H2O2-- Never again!

[coloradoclyde]

hydrogen monoxide

I Googled it. Apparently, no such thing.
Pity. I wanted to try some. :rotf:

:rotf: :rotf: :applause: You should work for spell check....Good job. Yes I misspelled it. it should have been dihydrogen monoxide. :thumbsup: :hatsoff:

 

[Dewey]

Or we could really confuse things and call it oxidane ... ok, ok, even chemists call it "water"!

By any name, it cleans your rifle (along with a little soap) just fine without the need for any hydrogen peroxide, IMHO !!!

 

[coloradoclyde]

:rotf: Ok, Ok at risk of starting a synonym war I :surrender: You can have your IUPAC name.

But if we look at the word oxonium we may begin to examine the role it plays in our MAP solution.
Chemistry is fun and interesting if not confusing. :haha:

 

[Rifleman1776]

dihydrogen monoxide.

Even I would have know what that was.
Correctness is taking the fun out of all this.
Methinks we are all a bit drunk on something by now. :surrender:

 

[robert reed]

Probably just something in the water.


“I don't drink water. Fish **** in it.”

”• W.C. Fields

 

[Rifleman1776]

What experiences have others had with H2O2?

I use H2O2 regularly when cleaning my ml guns. I once posted a test I did with a hunk of ml barrel and H2O2. Nothing, meaning NOTHING happened to the barrel.
I know what industrial strength H2O2 can do to steel and it ain't pretty. :shake:
But, the stuff you get at the drug store is much weaker. It cleans gunk from crevices very well and, in my experience, is safe to use in your ml rifles.

Try your test again with a dirty barrel, and I bet your results will be different ... the salts are needed for corrosion to proceed. The peroxide would just serve as a convent source of extra oxygen, speeding rust formation up, IMHO.

OK I did the test. Results satisfy me that a quick cleaning with drug store H2O2 does no harm to a rifle barrel. Yer still entitled to yer own opin. :surrender:
Here is what I did: I took my hunk of barrel coated the outside with some really filthy Elephant powder, filled bore with same and ignited. Then the dirty barrel was put into a glass jar with some H2O2. Only about 1/3 of the barrel was submerged. The jar was sealed and left alone for more than 48 hours. The combination of burned bp gunk and moisture did the expected rusting on the barrel. But the portion that was submerged looks no different than the rest. Which TO ME proves it has no effect on steel. Industrial strength stuff might be different but we are talking about home use stuff. Do yer own thang and I'll continue doing mine. :v

[/URL][/img]

 

[Dphar]

White,

Your barrel - how is it finished? Is it blued? Browned? Was the bore exposed to the same finish?

I suspect that the barrel has as much to do with this as the cleaning solution.

I have had similar results as you with the same witches brew. However, I have also used it on other guns with little problem.

The rust caused by the peroxide reacting with the barrel probably won't be a problem. The peroxide is also consumed in the reaction so that once it is gone the rusting ceases.

It is the chloride salts that cause pitting. That's because the chloride ion doesn't really get consumed in the rust formation. Instead the chloride acts as a transport vehicle to pull iron atoms out of the metal and trade them with atmospheric oxygen. The chloride ion then goes back and gets more metallic iron.

There is no Chloride in BP fouling. So unless using corrosive substitute there is no salt. Unless the BP is made with impure or improper ingredients. Water will almost instantly dissolve BP fouling since it sucks up water and liquifies.

Dan

 

[Rifleman1776]

Unless the BP is made with impure or improper ingredients.

And that is the sticking points in these discussions.
As I understand it (no chemist expert here) most bp on the market is made with industrial grade ingrediants. However, supposedly, Swiss does use phamacutical (purer) grade chemicals. So, any bp residue will most likely need some help for clean up.

 

[Dewey]

Thanks for running the test, Rifleman.
Experimental results trump hypothesis, so ... :surrender:

 

[Dphar]

Unless the BP is made with impure or improper ingredients.

And that is the sticking points in these discussions.
As I understand it (no chemist expert here) most bp on the market is made with industrial grade ingrediants. However, supposedly, Swiss does use phamacutical (purer) grade chemicals. So, any bp residue will most likely need some help for clean up.

