding/polishing metal with 600-800 grit (that is all that is available from Brownells) emory paper and I never saw any measurable dimensional change. Heck it is difficult, and time consuming to make any measurable change with such fine grit on wood, much less hardened steel.

You are right the slurry cuts the tops off the the jagged metal caused by the reaming process but then it just stops removing metal. You can feel the difference in how easy the drill turns after the flex hones have done their job.

You are absolutely correct, the plateau effect is what the system achieves.

I have found flex hones to be very helpful on semi auto shotgun chambers that IMO always benefit from a slick surface. I have even used them very effectively to polish the sizing/holding dies in PW reloaders. For that job I used the chamber size flex hone. The difference it made in the effort to move the handle through a loading cycle on a PW 800+ was dramatic!

So I will conclude that in this case I will disagree with your expert opinion, and say that I don't believe ANY measurable change will be made to a barrel innards if using the Flex Hones as made by Brush Research and sold by Brownells. Certainly no change that would be detrimental to the gun's operation.

No offense intended, but we will just have to agree to disagree.

 

Notice I said .0001's of an inch and it will continue cutting until it maybe only cutting .00001's of an inch but it is still cutting. In order to measure that, the average gunsmith is going to have to have tools that measure that small, and they simply don't, they cost too much.

So you may agree to disagree, but you are wrong. Notice I said

If a person hones their barrel repeatedly, eventually it will alter the size. The amount of course depends on how often and for how many passes the hone is used, and the hardness of the metal itself, along with the original surface finish.

So do you have instruments or whomever that measures .0001 or less ? My buddy's expensive bore gauge only measures to .001 definitively, less is a guess. So to say they quit cutting is a total misnomer, they simply slow down as to how much they are cutting.

Now to the grits provided by Brownells. I bought an Ithaca barrel that turned out had rust pits in it from sitting and water/condensation in a line at what was the bottom. The rust pits extended into the chamber. My one gunsmith friend has a coarser grit chamber hone which removed the pits but also enlarged the chamber a few .001's of an inch because they remove material radially.

My other gunsmith buddy has various grits barrel hones and he was able to get the pits out of the barrel. It took a while, they were deep. Does it hurt, no, it is just like back boring a little bit.

Now as far as opening chokes up, of course not. Let's talk 12 gauge choke constrictions. A FULL is .035 while an Imp Mod is .025 (constriction according to the chart I looked at just now, other charts vary). That is a .010 of an inch difference. It would take a very very long time to hone out .010. How about a Full to a MOD (.019 constriction) so .016 has to come out, that translates to .008 on a side because you are not removing the material from one place, you are removing equally all around the dial. .008 at 12 and .008 at 6, etc.

So once again I said:

But once again the alteration is going to be measured in .001's of an inch (or fractions thereof) , not .010's of an inch

To clean up my barrel, the amount honed out was in the .001's of an inch. The pits were deep enough to feel with a pencil tip. To be able to feel a pit with a pencil tip, it has to be at least a couple .001's deep. So the coarser grit hones as supplied by Brownells have to be able to remove that much material.

If the pit was .002 deep, that means that .0021 (at least) was removed on a side, increasing the bore diameter in the pit area by .004.

.010 is ten times .001. Fractions thereof as I said are 100 or even 1000 times less than .001, but still measurable with the right instruments.

And yes I had that experience, I was able to set my micrometers to be accurate to .00005 of an inch.

And finally to start it all off I said

You should say "altering much".

I could have fine tuned that statement to say altering much to have an practical impact or significant dimensional change (for the fine hone).

But they still will continue to remove metal. That is what they were designed to do. There is no disclaimer on any mfg'er's site that says "Our hones stop cutting when the surface finish gets to this".

 

Even when an engine cylinder is honed after boring, it is only a couple .001's taken out. Hones just don't remove massive amounts of metal. But they do and continue removing metal, it just gets progressively less until the peaks and valleys are so small that now there is more material coming into contact and is harder to remove.

 

The typical phosphor bronze brushes will will not scratch your choke tubes. They are made from substantially softer material and are not solid.

Try chucking one of those phosphor bronze brushes in a drill and then while it is being held in a vice, spin it slowly and run the choke tube on it skirt side first. In less time than it takes to write this, it will be clean up perfectly. Easy Pzey.

