Whats this in the barrel?

[ohio ramrod]

I have found that the old standby 1 part murphy's oil soap, 1 part alcohol, 1 part hydrogen peroxide, will remove almost all fouling and light rust. Plug your nipple or vent hole, fill with the solution , let set for a hour or so. Empty and repeat until the solution comes out clear. Then use a light fitting bore brush. .Polish with scotch brite after to remove any residual material.

 

[ord sgt]

Hardly surprising, when you consider that instead of using a regular patch, like most of us would, he'd used an undersized ball from his .36 revolver, swathed in many folds of Glad-Wrap.

Now, that's one that I have never heard. Some people come up with creative solutions to a nonexistent problem But plastic wrap for patching? Wow, just wow.

 

[Stantheman86]

Short story for sure. Picked up this TC Hawkin 45 recently. Barrel was somewhat clean, I did attempt to clean the barrel, but am not sure what this is. Note the brown. Is this rust, old lube or what? Any thoughts would be appreciated. If old lube what would get this out.

Looks like bluing that hasn't worn off from shooting yet

 

[mtsage]

The TC was cleaned. Here is what I can tell. I tried just about every method posted above. The barrel is clean. But the "rust" that is embedded in the barrel appears to remain. Without a bore scope so I can only see a couple inches down the muzzle. The method that really showed me the most was the piece of scotch 3m pad and jagged the barrel. Will head to the range this week and see what it does. Thanks for all the suggestions and thoughts. Enjoyed the reads. Blast on.

 

[senseisugarbear]

Did Ya'll miss the fact that the rifle was INDEED LOADED!!! Now perhaps Old Hawkeye isn't such a smart a##, Sometimes we get our attention so focused on something we overlook or take short cuts. a little rough at first, but you may have saved a terrible accident...good catch Old Hawkeye...WALLY

 

[user 49399]

Mtsage,

I bought a TC Hawken several years ago that had a similar discoloration near the muzzle. I tried several cleaning methods listed on this forum. The discoloration or whatever it was did lessen but never went completely away. I finally decided to just shoot it and see how it performed. You can see from the picture that it shoots just fine or at least as well as I can shoot. I figure that if I know it’s clean and it shoots well, I won’t worry about it. My uneducated guess is that a previous owner used a black powder substitute and failed to clean it propearly.

 

[rich pierce]

There are bore cleaners out there that will remove most plastic residue from a bore. A jag with a patch and soapy water isn’t going to cut it.

Good to know. Thankfully I’ve never seen a bore loaded with plastic residue.

 

[TFoley]

Good to know. Thankfully I’ve never seen a bore loaded with plastic residue.

I leave it to your imagination to think what a bore with the rifling filled with formerly molten Glad-Wrap looked like.

 

[Buckskinquin]

Pretty sure I know how to read. Read your negative post. Maybe, just maybe somebody else would like to know how to get rid of what ever ale's this barrel. Thanks for your time though.

A product, IOOSO, a light compound with fine grit in is made for this. However I had a horrible Pedersoli barrel and the steel wool on a jag with oil worked fine. I believe I put a narrow cleaning rod in my cordless drill to clean initially, then by hand. Good luck!

 

[mtsage]

JB Bore paste I think is about the same product. I have used it for some heavy duty cleaning as well. Thanks for passing this along.

 

[Two Elks]

"Ale" is a beverage, not a condition. My post was not meant to be negative, but I guess that's how you perceived it. All I said was your answer is here if you just take some time & make a little effort. There are as many ways to clean a barrel as there are people on this forum. All the remedies you will get on this thread have been posted here THOUSANDS of times! Now there will be dozens more posted. Which one do you want me to recommend? Seems everybody is too sensitive about every little thing these days. I asked if the gun was loaded because a lot of used muzzle loaders are unwittingly sold that way & a rusty barrel is a red flag that your's may be, as well. Did you check? Good luck!

I think your comment "All you have to do is know how to read" is what lit the fire. Perhaps a better answer would have been ".....your answer is here if you just take some time & make a little effort". Words matter these days. No offense intended, just pointing out how your comment might have been perceived by others. We have to be gentle these days for sure.

 

[Brokennock]

be careful with bronze brushes or you may wind up with more problems as they were made to go through a barrel they tend not to reverse well .. [can get stuck] use an undersize brush with an oiled patch or scotch brite pad.. oh and dont use your ramrod use a good strong cleaning rod. pulled off tips of a r/r stuck in the bore is an other story. just .2 cents worth for free . good luck and happy shooting

It isn't the big deal so many internet alarmists make it out to be. Give the rod and brush a clockwise turn and the brush breaks free.

 

[waksupi]

I asked a chemist/shooter today about this discoloration. He says it is most likely oxidation of the oil being used in the bore. He suggested using Ed's Red to avoid it. I've used it for years, and after introducing it in three gun manufacturers when I worked for them, it became the standard to use.