Since moving to Minden SFAIK Goex is now made with pure Potassium Nitrate. There was a time when this was not the case. Still even "table salt" fouling produced by at least one substitute can be easily removed with warm water. If people use LUBES that leave water proof residue in the barrel this might require soap. Otherwise water is as good as anything.
If the Potassium Nitrate contains even a tiny amount of Sodium Nitrate it will tend to absorb moisture from the air. It makes the powder unsuitable for propellant usage since it will effect the burn rate uniformity and reduce the amount of energy a grain weight of powder will produce. Blasting powder on the other hand can be and generally is made with sodium nitrate from what I have been told.
BP fouling, Goex or Swiss does not leave behind salts or acid.
People like to create problems that don't exist. BTW the main ingredient in all commercial BP bore cleaners is water.

Dan

 

[Jim C]

The only thing I've EVER used to clean my rifles is near boiling water with a squirt of dawn dish detergent and their barrels are as shiny as the day they were new. The intense heat from the near boiling water dries the cracks and crevices really quick like. I have never seen the first speck of rust in ANY of my rifles bores.

 

[Zonie]

It seems to me that the only thing your experiment did was to prove that a fouled barrel when enclosed in a sealed container with H2O2 covering part of it will rust above the fluid and below it.

As it was in a sealed container, some of the H2O part would have evaporated making the humidity in the air space 100 %. Any of the extra oxygen that escaped from the H2O2 solution into that 100 percent humidity would have added oxygen to the air space.

If the test proved anything it seems to be, 100 percent humidity plus some extra oxygen rusts steel coated with black powder fouling just about the same as the area of the barrel that was below the fluid level.

Perhaps a second test could be made that duplicates this test but, instead of using hydrogen peroxide, substitute distilled water.

It would be rather important to make sure the distilled water was not aerated by shaking it up because that would introduce air (read oxygen) into the solution.

Of course the trapped airspace above the water will become a 100 percent humidity zone and it will very likely cause the same sort of rust your experiment shows.
What will be interesting to me is, will the non-aerated distilled water cause rusting below the fluid level?

If it does not cause rusting, I think it would go a long way towards proving or disproving that oxygen, either in the air above the fluid or the fluid is the culprit.

Putting it another way, if hydrogen peroxide causes rusting below the fluid surface and non-aerated distilled water does not the presence of oxygen in hydrogen peroxide could be harmful to a steel barrel.

Just a thought.

 

[Dewey]

I think Rifleman has DEFINITELY shown that SOAKING a dirty barrel is a BAD IDEA (H2O2 or not) !!!

Water is saturated with oxygen at 8-9 ppm at room temp (more if cooler, almost 0 ppm at boiling), so any cleaning (bore scrubbing) would result in dissolved oxygen ... can't avoid it (unless you want to work in a nitrogen blanket, LOL). In a closed container, any extra O2 added to the air from the peroxide would increase O2 solubility (Henry's Law), but unless you are seeing bubbles I don't think enough O2 would be added to make a difference (I could be wrong ... again, LOL).

Extra humidity in the air would definitely hurt things. But I am beginning to think a QUICK scrub (NO soak) with a 1% peroxide solution is maybe not as bad as I would have thought.

I'm STILL going to use a bit of Murphy's Oil Soap and hot water for my cleaning, however - it works for me!

 

[coloradoclyde]

:haha: You just made a good case for cleaning with very hot water.

If you add Murphy's and alcohol to the peroxide oxygen is released, give it a shake to mix and more oxygen is released.
But once your barrel is passivized (oxidized) it is resistant to the extra o2 molecules.

Yes contact time seems to be critical as does keeping your barrel clean between shots.....less fouling =less potential problems.

 

[Rifleman1776]

passivized

:nono: Careful, this is a family site. You can't use words like that here. :wink:

Oh! What have we started?

 

[Rat Trapper]

After several decades of effective hot soapy water bore cleaning, I've never felt it necessary to use any other 'witches brews'.

:thumbsup: Same here, warm water and a little soap is all I need. I oil the boare and rifle when done.

 

[Jim C]

I use my water at near boiling and hold the barrel with an oven mitt while I pump the bore, .50cal, with a 20ga bore mop about ten times. I find that the higher temp water heats the metal up enough to effectively dry up any traces of water in cracks and crevices that the cleaning patches fail to pick up. It eliminates the need for the use of any water displacing chemicals. After 40 yrs of doing this all of my rifles bores/drums
/flame channels, have always been as shiny as a new nickle.

 

[Dewey]

I use my water at near boiling and hold the barrel with an oven mitt while I pump the bore ... I find that the higher temp water heats the metal up enough to effectively dry up any traces of water in cracks and crevices that the cleaning patches fail to pick up.

This !!! ^^^^^