ORIGINAL: cayugad
My final steps of cleaning was.. J-B bore pasted the barrel, then scrubbed it with some Butch's Bore Solvent and a brush. It then cleaned up real well after that, and all the flakes stopped showing up. I really have no idea what the metal flakes and speckles were. Any ideas?
It's nickel coating in the barrel. I had a nickel plated traditions that did the exact same thing. I would be shooting and during the swab I would get flakes on the patches. Eventually it will all come out.