I've heard that if you shoot 7n6 and don't clean your weapon, the next day you'll start having corrosion in your rifle.  Is that true?  If so, what do you do when you come off the range and get home? Do you dunk the rifle or hose it down?

If this ammo is corrosive, any ideas on how do the Russians stop corrosion if there are tactical for a couple days or weeks and can't clean their weapons?

New Question: Does anyone have any idea how Russian forces in the field (combat) clean their weapons up when they are shooting them day after day?  Do they just expect the weapons to be turned back in all rusty?

Depends on the environment.

I know of a person in the AZ/NM or somewhere similar dry and they shoot tons of 5.45 and gloat online how corrosive ammo doesn't make guns rust.
I am in FL and when I shot corrosive ammo I had rust by the time I finished the drive home.

As for cleaning?  Just clean normally.  Many will swear by hot water, or windex, etc, and while they work, if you just clean well and normally it will be fine.

I had a 5.45 ak and shot a shitload of corrosive anmo through. I simply housed it out all over with superhot water then hosed it down with wd40. Never a speck of rust, I sold it when 5.45 surplus dried up.

Hot water, then oil after cleaning with regular solvent.

or

Some use Windex (water is main ingredient)

The "corrosive" is a salt in the carbon residue. Either potassium chloride or chlorate (I forget at the moment). Salts dissolve in water, which is why it is used to remove the "corrosive" residue.

Russian manuals refer to an "alkaline solution" for cleaning.

I had good results using cheap Walmart brand Windex in a spray bottle as the first round in cleaning after "corrosive" ammunition. Then cleaned with regular solvent like Hoppes or CLP and light coat of oil after...

I shoot ammo that is corrosive, I use Ballistiol. I buy the can of oil, take a empty spray bottle fill it quarter way with the oil and fill the rest with hot water. Give it a good shake and the oil and water will blend together. Spray the bore and other parts that have shot residue and wipe/scrub it clean. If you spray the bore down and dont scrub it immediately it should give you a couple of days of time if you dont have the time to clean it. I live in Ohio and shoot mostly the summer time. You can use the unused mix later on, just shake it up again. Make sure after you apply it and clean up the firearm to use regular oil or pure Balistiol to put a good coat of protection and lubrication on the metal. This oil was developed by the Germans before WW1 when all ammo was corrosive and still used has many militaries today. It has other uses like cleaning and protecting leather, its very popular in Germany and and its found in a lot of households in Europe.You can find it on the internet or at gun shows. Hope this helps you out. Instructions are on the can for ratios.

Ballistol, like he said. It emulsifies with water, making what the black powder guys call 'moose milk'. The emulsion has a higher ph and dissolves, neutralizes and flushes away the corrosive salts. To be safe, you essentially wash the whole gun with it, inside and out. Its good for wood and plastic and won't harm any finish. After this you could actually put the gun away and be safe indefinitely but no doubt the best thing is to let it dry or blow it out with air, then use straight Ballistol  as your CLP and clean the gun normally.

Water is the key, flush out all those salts. I'll use close to a gallon of hot soapy water. Hot water to speed drying, soap to help get crud out.

You don't have to completely submerge but I use a watering can and a small oiler bottle to get in hard to reach places. BCG, charge handle, buffer & spring get submerged in the catch pan. With non-corrosive I don't worry about cleaning my BCG til it looks cruddy but when they get dunked I pull 'em apart and give them a quick wipe down. Mainly just to keep the firing pin clean.

normally I use CLP but for corrosive I just re-lube with ballistol, since it's water soluable the hot water rinses most of the crud out for easy cleanup. I use so much water for cleaning if I added ballistol at the begining I'd probably dilute it down too far.

I've had mag springs rust up too. I run Brownell's 20s with the tilt followers for 5.45x39, half of them had chrome silicon springs, the other half were stainless. Not on purpose, I just ordered them in two batches and didn't know the difference. After six months without cleaning the chrome silicons had surface rust, stainless springs looked good. Now my mags get a dunking too. I cut slots the size of my mags in a block of foam and made a drying rack so they can dry follower down. Easier than disassembling.

Of course all this is done in a shop with a concrete floor and makes a mess.

BALLISTOL! When you wash the whole gun with the emulsion, including inside and out, you can put it away without fear of corrosion. The best thing is to follow up with straight Ballistol as your CLP and go through your normal cleaning regimen. Its good for wood and plastics so don't hold back.

I live on the wet side of Oregon and I’ve had guns rust on me before I got home. When I lived in New Mexico I didn’t do anything special for corrosive ammo and had zero problems.

My routine for cleaning after shooting corrosive ammo is to use something water based* anywhere there is powder fouling, dry, and then reoil. I then check the rifle the next day for any rust from places I missed (I usually don’t find any) and then a final check about a week later.

AJ

*I’ve used soapy water and CLP with good results, right now I’m using Ballistol/water and straight Ballistol for lube. What you use isn’t as important as long as it has water in it. A good gun oil is essential as it will creep in between parts, displace any residual water, and prevent rust.

I’m not a chemist. But the internet chemists who usually chime in on this stuff say emphatically that there is no “neutralizing” the corrosive salts.

