New to precision shooting.   New Savage 10P.    325 rounds thru barrel.     Minimal cleaning of barrel so far - just a couple of swabs with CLP about 100 rounds ago.

Now noticing a lack of accuracy with hand loaded 168 gr Sierra TMK.      Over the counter commercial ammo was grouping better when the barrel had less rounds thru it.

So I scrubbed the barrel down good with BoreTech Eliminator.    Haven't had a chance to see if accuracy comes back.    


What is YOUR criteria (round count, grouping size, etc. ) to determine when you need to deep clean your barrel

.223, I'll shoot 50 and clean if I am splitting hairs, otherwise 100+.  I know it's been the subject of heated debate here but I used the finer grits of tubbs final finish on 3 rifles and they do clean much easier, I did not see huge amounts of improvement in accuracy, they were already .5 inch guns. The ease of cleaning was very noticeable. Some will argue it's snake oil or voodoo but I got real, palpable results. The more polished bore has less "grit" for fouling to stick to. Plus, it's polished in the same direction the bullets passes through.

I clean when I see groups starting to open up and no sooner as cleaning ruins far more barrels than shooting too much between them.

The Shilen Select Match barrel I had could easily go 500+ rounds between cleanings without accuracy degrading.  I imagine my new AI barrel should be able to do the same.

pardon the pun but ^^^ precisely.

I do the same as above.  i may put a patch or 2 through my barrel when im done shooting just to get any loose crud out.  but i dont CLEAN the barrel till i notice my groups open up and i have no real "reason" for it.

Cleaning does not ruin barrels. Improper cleaning methods can but if you know what you are doing you will never ruin a barrel.

Having said that, I clean my barrels when my groups open up beyond what I am comfortable with.

I agree with the comments about cleaning bolt guns once I notice groups opening up.  I keep log books for all precision rifles, so I know the exact round count since the last cleaning.  With low velocity (under 3000 fps) bolt guns like 308, I can easily go 300 rounds between cleaning the barrels.  I do wipe down the bolt, and bolt lug area to get carbon out of those areas though.

With gas guns, especially direct gas guns that blow all that carbon back into the bolt/bolt carrier, I clean those areas well in order to maintain reliability.  Again, I don't clean the bore until accuracy diminishes.  

I do note that whenever I do clean out the bores on gas, or bolt guns, accuracy and consistency of my groups diminishes, and it can take any where from 5-20 rounds before the rifles settle back down.  I NEVER begin a rifle match with a freshly cleaned bore.  Either I foul the bore the day before the match, or insure that there are sufficient zeroing shots to give the rifle a chance to settle down before the match scoring begins.

I'm with you on this one. I clean my gun after every time I go shooting. It actually bothers me if I let my gun sit overnight without cleaning it. I guess I'm OCD like that...

why?  carbon and copper are fairly inert.    they aren't actively corroding your barrel.  they're just sitting in there.  cleaning solvents, on the other hand...

That's what I meant by my original comment.

Any time you put something other than copper and/or lead down your barrel you are risking damage to your barrel.

Many guns shoot better after a few fouling rounds anyway so why waste 3-4 rounds per range session.  Going home and cleaning it after every range session just means you will be using up ammo for no reason every range session.

You are not alone.  I do the same thing.

I stopped cleaning my barrels after I was able to prove that it knocked back velocity for about 40 rounds.

It's troubling to pick up 80 fps in the middle of competition.

Might be the OCD Marine in me, but I clean my guns every time I shoot them. That's wether I put 20 rounds or 200 rounds down the pipe. I clean them before I put them away that night.

I used to clean every time I shot, but at one point, decided to see how long it took for my groups to open up.

I don't recall exactly how many rounds I shot that day, but it was around 300.  Not only did my groups not open up, a number of my best groups of the day came near the end.

Since then, my deep cleaning regimen is pretty loose, along the lines of "Whenever I feel like it".  I don't usually let more than about 300 go, but it's certainly not every time I shoot any more.

Not all cleaning "solvents" harm your barrel.

^^^ Very true. Rule of thumb, if you can't stand the stank of your solvent (like it's punishingly powerful ammonia smelling) then that's something that you don't want to leave in there a long time without thoroughly getting it out of there. Stuff like Break-Free CLP isn't going to harm anything at all ever simply by soaking in it. Ammonia based copper removers will if left in the bore too long.

Like Boretech Eliminator and C4?

Exactly!

Sorry for reposting this. I just posted this in another forum on this site yesterday. So copy and paste.

