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Posted: 2/24/2009 4:09:54 PM EDT
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In 9 years of shooting I have never loaded or fired a lead bullet.
Yesterday I loaded some .38 Special with lead round nose and some WC with medium to slow charges. Today I fired around 65 rounds of each thru 2 different stainless revolvers. Now I have lead caked in the barrel. Especially the forcing cone. I've tried Hoppes 9 with a bronze bore brush, even a lead cloth but it was kinda dry. Still the lead is there. What are you guys useing to clean the lead out? Thanks Much |
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go to the store and get a copper pot scubbing pad, one brand is "Chore boy" and bounty makes one too.
Pull a strand of copper off and wrap around a brush, work it through the barrel a few times and the lead will come out- you will feel it get a lot easier to move the brush through after the first pass or two. A little kroil seems to help loosen it up some. I've used 50/50 white vinegar/hydrogen peroxide before too- it makes a sludge mess but works. The copper wrapped brush by itself works well enough that i don't bother with the messy vin/perox anymore. |
| A lot of old cast bullet shooter use a bore brush saturated with Kerosene let it soak in a little then push a wet patch of the same stuff through the bore,followed by a tight dry one. I make my patches out of an old t shirt the porous material helps clean better that the regular patches. |
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Quoted:
go to the store and get a copper pot scubbing pad, one brand is "Chore boy" and bounty makes one too. Pull a strand of copper off and wrap around a brush, work it through the barrel a few times and the lead will come out- you will feel it get a lot easier to move the brush through after the first pass or two. A little kroil seems to help loosen it up some. I've used 50/50 white vinegar/hydrogen peroxide before too- it makes a sludge mess but works. The copper wrapped brush by itself works well enough that i don't bother with the messy vin/perox anymore. I use this method as well with the following exception. Take the chore boy and snip accross one end so you can unroll it. Cut into patch sized "sheets" and roll around a worn brass brush of the appropriate caliber. I find 10-15 strokes with this combo dry will take out most of the fouling then clean as normal. I've used this method for 15 years, I've tried other lead removers but always come back to the pot scrubbers. Until I learned this little trick, I hated lead bullets.....now they don't phase me. |
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Mostly good advise.
My experience is that lead will mostly slide on a steel gun barrel (clean) and what little lead you do get brushes out with a few passes of a good tight (new) bore brush used dry. If you have a bit of copper jacket material in your bore the lead bullets get shreaded all to hell and you will get a mess like you did. Use some good copper bore solvent like Sweets 7.62 or Butches Bore Scrub to get a super clean barrel BEFORE you shoot lead. I have heard the advise to shoot jacketed to "clean" out a leaded bore but this never worked at all for me the couple of times I have tried it. |
forget all the above 
30 seconds with a steel bore brush and your favorite lube attached to a drill.....done been doing it this way with a stock glock barrel every 300rds (thats how many rds it takes to get lead deposits) for the last 8000+ rds so approx 30 cleanings no signs of wear or scratches from steel brush in barrel |
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I use Shooter's Choice Lead Remover the only thing that worked for me, Most of my handguns I use lead bullets. When I clean my guns I run a wet patch with bore clearer,then a brush and a dry patch. Next I run a patch with lead remover and let it set for a 1/2 hour, next a brush and run a wet patch with bore cleaner( let it set for 10 mins) and then dry patches. The forcing coneI use a large bore brush and cut the end to fit taper of the cone and clean the same as I did the bore. Works for me and that's IMHO.
