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Posted: 4/13/2006 8:12:03 PM EDT
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I shot a few hundred rounds of Wolf poly and started having FTE. The poly is coating the chamber and I'd like to clean it out. I tried lacquer thinner on an unspent round and it won't dissolve the poly coating. What can dissolve the Wolf poly? By the way, the reason Wolf poly gums up some ARs is because a hot chamber melts some of the plastic off the casing and coats the chamber. So it's sort of like taking a hot glue gun and squirting a bit of glue into the chamber. Some ARs get sluggish because they have hot gooey sticky plastic in the chamber. Some ARs have FTE because the hot plastic cools and glues the casing in the chamber. I think some ARs eat up Wolf poly because their chambers are slighltly larger so there's more clearance. |
Old news around here. Good luck getting it out. IIRC, brake or carb cleaner and a whole lot of work. |
| Brake cleaner doesn't dissolve it either. I think if I switch to brass a little bit of the poly in the chamber will stick to each round so over time all of it will all come out. A brass casing that was stuck in the chamber today needed to be tapped out. It had quite a bit of poly stuck to it so maybe most of it is already gone. |
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Are you sure it's polymer? Are you sure you're not shooting the lacquer coated older Wolf? I've never heard of anyone having gum-up issues with the newer polymer stuff. Anyway, if it is the polymer, just take a good .223 chamber brush and go at it for a while with some solvent. The polymer should come right off since it's so soft. |
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use your chamber brush and your favorite cleaner and use some elbow grease. It is not poly coating your chamber. ETA: I re-read your post... everything you wrote is internet myth. There was a problem with the old green laquer Wolf, that problem is gone. I shoot Wolf Poly exclusively. the poly does not come off and stick to your chamber. If you clean your rifle after each range trip you will not have a problem. My rifle has 18K of Wolf shot through it and this picture was taken at about 9 or 10K.  I dump 1K each range trip and I never see "gumming up" I have seen a slowing down of the rate and action becuase I used too much lube and all the CARBON turned the excess lube into sludge. This was a range trip in NJ during a fairly cold day and I was in the middle of a 2k round dump. I use a GI Chamber brush, Hoppes #9 and a little elbow grease that takes all of 5 minutes to clean out the chamber. Try it and don't listen to the Interweb myths. |
Nice visual, but completely wrong. Take a blowtorch to a spent casing and see if you can get it to ooze if you don't believe me. |
Agreed, I put some cases in an oven under inert gasses. It would char but I could never get it to melt. When it charred it was at temps that a barrel couldn't really stand either. |
CB1 is correct. Nothing you quote is correct. It's all an internet myth. The "stuff" in your chamber is powder residue from fired steel cases. The steel cases do not expand like brass cases, and, as a result, you get blow-by of unburned powder. Neither the old "lacquer" nor the new "poly" coating on Wolf will "melt" in a chamber, no matter how hot they get. The stuff in the chamber is powder residue. That's all. Just use a GI chamber brush and scrub your chamber. |
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The reason why I think it's the poly melting and coating the chamber is because after shooting several hundred rounds of the Wolf poly the rifle was hot and as I walked back to the car a few hundred yards there was a water bottle on the side of the road. So I loaded a magazine of brass ammo and the first 2 rounds needed pulls on the charge handle to eject. The 3rd round fired but failed to eject and the 4th round jammed behind it. When I was able to remove the jammed 4th round and the magazine the 3rd round was stuck in the chamber and I couldn't pull it out. It only came out with taps on the charge handle. The brass casing was about 50% covered with black melted flaking plastic. I don't recall reading melting plastic as an explanation but everything that people experience with Wolf poly (sluggishness, FTE) would be consistent with a bit of melted plastic coating the chamber of their hot rifle. Admittedly, I'm an AR newbie. |
And you know this to be plastic because? Not trying to be a hardass, but did you look at your ejected cases to see if the polymer coating had flaked off? If it hasn't, then your assumption is incorrect. |
I bet it looked like this:  That pic was taken by me after firing a lot of Wolf and then following it by a brass cased round. I'll see if I can dig up the old thread. Here it is: archive.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=3&f=118&t=246820 Read Troy's explaination, down the first page. |
I looked at the brass casing that had been stuck in the chamber and it had the black stuff coating over half its surface with some of it flaking. It looked like what melted plastic in the chamber that cooled over the brass casing and got pulled out with it would look like. I automatically assumed it was the poly coating but it could be what's in the powder? Can that blow back into the chamber? Didn't think to save the coated brass casing. |
That's it! That's what it looked like but there was much more of it. Also, about the smell, a few times it smells like ammonia but most of the time it smells like some kind of incense. |
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I don't think non-members can read the archive... here is Troy's answer to what is happening...
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| I never for one second belived that "wolf laquer" sticking story BS. Becuase i have seen tons of guns use "steel cased" laquer bullets, from my mauser to my AK to my AR and i've never seen any such build up ever. So why should it do that in the AR only? Why does'nt it happen in SKS's and AK's? AK's shoot .223 as well you know. BUt you should cut in half a Wolf steel case sometime, it is very thick, I compared it to some chinese i cut and it was about twice as thick! OF course this was 7.62 x39 can't speak for .223. But it would make sense that the case is so thick it cant expand in time and allows a little carbon fouling in the chamber. |
This is what I have observed. Some of the Wolf casing does not have the rim shaped properly, causing the rim to be too thin: This is the one that have the properly shaped rim:  I put the one that have the rim cut thin into the chamber and pull the trigger, yup, FTEx. Case stuck in the chamber, extractor rip through the rim and need cleaning rod to punch out the casing. Put the other round with properly shaped rim and it fired and extracted just fine. The round is Wolf polymer case, 62gr FMJ recent production (sorry, I dump all the ammo in ammo cans and toss the box so I can't tell you what's the lot number). But I have seen the same issue with the 55gr FMJ as well. |
Check out this website old_painless is responsible for this wonderful creation!! check it out and find the link about wolf ammo in AR's www.theboxotruth.com/ |
My sentiments exactly. Upon reading the "Box of Truth" website it seems that if you shoot a mess of Wolf and then shoot some SA brass right after without cleaning, the case may very well get stuck. It seems that the Wolf steel doesn't form in the chamber well enough to seal all the carbon out and that carbon builds up in the chamber which makes the brass, which did form to the chamber, stick. So it's not a problem with the lacquer, but more of a problem with the steel. |
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