Barrel Cleaning

[Cicero]

How often do you clean your barrel? I know the general wisdom is to wait until accuracy suffers but I haven't pulled through a pull through in my HW100 barrel in the last 4 years.
As for accuracy, my grouping was not too good the other evening but then there was a crosswind! So my dilemma is whether to give it a clean or leave it nicely leaded ...

[Berry]

You won’t know unless you try it mate.
Give it a go and get it re leaded. 4 years isn’t bad going for not cleaning and still having good accuracy.

On a side not, if it takes say 50 pellets to re lead a barrel, why do you only get between 20-50 pellets in sample packs to see which is your guns preceded pellet. Surely you’d need to clean between different varieties and then use all the next variety to lead it up again, hence never really getting a true reflection of each pellet variety ???
Just a thought.
Back to the op. I’d give it a clean mate. It can’t hurt

[barrel]

Wait for a still day then try again if no improvement then clean the barrel. Its no big decision as it does not take that many pellets through a cleaned barrel to get it back on song anyway. When you say cross wind what sort of speed are we talking about and what size groups were you getting at what distance?.

Kindest regards

Barrel

[jumbuck]

I have never in 40 years cleaned an air rifle barrel and never had accuracy problems however it's up to the individual and some swear by it

[Murphy]

I normally only clean if they get a soaking.

[PhatMan]

Cicero,

The only reason I regularly pull through my air rifle & pistol barrels, is to apply a preservative grease to prevent rust in the bore.

If I lived in a house with central heating, I probably wouldn't bother !

As it is, in the winter especially, I find it essential.

Have fun & a good weekend

Best regards

Russ

[Cicero]

Thanks everyone for your input. It was quite a crosswind the other day but I think I will give it a pull through on Sunday just to be sure.

[FPoole]

Can't see it hurting anything. I can actually see the difference in grouping after I clean the bore. I have an air rifle specific Boresnake(no brass bristles) and I pull it through 2-3 times. I don't think I actually clean the barrel, rather just knock down some excess lead to get it back to right amount of leading. I say this because it never takes over a few shots to be back on target. This is a TX200, if it matters.

[32:1]

I have a few barrels that just keep shooting well, clean them every six months or so. I also have a barrel that is like a laser for around 200 shots then it gets weird quickly, a quick clean and its back on form with one or two pellets, I did have a trick told me and that was to shoot 2 pellets backwards at the end of a session as this would clean the barrel, I have tried this in my TX and as yet its not needed a clean, it might be 'Hocuspocus' but I wont know until it does lose its accuracy....

Cleaning it will not lose you any accuracy surely improve it


Chris