Mike |
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Quoted:
Before you come home from the range shoot about 5 jacketed bullets through your gun and that gets a lot of it out. that can be dangerous depending on how much lead is in the barrel. think obstruction in the barrel. best route is to shoot some paper patched lead bulets, the paper polishes the bore and will help remove some lead. |
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Quoted:
forget all the above
30 seconds with a steel bore brush and your favorite lube attached to a drill.....done been doing it this way with a stock glock barrel every 300rds (thats how many rds it takes to get lead deposits) for the last 8000+ rds so approx 30 cleanings no signs of wear or scratches from steel brush in barrel My brother shoots lead only and uses a brush and drill. I forgot what kind of brush but when I first seen him do that my jaw dropped. The guns I used shooting the lead bullets were a newer Taurus and an older Rossi each with plenty of jacketed ammo thru them but I thought they were very clean. Could be the barrel bores were bad from new, rough. I'm done with cheap guns. |
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No need to work so hard. Mix up a solution of 50% ammonia and 50% vinegar. Plug the muzzle, stand the pistol upright, and fill the barrel up to the top. Wait 15 minutes and pour out the dissolved lead. Clean your barrel immediately with Hoppe's No. 9 to stop the chemical reaction. |
| Many good ideas you have here to remove that lead, but don't sell lead bullets down the road yet. You must have had some very soft bullets to have that happen. I use nothing but hard cast bullets in all my handguns and have virtually no problem. I even shoot a 150gr. cast bullet out of a single shot rifle at 2600fps with no leading, these were bullets made up by an old friend of mine that moved away and I have no idea what mix he used or what his process was. Just some info for folks that might otherwise be turned off to using lead bullets! |
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Quoted:
No need to work so hard. Mix up a solution of 50% ammonia and 50% vinegar. Plug the muzzle, stand the pistol upright, and fill the barrel up to the top. Wait 15 minutes and pour out the dissolved lead. Clean your barrel immediately with Hoppe's No. 9 to stop the chemical reaction. Are you sure about the ammonia? I've used 50-50 mix of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar for years, but never tried an ammonia mix. Chore boy is fine, but I just use a few strands of fine (00) steel wool on an old bore brush. I dip the brush/steel wool in the hydrogen peroxide and vinegar solution and scrub the bore a few strokes. Let it sit for no more then 10 minutes, flush it out with hot water. If there is still lead remaining, do it again. |
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Quoted: Quoted: No need to work so hard. Mix up a solution of 50% ammonia and 50% vinegar. Plug the muzzle, stand the pistol upright, and fill the barrel up to the top. Wait 15 minutes and pour out the dissolved lead. Clean your barrel immediately with Hoppe's No. 9 to stop the chemical reaction. Are you sure about the ammonia? I've used 50-50 mix of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar for years, but never tried an ammonia mix. Chore boy is fine, but I just use a few strands of fine (00) steel wool on an old bore brush. I dip the brush/steel wool in the hydrogen peroxide and vinegar solution and scrub the bore a few strokes. Let it sit for no more then 10 minutes, flush it out with hot water. If there is still lead remaining, do it again. sleepercaprice1 - Good Catch. I guess I zoned out on that one because the ammonia and vinegar solution is my home made window cleaner recipe. (75% ammonia and 25% vinegar) As he said, the correct solution for removing lead is 50-50 mix of hydrogen peroxide and vinegar. |
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Ammonia and vinegar makes ammonium acetate, a damn near neutral salt. And nearly worthless.
Now H2O2 and vinegar WORKS very well for lead dissolution. But it WILL rust the fool out of steels, even stainless. Please do NOT use steel brushes and a drill, that will burnish the bore, making leading even worse. Copper jackets WILL cause leading if followed by cast bullets. And the plated bullets are even worse as are low velocity jacketed loads as they do not get hot enough to cause the gilding metal to self limit. In rifles, the 5% Zn in the jackets vaporizes, shedding the copper as a fine dust. But in slow pistols, it isn't hot enough so copper builds up. |
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I am shocked that no one has mentioned lead wipes. These are treated cloths that are sold in a plastic bag. I have bought them from
Pro-Shot Products (Lead-Clean Gun Cloth), Kleen Bore (Lead Away), Remington (Lead Wipe) and others. All seem to do a good job of removing lead from barrels. The cloths are usually 11" X 9" and are easily cut to 1" X 1" squares or less depending on bore. When used with a tight jag, they are probably the easiest of the methods so far. I bought them originally to use with my stainless and nickle wheel guns to get the cylinder faces and cone areas clean as well as the top straps. After reading a little more on them I started to use them to remove the lead from barrels. You can mop the bore with Kroil and then use the patch or use them dry. Main thing is keep them sealed in the bag they came in. When they dry out they don't seem to work as well. Maybe my perception. |
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I bought some "Butches Bore Shine"... that is some AWSOME stuff!!
Like has been said above, the "key" to shooting lead is "hard cast". I shoot 80% - 90% lead and don't have any leading issues with my centerfire guns. I shoot a crap load of .22 (wife and I can go through 550 - 800 every weekend) So I do get leading in those. As long as you clean regularly it is minimal. The 50/50 white vinegar & hydrogen peroxide works like magic... but it's a TOXIC soup. I've never used the chore boy method around a brush personally, but the old timers (I'm not quite there yet... thank you) swear by it. I would suggest... once you get it clean, then every time you clean, clean the bore with butch's bore shine, follow up with hops #9, and you won't have any issues with copper or lead, as long as you use hard cast lead. This method seems to be working for me even with the soft .22 bullets. |
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