Perfect Barrel - Proof of "leading in" after cleaning ??

[Bladerunner too]

So I have been messing with barrels, what i want to try to do is make a mediocre barrel into one of those hard to find "keepers".

The plan longer term is to get a polygonal barrel for one of my rifles and polish it to a mirror finish, i just think Poly barrels will be easier to deal with - I believe Cardew and Whiscombe both found true rifling (cut or button) was just too much for air rifles and that just scratches were enough to provide adequate rotation, probably why FX have gone the "smooth bore with a tad of poly" at the end route.

Anyway, I digress, the first step was to get a full VFG cleaning kit, rod, intense & normal felts, cleaning compound and Lupus grease, I will be using this to eventually polish a barrel.

So I have a recently aquired used rifle that is quite accurate but not sure of its history, I can see the barrel is dirty, to the naked eye it looks like the lands are shiney but the grooves are grey (lead) coloured. Over the chrony its doing 795ft/s avereage with a spread over 30 shots of around 8ft/s so not to bad.

So just got the kit so had to go and play for an hour, instructions for use of the kit are sketchy so I freestyled somewhat, cleaned with the gun assembled.

- put 3 intensive felts through and they went from very dirty dark grey to dirty
- then 3 intensives with cleaning compound on, these went from very black to just black
- so then tried 10 normal felts with cleaning compound on and these went from very very black to black
- then tried 3 normal felts with Lupus on thes went from grey to slightly grey
- finally 3 dry felts these went from grey to clean

Looking down the barrel it now appeared mirror clean

So thought I would have a look at the Chrony:

- first 10 shots were 740 to 745ft/s
- next 20 shots steadily climbed to 770ft/s
- next 30 shots slowly climbed to 780ft/s and levelled out

One thing I did notice is that the grey fouling was visible to the naked eye very quickly, the shiny mirror finish was gone within the first 10 shots

Not sure if the mirror bit is good or the grey bit is good, it may be mirror finish is not ideal on rifled barrels, but may be in a Poly - if you see what i mean?

So the cleaning has definately had an effect, not sure about accuracy, will have a play the weekend

Has anyone else "played" with intensive cleaning?

I will report back

Many thanks for the report, saved me a load of trouble i think, Was going to jump on the "need my barrel mirror finished" Band-wagon.

[Benelli B76]

To really clean all the lead out of your barrel make a rubber or cork plug for both ends, pour in a little mercury and rock it back and forth.If you have enough mercury to fill the barrel just let it stand for a while.Lead will dissolve into an amalgam and just pour out.This is the best way without scrubbing at the barrel and causing any damage.Both of these items are toxic so wear gloves, and be careful the mercury does not leak and run all over the place.This is a well known method used by us old gunsmiths.

Baz

[Logunner]

To really clean all the lead out of your barrel make a rubber or cork plug for both ends, pour in a little mercury and rock it back and forth.If you have enough mercury to fill the barrel just let it stand for a while.Lead will dissolve into an amalgam and just pour out.This is the best way without scrubbing at the barrel and causing any damage.Both of these items are toxic so wear gloves, and be careful the mercury does not leak and run all over the place.This is a well known method used by us old gunsmiths.

Baz

Think I'll skip the mad hatters tea party.

[sharpsman]

To really clean all the lead out of your barrel make a rubber or cork plug for both ends, pour in a little mercury and rock it back and forth.If you have enough mercury to fill the barrel just let it stand for a while.Lead will dissolve into an amalgam and just pour out.This is the best way without scrubbing at the barrel and causing any damage.Both of these items are toxic so wear gloves, and be careful the mercury does not leak and run all over the place.This is a well known method used by us old gunsmiths.

Baz

Hoppes No9 or Youngs 303 bore cleaners will be a lot safer than useing mercury.

[Benelli B76]

Think I'll skip the mad hatters tea party.

Think that there a lot of people around today who have little experience.This can be expected in a very restrictive society.I owned 120 firearms when I lived overseas and spent 20 years repairing almost every type of pistol and a lot of rifles.If you google "mercury to clean lead from gun barrel" you will see it is a common practice. When I was at school as a boy we were always playing around with mercury, and here I am 67, fit, and still messing around with it, no problem.Your comment tells me a lot about you.

Baz

[Lol Moore]

Think that there a lot of people around today who have little experience.This can be expected in a very restrictive society.I owned 120 firearms when I lived overseas and spent 20 years repairing almost every type of pistol and a lot of rifles.If you google "mercury to clean lead from gun barrel" you will see it is a common practice. When I was at school as a boy we were always playing around with mercury, and here I am 67, fit, and still messing around with it, no problem.Your comment tells me a lot about you.

Baz

Baz

I am NOT a fan of the crazy levels that Health & Safety edicts have reached in this country, I am a great believer in personal responsibilty for yours and others H&S, 35 years working all over the world in some very dangerous working environments in some very dangerous countries and I have all the bits I started with and they are all working, usually I was soley responsible for my H&S as the places had no policy....however.

