Raktrakr - I started a thread a couple of weeks ago asking about how often to clean a ML with rifle solvent and which solvent folks liked. I received some very good suggestions as to the recommended solvents including: Butch's Bore Shine and Tetra Copper Solvent to name a couple. Many folks posted that they clean their MLs starting with the typical water bath followed by a good rifle solvent.

After feeling that accuracy with slowly deteriorating in one of my MLs that I've had for the last 10 years (and only gave water baths to), I decided to order some Sweet's 7.62, Tetra Copper Solvent, Kroil, and CR-10 from MidSouth Shooting Supplies. Yeah, I know, why the heck did I order so much stuff that essentially does the same thing? Well, I've only used Shooter's Choice and Hoppes and thought that this was my time to experiment with some stronger "modern day" solvents.

The results? Stunning. I took the "clean" ML and proceeded to scrub the bore with a soaked patch of the Tetra stuff and was AMAZED at how much crud came out. I've been shooting sabots 99% of the time out of this ML so I suspected that most of the crub was imbedded plastic. I followed this with a strong cleaning of Sweet's which almost made me pass out the smell was so strong. Again, fouling kept coming out of the barrel. I then left some Tetra in overnight as the directions suggested. Lastly, I flushed the bore with Kroil to neutralize the affects of the amonia based solvents. Man's these solvents are nasty!

In brief, don't make the mistake I did and assume that just because you are cleaning with hot soapy water the barrel must be clean. Because if you're shooting sabots...it probably ain't !!! Good shootin'

-Hunter John