 

The typical phosphor bronze brushes will will not scratch your choke tubes. They are made from substantially softer material and are not solid.

Try chucking one of those phosphor bronze brushes in a drill and then while it is being held in a vice, spin it slowly and run the choke tube on it skirt side first. In less time than it takes to write this, it will be clean up perfectly. Easy Pzey.

ABSOLUTELY !! You are 100 % correct !

Additionally, those ceramic hones do not have the balls radially aligned. If you look at them closely, they are on a slight helix, that keeps them from cutting grooves, especially if they are kept moving. They are not designed to leave in one spot and spin, that can cut a low spot the length of the hone, actually neither are the 3 stone ones either.

If a choke is "cutting" off plastic from the wad, you should look to see if the bore diameter is actually larger than the wad is (or off center) causing a step.

My buddy would machine choke tubes like that intentionally for turkey shoots. They (the turkey shoot gunsmiths) have all kinds of tricks to get the wad and shot column to stay together as far as possible. Shave it down, slow it down, anything to keep the shot from spreading out (so they were shaving off plastic like that).

He built shotguns that would blow the center out of an X target at 30 yards. 1 ragged hole from what ever shells that were provided. At turkey shoots, you shoot their shells.

 

I use Pure Gum Turpentine to lift lead out of the bores of BPCR rifles. It would probably work for plastic also, BUT, WD-40 smells better.

 

Thanks, I just ordered some polishing bore brushes from Brownell's for my choke tubes.
Mike

 

Old fart at the club says to put steel wool on the brush, the brush in the drill !!
Worked great!

 

This is what I did with my shotgun barrels. I don't have all the fancy gauges and what not, but the bores sure were shiny when I was done. Seemed to close up my patterns of my 20ga single shot.

 

Right on, Grizz56...and Fireball..!

I'm an old 77 yr. old, old fart too, and I've been using 0000 fine steel wool on a bronze bore brush whenever I see ANY plastic residue in the muzzles of any of my shotguns. Depends on the ammo you use. I've been doing it for over 60 years now. Any good hardware store should stock some OR can get it for you.

Just chuck the combo on a long cleaning rod and let the drill slowly work. It won't take long AND will look like new once again! {Start at the breech end - not the muzzle end.}

Best of luck w/ it - it WORKS..!!

 

Yes, I have a drawer full of different steel wool from 0 to 0000.
And you are correct; some gun powders are seriously hot to melt plastic.
It wasn't a problem when I started hunting & reloading, there were no plastic wads, only Celotex & shot cards. Mike

 

Ah yes, I can remember back to 1964, while in high school and reloading paper Federal hulls on a Lee hand/loader set in my dad's basement..! It took a LONG time to load one box w/ the old fiber wads - but it was fun teaching myself to shoot Skeet a long drive away, so I could hit those quail & rabbits better back then...! {We had a LOT of them too, back then.}

I had just turned 16 and had my DL AND freedom..!! NO plastic wads back then to stick inside a choke. (Heck, we didn't even have plastic hulls yet then!)

I think I'm dating myself a bit, ha, ha..!!! Vietnam was just four years away, also.

 

We were not a wealthy family; I hunted with my dad & uncles because I reloaded my own shells from the hulls I picked up after my uncles were done hunting. It was a bear loading 4-boxes of shells to shoot trap when I started out. But I could hunt 4 to 6-times with one box of hand loads with a Lee hand loader in that little flat box, 12 / 16 / and 20-gauge. My dad bought everything we needed from Herter's in Waseca, Minnesota, fiber wads, powder, primers, and shot cards to cover, and yes, I did roll-crimping too with an electric drill.
I first began in 1956, then came plastic everything.
Mike

 

hoppes 9 and steel wool on a bore brush....+1. been using that for decades.

 

i saw in an old gunsmith book where you take a wood dowel and widdle it making look like a pine cone. its said to crack and fling out the plastic.

 

i saw in an old gunsmith book where you take a wood dowel and whittle it making look like a pine cone. its said to crack and fling out the plastic.

Well, if you ever get a picture of that, post it, might make interesting subject matter.
Mike