The way they’ve explained it is that you can do nothing more than mechanically remove the salts from the firearm. And you more easily do that by dissolving the salts into a solution (water) and flush them away. The problem with using traditional cleaning methods alone is that your swabbing and patching may not be enough to remove the salts from the firearm...you end up removing some on the patches but just smear around the rest. The oils you use may temporarily encapsulate the salts to some extent, which keeps moisture from being drawn into the salts, but as things dry out, the remaining salts can still eventually be exposed to water vapor in the air and start the corrosion.

So they say that Windex isn’t even necessary. The ammonia does nothing to the salts. However, ammonia is a bore cleaner and helps remove copper fouling, so it doesn’t hurt to use it. It’s just unnecessarily expensive to flush with ammonia when flushing with water is what it needed for the salts. Which does kinda make sense when you think about most ammonia based bore cleaners instructions. They tell you to swab and then leave the cleaner in place for a bit rather than to flush the bore with the solvent. The solvent needs to remain in contact with the metal surface to work well.

One other thing, one of the benefits of chrome barrels is corrosion resistance. So in terms of protecting a barrel from pitting from corrosive ammo, chrome is helping out a lot. All my AK’s have chrome lined barrels. So that’s buying you some time and probably a certain amount of margin of error in terms of cleaning process.

I actually worry more about corrosion back in the action of an AK than I do in the barrel. Barrels are relatively simple to clean. But the blow back of gases into the action can get those salts down into pins, springs, etc. So I often flush there with water as well but then follow up with a generous amount of WD40 to displace the water after flushing.

Been doing it pretty much this way for 30 years and never an issue. I will add a small drop of dawn dish soap sometimes and carry the mix to the range with a can of WD40. After shooting while still warm , just douche the shit out of it and then hose it with WD to displace the moisture. Then home for a regular cleaning.

After shooting corrosive ammo, shoot a half mag of noncorrosive. It coats the surfaces and doesn't rust. If you're gonna clean it afterwards, easiest way, for me anyways, is to clean as normal and then pour boiling water over everything that had carbon. The boiling water flushes the salts away and heats the metal so it dries itself. Now lubricate as desired.

While it is true that ammonia does nothing to the salts, and that ammonia helps remove copper fouling, and that it doesn't hurt to use it, there is still one problem.

Windex does not contain ammonia.  Look at the MSDS, (or whatever they changed it to).

Every one gets confused by the Ammonia D advertising.

Using Windex to clean barrels after firing corrosive ammunition is an unnecessary expense.  If you want to use an ammonia based bore cleaner, buy an ammonia based bore cleaner.  Windex does not contain ammonia.

+1
Ballistiol

moose milk

lots of hot water in the kitchen sink

then oil

On a summer day in florida it will rust before you get home.  Huge PITA because you got to take the whole thing apart and get everywhere, including most particularly the gas tube and gas hole those suckers rust the fastest/worst

I started to figure:  if I shoot 200 rounds on an average range trip and I can sell some of my 7n6 stash for ~.20 a round after fees/expenses/shipping and buy non corrosive at ~.225 delivered to my door.  It costs me $5 EXTRA a range trip.  Totally worth it to save almost an hour of time doing a full breakdown/clean versus doing what you are SUPPOSED to be able to do with an AK (don't worry about it)

Especially since nowadays good AK74s are worth real money... I could not imagine running corrosive through a $1500-$2500+ SLR/SGL/Krink… maybe a throwaway 5.45 AR that has no resell value just to burn the barrel out having a blast (after which the aluminum receiver, unrusted, you can use to build a proper 5.56).

I just bought a shit ton to run through a SLR

Spray bottle of moose milk doesn't take 30 seconds to spray down the innards and barrel. Then bore snake with straight ballistol.

Worked for me for years of shooting 5.45 and no rust.

TN is humid too (nothing like FL) but its muggy 3/4 of the year.

Rinse it thoroughly with water in all the nooks and crannies, ideally in the same day. Afterwards, clean and re-oil as normal.

This is what I do.

As soon as I get home from the range:

Field strip rifle. Heat some water while doing this.

Pour hot water through action, down the bore, don’t forget the gas block.

Scrub with a toothbrush, bore snake, and chamber brush using hot soapy water. Also clean the gas tube (be careful of the wood) and the bolt carrier/piston.

Wipe down the bolt, dust cover, etc. with a wet cloth.

Rinse with more hot water.

Then, spray everything down with an 80/20 mix of Ballistol/distilled water. The water will evaporate leaving a thin film of oil.

The next day inspect then LUBE as required.

Sounds harder than it is. It is actually much easier than gingerly dabbing solvents and snake oil to clean in the American manner.

Communists don’t really care about a little rust as long as the gun keeps running, a complete cleaning can be done later.

As others have stated it depends on your climate. When I lived on the wet side of WA my SGL31 would start seeing surface rust within 24 hours if I didn't clean. When I moved back to UT I think the longest I went without cleaning was about 3 months and didn't see any rust pop up, finally just cleaned it because I got tired of having a dirty rifle. In WA I'd do a quick rinse with very warm water (not hot), then clean with Rand CLP like normal. Here in UT I don't bother with the water.