clean copper fouling
 

working on cleaning out the copper in my 338. how can you tell if you have it clean? one person told me to keep soaking a patch and wiping out until no more blue shows up on the patch. i did this process severals times last night using bore scrubber and continued to get the blue on the patch after several cycles. when i went to the brush in between the patch would come out basically black. am i too impatient? do i need to continue the above or do you have any other suggestions.

When you clean are you using a powder solvent like Hoppe's #9 or are you using a copper solvent?

I use patches and brass brushes soaked with Shooter's Choice mixed with a little Kroil until all of the powder residue is gone (the black patches), and then deal with the copper by using Sweets 7.62. After the Sweets I use the SC again to clean out all of the Sweets. I oil the barrel if it is going into storage.

I don't use the Sweets every time I clean, as the SC does a pretty good job. Sweets 7.62, Butch's Bore Shine, etc. are just stinky old ammonia based cleaners that disolve the copper. The copper cleaners do a good job but don't let them stay in the barrel too long (read directions!).

If you have black patches after brushing you are not quite done.

Also, some of the cleaning solvents will continue to pick up copper from brushes, jags, etc. For that reason, I use nylon brushes.

I too always use nylon brushes and jags when dealing with the copper cleaners.

I run a wet patch with #9 benchrest and let it soak for a while,followed by dry patches. I then resoak the bore with #9 and use the J&B paste if needed. Cleans and polishes that bore. Then I swab with #9 benchrest, dry patches and then oil the bore.

Are you cleaning our brushes?? Seems like you clean your ore, but if you use the same dirty brush between, you are redirtying your ore, thus the patches coming out black again.

your are right i am not cleaning my brush. how do you go about that? soak and wipe?

Yeah, I run Hoppes #9 for powder and KG12 for copper fouling, run dry patches and repeat as many times as it takes me to get the dry patches to come out white. It is sometimes a long process.

I use bore foam and then clean with hoppes or something similar...