Biggest reason you want to clean the copper fouling out of your barrel is the grooves in the barrel. Sure, if you take the copper out of your lands in the barrel, after you clean it, the first 2-20 rounds will fill in the microscopic depressions in your lands, and in most cases "settle down" and shoot tighter groups. Problem with not light cleaning your barrel every 100 rounds, is those grooves fill up with copper and it's like welding copper into them. Those grooves get smaller and smaller, your chamber pressures get higher, and you will wear out your barrel faster. I've seen AR 10 barrels build up so much copper fouling inside the gas hole inside the grove that rounds keyholed (sideways impacts) at 100 yards. There is some very bad advice given to not clean your barrel. I have over 20 years of teaching military and civilian sniper experience, either as a sniper or sniper instructor. That doesn't make me an expert by any means, but I've seen and experienced a lot of things. Usually it was because of my dumb ass mistakes. Bottom line, I clean my barrel every 100-150 rounds. Concistancy is accuracy so I clean my chamber, bolt, I run one wet powder solvent patch, one wet copper solvent patch down the bore, wet my bore brush with copper solvent and give the bore approximately one pass for every 10 rounds I fire. I then run 3 wet powder solvent patches down the bore, 3 dry patches down the bore, then one wet powder blast (this solution drys fast and ensures no copper or powder solvent is left in the barrel) I then run 1 dry patch down the barrel. I have seen no clean cold bore deviation with this process.

Every 500 rounds, I clean my barrels with JB or sweets and clean it until it's completely clean. I do this at the range where I can then confirm my zero and fire 3-8 rounds to ensure the barrel has fouled.

With all that said, you don't have to clean your barrel at all. 1000-3000 rounds, but your going to decrease the life of your barrel. We did a test when I worked for a company overseas. We fired 4,000 round through an M24 and 5,000 rounds through an SR25. The SR25 had to be rebarrelled because it would hold but a 2 MOA group. Before, it fired a 1/2 MOA barrel (total rounds through the rifle was 5347 rounds) The M24 had to be rebarelled at 6200 rounds. All of our other rifles we cleaned in the above mentioned process and we got on an average of 12,000 rounds out of the barrel. We had a sniper on our team in Baghdad who never cleaned his rifle, ever! After failing the FBI qualification 5 times, we bore scoped the barrel and you could barely see the lands and grooves. The barrel throat had eroded and measured almost a 1/2 inch. We filled the barrel with sweets copper solvent, put an earplug into the end of the barrel, hung it bore down for 2 weeks. Tried scrubbing all the copper out of it. Never could get it shoot after that. I fired him and sent him home. His excuse was is that he was told in Army sniper school that the SR shot better dirty!

Just my opinion, nothing more. Semper (I can't spell worth a damm, so excuse my knuckle dragging)

I have been cleaning my bolt gun every 300 - 400 rounds or when accuracy starts to drop off.  After reading Ranger8541's post, I am reconsidering my cleaning regimen.

Ranger, thanks for sharing your experience with us.

I'm glad I that I kicked that unnecessary stuff the Marine Corps taught me.  Seriously, my guns shoot just as well and I have more free time and less exposure to solvents.

Ranger, thanks for your service.  I'm just a 65 year old hunter and wannabe precision shooter with quite a few rifles that I do shoot quite a bit, and have been shooting regularly since I was a teen. I hunt with solid copper monolithic Barnes TSX and TTSX bullets, and load them for self defense.  I can attest to exactly what you say across a wide variety of centerfire rifle and handgun calibers.  Those bullets build up copper even faster and accuracy drops off by 100 rounds.  The groves pick it up really fast.  

Of course gilded metal jacketed bullets are not as bad, but I just got in the habit of cleaning at the 100 round point for everything and using Barnes CR10 copper remover every other cleaning.  You use your regular cleaner first and follow with the CR10, as it is copper selective and you should clean powder and lead deposits out first.  If you use proper cleaning rods, guides and jigs, you'll not damage the bore or crown.  A couple fouling shots and you are back to your baseline accuracy and zero.

I clean my firearms every time I shoot them. At least a once over lightly cleaning. This means I'll run a couple of wet patches through the bore and allow it to sit for 15 minutes. I'll follow with another wet patch and then a dry patch and I'm done. I feel it's best to knock the carbon out at a minimum.

I'll use a bronze bore brush around once every 200 rounds. Two or three passes followed by wet patches. I always push the brushes and patches he same direction that the bullet travels. I never pull a patch or brush back through the muzzle.

I know people who shoot NRA/CMP high power that clean their guns once a year. I know other that tear them apart after every outing. This is a personal decision based on each individual's personal belief system. I fall somewhere in the middle.

