So I am pretty decent about keeping my gun running and clean.  
I shoot a good bit of steel, and have never had a stuck case yet.
I've never felt like I got my gun really clean with a chamber brush, so I use a .40 nylon brush and brake cleaner now.    

Anybody else do something similar?

Who cleans their gun anymore. If you're a super tactical operator you just put sand in your chamber......

JK, I clean as i normally do (chamber brush). I've never had a issue except when i was in the 100~ round range and one got stuck but that was it. A thousand rounds later never had a issue.

Not having read the Box of Truth on the subject of shooting brass after steel I once managed to break a reloaded brass case at a MG shoot.  This was after about 1k steel on that day.  Got the fragment out with the oversize brush technique.  When I got home I ordered a nice Dewey chamber rod and a bunch of brushes.  Oh yeah, and a broken case extractor.  

I've never used any of those things - they live in a drawer somewhere.  In fact, the awful truth is I've never separately cleaned a M-16 chamber - as distinct from bore cleaning.  I always figured pushing wet brushes and patches from the chamber end soaked the chamber down just fine - and the dry patches removed it.  I still believe this.

Possibly, this is cause for revoking my man-card.  But after over 24k steel and about half as much brass - most through three uppers - without ever once needing to specifically clean a chamber tells me something.

Sam

I never used one up till recent. I have the same thought process as you on the subject but i go ahead and use a chamber brush anyway because it takes a couple minutes out of my day.

The AR chamber brush is probably most useful to clean out the barrel extension and break any crud out from that area.

I've run a 40 round mag of Wolf plastic coated thru my AR (BCM hard chromed bore and chamber) as fast as I could and then chambered a round of brass case ammo and let the rifle cool.

After 15 minutes cooling in the chamber the brass case round and its 29 little brothers fired, fed, and ejected just fine.

AJ

Agree with Sam....break cleaner and a a tip

I picked up a few blue nylon chamber brushes from Cabelas last time I was there. They work really well and don't get all messed up like the bronze brushes. I think they're Isso or something. My solvent is Hoppes #9/Kroil mix. I'll flush with brake cleaner and blast with compressed air. Use a little Breakfree for some things.

i use to shoot steel and never clean afterwards and never had a problem....then i read this and stopped the steel habit, didnt feel like buying new barrels, even though its cheaper in the end....

steel ammo test

.410 brass brush wet with Ballistol on one end of the aluminum cleaning rod, the other chucked into my cordless drill.

that seems a bit of overkill with the drill.

at most, i just use a large cotton patch soaked in hoppe's, then dry ones.

why do you feel the need to use a metal brush AND a drill?

It works?



 

I use a chamber brush on a chamber brush rod, and give it a few turns wet with a good solvent, then use a bore brush on a regular rod, also wet with solvent.  The chamber brush gets the chamber body AND the locking lug recesses, while the bore brush gets the neck section of the chamber area as well as the bore.  That's for whatever I've been shooting, whatever the cases are made of.

The thing with steel cased rounds in .223 is that steel doesn't stretch the way brass does, so the case mouth doesn't seal completely and powder gasses will seep back around the case neck.  In time, they can build up sooty deposits that can goof up your chamber while you're shooting.  Nothing permanent, but a case that's stuck hard puts a big crimp on your shooting time.  Getting the front part of the case section of the chamber clean is really all you need to do, but then this is the Maintenance & Cleaning forum, not the "I never clean my gun ever and I'm proud of it" forum...where you'll find most people's posts about having steel cases stick.

I found that my Glock 9mm supplied brush/handle work perfectly as a bore brush for my AR.

Great link! Thanks.

I just include chamber brush use into routine cleaning and don't worry about it.  I have noticed that lots of new AR owners or new builders are challenged with malfunctions that can easily be avoided with a good chamber cleaning as part of the build or break in process.

Very Informative. Shoot Brass keep your barrel Longer. Shoot Steel Replace barrel much sooner.

But also Remember they fired 10,OOO rounds. I really do not think many will fire 10,OOO rounds in there life time or can afford to do so.

If a person is happy with the performance of there barrel  speaking for myself I would take care of it and shoot brass. If a person has just a run of the mill 3-4 MOA barrel then by all means shoot steel but plan to replace the barrel.

Actually it's more like "maybe replace your barrel somewhat sooner."  The Lucky Gunner test was a torture test, intended to get LOTS of rounds downrange to compare among guns with the equivalent of many, many months of consistent use with the ammo they used.  Yes, the Tula gun failed quickly, but the Barnaul gun kept going a lot longer, and the wear on that one's barrel was not at all in the same league as the Tula gun's.  And part of the torture was intentionally NOT allowing these guns to cool down, with mag dump after mag dump; even a little cooling will extend barrel life considerably.

So with shooting SOME steel cased ammo, you may have to replace your barrel eventually, but we're not talking about in a few thousand rounds.  More likely, it's going to be at 10,000 rounds instead of possibly 12k or more.