RE: Barrel cleaning?
Count me in as someone who thinks you CAN be too anal about keeping your bore clean. I should know, cause I' m too anal about it myself, although I' m slowly curing myself of this affliction. Anyway, you' ve been given pretty good advise. There are much better choices than Hoppe' s as you' ve found out by now. In search of the Holy Grail of barrel cleaning I' ve used just about everything including Barnes CR-10, Butches, Sweets, Bore Tech, Shooters Choice, Wipeout, Hoppes, Birchwood Casey, J-B Paste and some others I can' t remember. All my experimenting has led me to the following routine, which does a very good job and is not complicated. I clean the bore after every 20 to 25 rounds or each trip to the range. I don' t clean between groups while at the range.
First, my equipment: Sinclair rod guide, Bore Tech rod, Dewey jags, Sinclair bronze brushes, Brownells nylon bore brushes, Sinclair 100% cotton flannel patches
My routine:
A. First I clean for powder fouling:
1. Push 3 patches wetted with Shooters Choice (actually I use a mixture of 75% Shooters Choice and 25% Kroil) down the bore. Discard them when they exit the muzzle. Wait 30 minutes to allow the solvent to work.
2. Push one wet patch (Shooters Choice) down the bore. Look for blue coloration on this patch. If the patch is quite blue, you' ll need to use a dedicated copper cleaner after you' ve cleaned the powder out.
3. Wet the bronze brush with Shooters Choice and scrub the bore back and forth about 20 to 25 times. Make sure you exit the bore on each end. Don' t change directions while the brush is within the bore.
4. Run another wet patch or two down the bore.
5. Run 3 or 4 dry patches down the bore.
6. Spray a patch with Birchwood Casey' s Bore Scrubber (a degreaser) and run this down the bore to neutralize the previous solvent.
7. Now you can proceed to clean for copper or you can apply some type of bore oil if you' re going to be putting the gun up.
8. Don' t forget to swab the chamber out also!
B. To clean for copper (if necessary):
1. After cleaning for powder fouling as per above, I apply Barnes CR-10 according to the directions on the bottle.
2. Patch out with dry patches followed by Bore Scrubber to help neutralize the CR-10.
3. Apply a light bore oil.
Before shooting you rifle again, run a couple patches down the bore to remove any excess oil left in the bore.
Here' s something to remember: don' t use a bronze bore brush with a strong copper solvent like Sweets or Barnes CR-10. The solvent will quickly destroy the brush and you' ll get false blue coloration (a sign of copper) on your patches from the brush.
I highly recommend the 100% cotton flannel patches. The synthetic patches like you get at Walmart are almost useless in my opinion.
Also, I will occasionally (after 150 rounds or so) scrub the bore with J-B paste, which is a polishing compound. This helps remove the really caked on fouling that the solvents simply can' t remove.
Anyway, that' s what I do and it works for me.