I'm no expert, but I'm in the group that cleans the bore as little as possible.

I once read it explained by a well-respected gunsmith in this way. When you run sandpaper over a soft wood, the area between the grit in the sandpaper quickly fills up with wood particles and it becomes smooth. At this point it isn't much good at sanding anymore and the sandpaper grit isn't going to wear much. On the other hand, if you sanded a bit, then cleaned that wood particulate from the sandpaper periodically, it will be more effective as sandpaper and will also wear out the sandpaper faster.

Obviously we don't want a sandpaper effect in our bores, but the imperfections in the bore do act that way. Some copper fouling will fill those imperfections, making the bore more smooth, reducing wear. If you're constantly using chemicals and solvents to remove that copper, you're keeping your bore more abrasive more of the time, leading to increased wear.

I clean my barrels at about the same interval as the time between your post and the one previous to it

When the groups start opening up.

No shit.  Those rifles we shot at MCRD San Diego were cleaned a ridiculous amount.

And they shot like shit

I fall into the cleaning group.  I had a Team Sergeant whose motto was, "Never let the sun go down on a dirty weapon." I remember we use to take our rifles into the showers with us after being out in the field. My bolt guns I clean after every range trip, and I even do a break in. I use Sweets 762 to remove the copper and JB paste, but I am also very careful to get all that stuff out with shooters choice, then CLP and some dry patches to finish. Use a good bore guide, a coated 1-piece rod, and never pull back through after exiting out past your crown, remove your jag and then pull the rod through.

What do you do about the velocity loss and attendant dope change from doing that?

Do you log it all and just rezero as your round count comes up?

I clean my competition gas gun after 200 rounds. Past that and enough of a carbon ring starts to form that I notice chamber pressures going up.  I shoot a load that is hot but okay with a clean barrel and can start blowing primers if I go past 300 rounds without cleaning. Even at 300 rounds the accuracy is still good though.

I have another rifle that starts losing accuracy at about 130 rounds.

Just do whatever you like, who cares.  I have no idea why everyone always wants to argue about this subject.

Oil patch, dry patch after 50-100 rounds. (1 usual outing)

Solvent, dry, oil, dry after 200-250.

Solvent, JB, dry, oil, dry at 500.

This is my experience.  It just realy bothers me to see the copper streaks in the rifling.  My latest experiment is to avoid cleaning until I actually see a change in the accuracy.  My OCD hates this but I hate having to shoot foulers every range session as well.

Honestly I don’t shoot that much that I get a ton of copper fouling from any one range session.  And I guess I don’t shoot enough to shoot out a barrel.  I guess I’ll thoroughly clean each bore about once a year.  Otherwise I run a boresnake (wet with clp) down each bore a few times after each range day.

ETA- I guess threads don’t archive that often in this forum.  Lol

I shoot mostly bolt action .308 Win with barrel lengths of  20 to 24 inches and twist rates from 10 to 12.  I punch paper, occasionally ring some steel, and rarely harvest a few of gods creatures.  I do not compete.  On a new rifle, I usually do an initial break in / conditioning of some sort using 20 to 50 rounds.  After which I clean the barrel down to the steel.  Subsequently, I clean (but don't scrub) after every range session regardless of round count.  My cleaning routine is to run a wet patch (powder solvent and a little oil) thru the bore and let is "soak" for about 5 to 10 minutes.  Then I do 2 passes with a bore snake and call the barrel good...   The chamber I clean with some solvent / light oil on a nylon brush and then dry the bore with a clean dry bore mop.  Using a little more powder solvent / oil on a brush, I clean the bolt and then wipe it down with an oil cloth and lightly lube the friction points / lugs.  Last steps are reassemble and function test.  I only clean more if accuracy degrades which is uncommon for me...

Bullets and barrels are consumables.

Most of what we think we know are just theories. To actually know, we’d need test and control and a large sample size.

We’d need to start with a really long barrel blank that was identical from end to end. Then, cut it into at least 30 typical barrels. The cutting and chambering would need to be done with cutters and reamers that never dull.  That way every barrel could be identical. Then, you could actually get statistical data to make your cleaning or non cleaning case. Without doing that, we make our conclusions on a very limited sample size that isn’t representative, but we act like it is.

I rarely clean my barrels. I made High Master with barrels other guys said were worn out.

I’ve seen guys clean before really important matches only to find that it took half a match for their groups to be anywhere close to normal.

Whether you clean a lot or a little, realistically, you have no proof it changes anything except the way you feel.

Carbon is a barrel killer. I clean my Bartlein barrels after 100 rounds.