Cleaning Stainless Cylinders

[DaveC]

Hi,

I have a Westlake Alfa MLR and I have two cylinders. Not had it for long, but boy does it get dirty quick.

I have been through a number of different ways of trying to clean these but nothing seems to be perfect.

The most successful so far is the dishwasher, seems to be the least effort and gets them clean enough, but still not perfect. Some careful work with a small wire brush gets a lot out as well, but what I find most annoying are the burn marks on the face and especially at the rear where the primers are.

I remembered the other day my Mum used to clean the stainless tea pot we had by dropping in a couple of steradent (denture cleaning) tablets and leaving it over night, I still do this on stainless flasks, gets them really clean.

So I tried it, put both cylinders into a small jug, warm water and a couple of tablets, left for 24 hours.

When I removed them, although the water had gone a nice dark brown, the cylinders did not look any cleaner, so I gave a rinse off in hot water, some washing up liquid and a tooth brush…. OMG, these cylinders have never been so clean, not a burn mark any ware, absolutely spotless…

OK, I am not going to go through this process every time, but now and then just to get them back to new.

Don’t think I would try this on a blued cylinder, but on stainless it works a treat.

Dave

[tacfoley]

Dave, everybody in my house still has their own teeths, so we are greatly lacking in Steradent.

However, I have two stainless steel revolvers, and clean the burn marks off either with the product made for that purpose - the Birchwood-Casey lead remover cloth, or better and far cheaper here in yUK, the Kleeneze 'Miracle' cloth. It's the same kind of material, smells the same, same colour and all that, but is twice the size at half the price.

Every owner of a stainless gun should have one - or two.

tac

[loiner1965]

would steradent tablet work in an ultrasonic cleaner....obviously after the fizz as gone down

[DaveC]

Hi tac, we all still have our own teeth as well I will try the cloth, in fact I have one that I use for cleaning the muzzle end of my Marlin as it has a ported barrel it also gets in a bit of a mess, I will give it a go next time.

As for using in the US cleaner, not tried it, always used sea clean, which does get them clean, just does not remove the burn marks.





Hay look at that, 1000 posts

[tacfoley]

Hi tac, we all still have our own teeth as well

Yeah, riiiight.

Do you keep them all in the same glass?

Only kidding.

tac

[Simon G]

Bloke in our club has one of the ML Alphas, are you sure your cylinders are stainless? Hisare a carbon steel, left in the "white"...

[DaveC]

Bloke in our club has one of the ML Alphas, are you sure your cylinders are stainless? Hisare a carbon steel, left in the "white"...

I was told by Alan himself they are Stainless, not sure how he ended up with a carbon steel cylinder.

[airgunnut]

I use this http://www.wilko.com/homebrew-access...g/invt/0022658 in stainless steel flasks