I can see why people would be a little bit wary of using Mercury it is quite nasty (and difficult to get hold of because of that) reference to mad hatters being a good example of the prolonged effect, I suppose you have no discernable effect from it because you will have had very little contact to it cleaning the odd barrel cold.

All I would say is if you can avoid using something potentially damaging to you and possibly others then do so, use an alternative fella





Anyway back to the barrel

It has definately settled down, I would say after the deep clean it took 40 to 60 shots to settle, now its sweet as.

Would I recommend deep cleaning, yes I would but I dont have a handle on how often yet, there will be a happy medium of running maintenance and this proper service but I am not sure where those timings are yet

I tend to shoot a couple of VFG felts through after every shoot, but I think a pull through may be better as one of the issues is the condensation from a shot causing rust, a pull through wouldn't do this

One thing I did do today was make a bush for the VFG cleaning rod (from PTFE for that slickness ) following from the comments about protecting the crown at all costs, the bush is a snug fit on the barrel end and the rod, thus keeping the rod away from the muzzle end of the barrel, the other end of the rod holds the felt so in theory the rod shouldn't touch the barrel.

Added pics to the album:

https://plus.google.com/photos/11776...74993258500913

More work to do

[Benelli B76]

Sorry if I upset you I apologise.I suppose I am a "mad hatter"as you called me, had a very interesting life which I have enjoyed doing some risky things. If I was young I would join the South African Police (if they would have me!).On this forum we should not be so aggressive and use bad language as it gives a bad impression of the shooting community especially to those who would like to ban our sport.

Baz

[Logunner]

No one called you a "mad hatter"... It is a reference to the milliners who went mad from the exposure to mercury, hence the character in through the looking glass.

As for swearing adding to the peoples poor perception of those within our sport, well even those in government swear and so does that old rogue Philip. Do not post judgements on people and they won't swear at you!

[Hsing-ee]

What do you do with the mercury/lead mix when you have finished cleaning the barrel?

[Benelli B76]

What do you do with the mercury/lead mix when you have finished cleaning the barrel?

At last, back to some sensible input and an intelligent question. You can just keep the mercury and re-use it. There is a lot of info on the internet about cleaning barrels with mercury, especially from the U.S.A. It is used a lot by black powder guys who cast their own bullets and get a lot of lead deposits on the bore because their alloy is too soft.It is a bit of a trade off as if you use too much Antimony you get a hard bullet but not such a good gas seal.Less Antimony and more lead you get a better seal but more deposit.
Lead build up can increase gas pressure to dangerous levels and affect accuracy.
Do they not use mercury in chemistry lessons at school any longer? We had a huge bottle of it that we did experiments with, especially the production of oxygen by heating it up.After reading latest info on here I guess it is regarded as too dangerous to work with so perhaps not a good idea.Will have to have all the mercury fillings in my teeth removed!

Baz

[Bladerunner too]

Make up your own mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)

[Logunner]

Make up your own mind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)

Dangerous stuff... Why use it if safer alternatives are available.

In an air rifle a simple pull thru or cleaning pellet soakedin a suitable cleaner will suffice. Rarely do it, unless accuracy is off or I'm storing for a while.

[airgunnut]

i have a falcon fn19 i got it new and its now over 15 years old, well over 1/2 million pellets have been through the barrel and its only been cleaned once using a vga cleaning kit, its still capable of single hole groups at 70m (sadly i am not) lead is a lubricant so the only reasons i see to clean a barrel (airgun) is when the accuracy drops of after 1000s & 1000s of shots (dont know about the smooth twist) the second reason is that in pcp the air as soon as it is released from the valve it starts expanding, when a gas expands it cools so it will freeze the skirt of the pellet,as the now brittle skirt inflates in to the rifling fragments brake off and settle on the condensation in the groves from the cold air so the water rusts the barrel under the flakes if lead

[iceni1]

Also how often you use your rifles may have some bearing on the matter, I am retired so i can have a play with all my rifles at will but if i was going to store them for any length of time i may well think about leaving the barrels lubricated.
The amount of money i have spent on my collection its rude not keep shooting them, Much to the other halfs chagrin!

[Benelli B76]

Also how often you use your rifles may have some bearing on the matter, I am retired so i can have a play with all my rifles at will but if i was going to store them for any length of time i may well think about leaving the barrels lubricated.
The amount of money i have spent on my collection its rude not keep shooting them, Much to the other halfs chagrin!

In December I took a rifle and pistols out of storage in South Africa that have not been touched for 8 years.I lubed the barrels when I put them away.I was amazed how hard the lube had set, and I could not remove it with a phosphor bronze brush, it was absolutely rock hard. The rifle would not chamber rounds and I had to use a chamber reamer to clear it.

Baz