 

[deerstalkert]

Have done some ale's. Some history. I'm not new to shooting. Got 60 plus years throwing lead of many diff calibers. Been shooting my old 50 cal TC Hawken since 1969 actually. But have never had rust or any buildup of lube. So looking into this new barrel was something new to me. And you are correct in that there are many many posts on cleaning rust, lube from barrels. So I guess I took the shortcut and just asked without doing a search. But some peeps for whatever reason feel in necessary to remind other peeps of the "SEARCH" line. Of course the easy way would be just to avoid posts with headlines that were not of interest. Enough said. Thanks for the reminder. Search just took on another meaning to me.

And yup the TC did have a RB and patch in the breech with 40 grains of powder. Ramrod proved something still loaded. Screwed ball out and shook/scraped powder out. Weighted powder and was 40 grains. I was told 45 was put away 20-30 years ago. So my brain says lets see if powder is still good. Oh, I don't have a clue what kind/name of powder was. Hope this video loads for show.

Please always check to see if gun is loaded. Use the ramrod. It did not lie. Fun stuff.

man oh man my friend! you understated it with the comment of "pretty slow"! my home brew is faster before milling!
how be ye? haven't heard from ya for a while.
that discoloration looks like someone used something weird as a lube or cleaner. let us know how it shoots! in the long run that is what matters.

 

[Bad Karma]

Pretty sure I know how to read. Read your negative post. Maybe, just maybe somebody else would like to know how to get rid of what ever ale's this barrel. Thanks for your time though.

There are some salty dogs around here and some who pretend they’re salty. At any rate. I bought an inexpensive steam cleaner a while back and I use it for stuff like that. Usually I can get to bare metal in short order.

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Good to know. Thankfully I’ve never seen a bore loaded with plastic residue.

Could very well be from one of those sabot loads popular for shooting a .30 cal conical in a .50 cal unmentionable muzzleloader.

 

[Bad Karma]

Leeshaver.com as a method for cleaning and polishing rifle bores as well.

“Something i found on Lee Shaver’s i figured i would share


Lee Shaver’s Break-in Procedure

Having used the jacketed bullet/clean-between-shot process in the past and
specifically Badger’s procedure when breaking-in one of my Browning BPCRs, I
was not looking forward to repeating the very lengthy process with my other
Browning’s. Fortunately Lee Shaver came to the rescue with his much simpler and
less time consuming process. With permission from Lee I’ve included the details
of his procedure. It’s from a larger article Lee published in the May 2013 edition
of The Single Shot Exchange Magazine.

Excerpt from “Breaking In a Barrel” by Lee Shaver:
Several years ago, I developed a process for breaking-in barrels for lead bullet use
that eliminated the afternoon of shooting and cleaning with jacketed bullet. It
began because I would occasionally have to get bad leading out of a barrel for a
customer, and when you charge what a gunsmith must charge to stay in business
you don’t want to spend an afternoon scrubbing the lead out of a customer’s gun.
And I’m sure the customer would rather not pay for said services.

What I learned was that when scrubbing lead out of a barrel, I could run a tight oily
patch through a few times and then take the patch off the jag. I would then unroll a
little 0000 steel wool and cut a piece the size of the patch. Place that over the
patch and then run it all through together. (The proper fit is when you have to
bump the rod a few times with the palm of your hand to get it started in the bore.)
When you shove that steel wool over a patch through the bore of a badly leaded
barrel, it may sound like paper tearing as the lead is ripped out of the barrel in a
pass or two. I can clean the lead out of the worst barrel in about ten or fifteen
minutes that way, and an average leaded barrel will be clean in a few strokes.

After using this technique for a while, I began to notice that the rifles that I was de-
leading that way seemed to lead less afterwards, which got me to thinking. We use
fine steel wool on the outside of old guns all the time to do some cleaning or spot
rust removal, and it does not damage the surface of the steel. It just scrubs it.
Which lead me to consider the fact that we are trying to break in a barrel by
smoothing the surface without cutting, and it seems to me that process would go
much quicker if we used something on the inside of the bore that was closer to the
hardness of the barrel instead of lead or copper. So I started trying the steel wool
and oiled patch technique on new barrels before shooting them. I use it about as
tight as I can get in the bore and wear out a steel wool pad or two in about 15
minutes, then I go and shoot the rifle.

How well does it work you might ask? On a few occasions, I have built a new rifle
and taken it to a match without ever having fired the rifle. All have performed
flawlessly in their first match and several times I won the match or set a record
with them. On one occasion, I set a new 300 yard range record with the first 13
shots out of a barrel. This method has become a service we offer to our customers
here in the shop and I have shared the technique many times with others.

So the next time you get ready to shoot that new rifle, just remember it is important
to break in a barrel properly, but if the operation you are doing to the barrel cuts –
it is not breaking it in. It may be making the barrel smoother, but to break the
barrel in you need to polish the bore by burnishing not cutting either by shooting it
or scrubbing it.
Lee Shaver”