I Was Wrong. I'm Sorry
 

I've had oil soaking in the bore of the Pro Hunter for 3 days. This morning I found brake cleaner, a Scotch Brite pad, and some more JB's. I spent about another two hours working the bore. It's not perfect yet, but it's a lot better. There's still a couple areas of concern but on my next day off I'll work on it more.
Anyway, as embarassing as it is, most of my problems I'm guessing were whatever TC puts in their bore. I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions and made such a big deal out of it. I also have a call in to the manager of Dicks so I can apologize to him.
Again, I'm sorry and I appreciate everyone's help and suggestions. I hope this doesn't make anyone too mad.

:D Takes alot of work to get that packing lube out. :D

From my perspective... a learning experiance gained... NOTHING that some else might not do somewhere in the future..

Keep moving forward...

Nothing to be sorry about . You polished out a big bunch of imperfections in a rough bore. Something that should have been done by TC.

Some of these rifles are just a bear to clean. I am sure it for the protection of the metal. BUT why does it have to be so hard to get the stuff out. Glad you have the problem under control. Get it nice and clean, then go shoot it. Have fun.

Thanks for telling everybody. It takes a man of character to admit he was wrong.

Part of the problem is until you get all the oil out. It looks like rust.

I used up a whole can of brake cleaner, and finally had to wrap some 0000 steelwool around a brush with brake cleaner to get it all out.

Glad I didn't give up though. It's the best shooting ML i've ever owned.

I shot it again this morning. I boosted the load from 100gr to 110gr with 300gr Thors. It took my 1 1/4' groups @100yds to sub MOA.

My hunting gun is ready for next Sept. I'm not changing nothing.

Ive seen some really nasty packing lube that looked like rust too and not just cosmoline. Ive even seen some on a few old NIB Knights that hardened and got darker.

Brake cleaner and a bronze brush usually break it loose before a normal cleaning. Diesel fuel or Kerosene will soften it too if you want to let it soak.

Just another learning experience. No worries, before too long you'll be killing deer with that rifle.

Thanks guys. I stilll can't believe how bad that was to clean. I've never seen a gun that was that bad. There's still a couple spots I need to work on but I'm letting oil soak on them some for a few more days and I'll try to finish cleaning and get the scope mounted on Saturday. Looks like more rain and snow showers this weekend so I don't know if I'll get to shoot or not.

I have yet to see a company put more cerosote (or whatever it is) than T/C.

I figured thats what it was from your first post. Even my encore 204 ruger barrel took quite a bit of elbow grease to get out.

The bad news is its dangerous centerfire rounds. Because most people just go and shoot. I know a few people who asked me why its so hard to remove brass from thier encore first time they shot. I explained they were over pressure.

I just remembered something. When I was trying to get the packing oil out of my Omega I had gone through a can of brake cleaner and was still getting some crud that looked like rust. At that point I had tried every cleaner I had except one.

I had bought a used Renegade and it came with a box of stuff. One of the items was a bottle of Cabelas black powder cleaner. It was a green color ans some sort of citrus. I'm not a fan of Cabelas anything for my BP guns, and had just left it in the box.

With nothing to lose I soaked a patch with it and ran it down the bore. To my surprise I got a lot of the oil from the bore. Another wet patch and some dry patches, and the bore sparkled. I have no idea what was in that Cabelas cleaner, but it sure cut through that oil. I have to wonder if I had used it from the beginning how it would have done.

Sorry I forgot about this.

I always use JB bore cleaner. It seems to clean anything, even heavy leading.

I think he tried that. That TC oil is made by the devil.

I used a whole lot of JB's.

As for the Cabelas cleaner, I've seen it there before and I've almost bought it on more than one occasion just to try, but I figured it was probably watered down water or something. Maybe I'll have to try it next time I'm there.

For removing all types of fouling and packing grease or whatever it is they use in new rifles, Kroil oil and Jb's will remove it. when i got my triumph i couldn't get it cleaned up the way i wanted it, so i called a friend of mine that builds rifles and he asked me to bring it to his house.i had some JB paste i brought along. he took a scotch brite pad applied kroil and smeared some JB paste on it. 50 strokes later and 1 more patch it was spotless.he then took a sythetic brush with kroil on it and told me that would remove any left over JB paste. followed it with a couple more patches and had a nice shiny smooth barrel.Midway sales kits that contain kriol/JB since this is what most rifle builders use when working on new and used rifles. midway also has a video on this subject. Ray

There was a lot of old stuff in the box. It might not be available anymore. It was citrus though. Maybe some other citrus cleaners might work.

A few months back Cabelas had .45 caliber shooting / cleaning kits marked down to $14.00. I bought one because it came with 20 SST's and they nornally run $12.00 a box by themselves. There was a bottle of the Cabelas blackpowder cleaner in the kit. I will have to give it a try as I just threw it on the workbench thinking it was junk.

Muley the secret is the Kroil oil, it along with JB will remove about anything one can have in a barrel. when my friend gets a new or used gun in. the first thing he does is apply some Kroil to the barrel and lets it set awhile wipes it out, then applies kroil an JB both.if it's real bad he uses a stiff synthetic brush with kroil first, followed by JB/Kroil.his son uses the same exact method and he builds high dollar rifles. bottom line is it works excellent. Ray

If you don't have Kroll around, Liquid Wrench works just fine.

I bet it would work just as well, since it's designed to break crud and rust up.. great tip SEMI.. Ray

I did not have any trouble at all cleaning my Prohunter barrel before I shot it. I just gave it a regualr cleaning and it was shining.

when using kroil or liquid wrench let it soak over night and just keep running patchs with kroil or liquid wrench every hour down the barrel before you start to clean it this will help brake it up then use a brash you may have to do this more thing once hope this helps

If you did not JB the Pro Hunter bore you may want to consider it. It may look clean like my buddies did until I hit it with JB and showed him what the patches looked like. He was amazed at the ease of loading saboted bullets when we hit the range. My sons Triumph looked spotless too but loaded a little harder then I wanted it to. I JB'ed it and it loads beautifully now.

X2 on that! Ray

No matter if a barrel is clean or not, JB's will always turn black when fiction is applied. Just take some JB's and rub between two swabs. It will turn black.

Yeah I know it will turn black its brown to begin with. I have used it enough to know that its doing its job pulling fouling or packing lube from the rifling. It turned a few of my harder loading muzzleloaders into great loaders.

I wonder if plugging the breech and pouring kerosene down the bore and letting it soak a while would work. I bought a used 700 once that the trigger was really rusted. I soaked it in a wallpaper trough filled with kerosene for three days. Took it out, used my wife's toothbrush to scrub it up, worked the action/trigger a bunch of times, wiped it off and oiled it up and it worked fine. In fact I still have that old rifle.
Excuse my rambling, but the point is, kerosene may loosen that crap up. That or some really hot water and a good brass brush scrubbing with soapy water (Dawn) and another hot water rinse.

Did ya just throw it back in the holder when you were done? :lolabove: