Thread: How often do you clean your rifle?

Originally Posted by Tahr

What about your new Lupo? Whats the regime for that? Is the blueing keeping nice?

I believe the Mrs may have been moved out to the couch to make room for the lupo in the bedroom..or course this is just rumour until confirmed..... bet it is getting lots of oily rag rubdowns.....might even be new lint free linen rather than a common old rag.

Originally Posted by Tahr

What about your new Lupo? Whats the regime for that? Is the blueing keeping nice?

Oily patch if shot or gets wet, both have happened in the last week. I run a patch soaked in crc longlife through all my rifles before storing have never had an issue. Must use crc longlife only cause it doesn't run down into the chamber like normal crc would.

The Lupo is tri-nite coated and crio treated or some other fancy shit it's like cerekote but for men hard as the hobs of hell garunteed not to rust for 30years so not blued.

Originally Posted by Magnus

Yea I'm like most others, after every time it's fired around, but I only clean for powder residue etc with like brake clean or carb cleaner with a patch then a soggy patch with ballistol. Learnt my lesson with cleaning copper foul once and only attack that problem when accuracy starts tailing away. Rifles are always stored away lubed regardless.

This, and inox on outer surfaces.

Originally Posted by Tahr

Centre fire. One pull through with a bore snake after a hunt or so (I keep the bore snakes washed and clean). A good thorough clean out every 6 months or so depending on use. I only ever use cloth patches or soft bristle brush. Never brass or copper brushes. Hoppes 9 or such like as a solvent for the big cleans.

Are brass brushes bad for any gun?
The shop told me that they won't scratch the barrel?
I've been putting a fair few patches through my 303 barrel with hopes no9.
I would give a brush between patches and they kept coming out black for a while, but the barrel looks good now.
It probably had not been cleaned for some time prior to me getting it.
I know you have to be careful not to damage the end of the barrel and my main concern is when using a rod that the edge doesn't hit the barrel when you pull it back. Brass is softer than the steel, but there is still a risk.
Makes me wonder if bore snakes are probably safer to use instead for this reason?

No damage is caused cleaning using a quality one piece rod, bore guide and a bronze brush.
Most mass produced barrels don’t like to be taken back to bare steel and can use a couple of shots to settle in. Hunting rifles I only bother to remove powder fouling but my custom 308 target rifles I aim to remove around 80% of hard fouling at the end of each day.
Two barrels I trialled only cleaning after 400 rounds and never found a drop in accuracy but they did seem to require fouling shots to settle after a cleaning which is not ideal for workhorse competition guns. I also found the barrel life was noticeably less so became a born again cleaner.

There are differing opinions amongst barrel makers re the use of bronze brushes and differing opinions re pulling them back through the muzzle/crown.
All I would recommend is if you use bronze brushes buy the ones with a brass core, avoid the steel cores. Lessens the chance of damage.

I was concerned when I was cleaning my rifle when I pushed the rod through and the edge of the jag would drop and then hit the edge of the barrel when pulling back through. This was my main concern, I was trying to be careful so in the end I would not try and push the rod all the way out and had to go slowly.

My tika 308 gets a couple of hoppes n dry patches after every pkt of ammo.Shoots moa to 400yds on deer.Allways give the bolt face a tooth brush clean.Just came back from a rainy couple of days,give the rifle a light oiley ragg wipe down.Ready for next trip.
I only use hornady ammo,good clean ammo on the barrel.Deer don't stand a chance when im around,reliability is what you want in your rifle.

Usually after every outing on my center fire, unless it got wet then I clean it straight away. My 22, I think I have cleaned it twice in the 22 yrs I have owned it.

That hoppes no9 is pretty strong stuff, the vapor that comes off it is strong. Best done outdoors if possible.
It does a good job of cleaning. I thought it was really only required on really filthy barrels, Ive been using easeox gun cleaner/oil and that seems to be enough for cleaning if you do it after every use.

There must be a different theory on cleaning for every shooter. And the internet makes it worse.
I think it mostly depends on the rifles use.
Most .22 plinkers and pest shooters will do a clean every brick or two. But put that .22 on a small bore range and I bet it's cleaned at least every outing which is under 100 rds.
Talk to a center fire hunter and apart from waving an oily rag around, they don't want to upset the MOJO.
Talk to an F open guy with a life expectancy of 1500 rounds and they will most likely take it back to bare metal under 100 shots. I am experimenting with full carbon removal (to the best of my ability) and leave some copper in there. That's on a TR rifle (.308 with expected barrel life of 5000 rds) I guess I won't know for sure until I am on my 3rd barrel....when I get there I will post the results.

I used to be a cleaning fanatic, then I went to the US and realised that they never bother....

I genrally dont clean until I loose accuracy