We have talked about when does a patch come out clean enough to call the barrel "cleaned". Here is a picture(sorry the picture is poor quality) of a few patches that I got while cleaning my Kahr MK40. The dirty patch on the right is the very 1st patch I pushed through the barrel using a tight fitting Jag and Slip 2000 725 degreaser after I scrubed the barrel with a bronze brush 20 times(in and out being 2 passes). It came out black with all kinds of crud! Now the 2nd clean white patch I put through right after the 1st patch.....the barrel must be clean, right? Wrong! This is the deceving part. As soon as I hit the bore with the bronze brush again the next patch came out just as dirty so the bore was still fouled even though the 2nd patch showed compleetly white.
The third patch is the last patch used durring the cleaning process and was pushed through the bore right after I scrubed the bore with the bronze brush a 4th time and it had little to no fouling on it and is what I call "clean" and stop the bore cleaning process and reoil the bore.

It use to take me about 10 to 15 cycles of bursh scrubbing, patching, scrubbing, patching to get the bore 100% clean to where the patch came out white even after a scrubbing. Now it only took me 4 cycles of scrubbing and patching to get the patch to look like the 3rd patch in the picture. How did I cut it down that much?
I started to use SLIP 2000 gun oil which claimes to prevent fouling from sticking to the bore. It truly does work and is the only oil I have used that does this that well! All other oils I tried it still took me 10-15 scrubbing/patching cycles(another 45 minutes of cleaning) to get the bore as clean as it now takes me only 4 to 5 times using Slip 2000. Hope this helps

Forgot to mention I'm in no way connected to Slip 2000.....just think it is some of the best stuff to be had.

My HK cleans up like that using fp-10, Only I need 4 patches.  I credit the polly rifling for its ease of cleaning.

Is it safe to run a bronze brush through the bore after it has been dried?

I usually just run a soaked mop of bore cleaner.  Scrub a couple times with the brush, and then just run patches.

If it's ok, I'll run the brush through again once the patches start to get clean.

Quoted: Is it safe to run a bronze brush through the bore after it has been dried? I usually just run a soaked mop of bore cleaner.  Scrub a couple times with the brush, and then just run patches. If it's ok, I'll run the brush through again once the patches start to get clean.

Never tried it on a dry bore. It won't clean much that way, I'd keep solvent in there just in case.

Quoted: My HK cleans up like that using fp-10, Only I need 4 patches.  I credit the polly rifling for its ease of cleaning.

Mine is the same for regular or poly rifeling. Do you only need 4 patches in combo with brush scrubbing?

I start with an oil soaked patch (dripping wet on loop) and coat the bore. Work on rest of pistol, Run a bronze brush down the bore about 10 cycles ( 20 by your method of counting). Then I run a damp oil patch down the bore on a jag. One Patch to dry and for Oil.

I noticed with traditional rifling there is still build up using that method of cleaning, but I dont worry about it. I'll clean that pistol in a detail fashion every 2k (once a month). Normal cleaning once a week using the method posted above.


With all the different cleaners out there you can go broke trying them all.

Quoted: Forgot to mention I'm in no way connected to Slip 2000.....just think it is some of the best stuff to be had.

I've been using Slip 2000 for over a year now. Really makes cleaning the bolt assy of the AR15 a breeze.

Where do y'all buy slip 2000?  Brownell's doesn't carry the oil.  

Quoted: Where do y'all buy slip 2000?  Brownell's doesn't carry the oil.

But it direct at www.slip2000.com.

How clean is clean?  Here is an excerpt from the Shilen Rifles Inc web site - take it for what it's worth, but after reading it over a year ago, I quit struggling to get that magic clean patch to come out of the rifle.  I now run several through with solvent, run a dry patch through and finish off with one patch with CLP.

"How clean is clean?
We get this question many times and have a great deal of difficulty helping some customers understand that a rifle barrel does not have to be spotless to shoot great. Many times more harm than good is done in trying to get it that way. Picture a car's fender. If the fender has a small dent in it, then professional application of body putty fills the dent. When painted over, the dent becomes unnoticeable, and the surface of the fender is smooth and consistent. The same thing happens in a rifle barrel on a microscopic level. Removing this small trace of copper puts you right back to square one. The next bullet that crosses that area will, again, leave a small trace of copper. Similar to patching a pothole. All successful benchrest shooters shoot one or more "fouler" shots down the barrel before going to the record target. This is not to warm up the barrel. They are resurfacing it on the inside. Benchrest shooters clean between relays to get the powder fowling out, not the copper. However, since copper usually comes out with the powder, they know that it must be replaced to get "back in the groove". I've had shooters tell me they "cleaned their rifle for 3 hours to get all the copper out of it." Their next statement is almost invariably that they had to shoot 4-5 rounds through it just to get it back to "shooting" again. This tells me that in order for the rifle to shoot well again, they had to replace the copper they worked so diligently to remove. I have a 7x08 Improved that shoots the same 1/2" MOA after 15 minutes of cleaning or 3 hours of scrubbing and de-coppering. Personally, I prefer shooting to cleaning. The gist of this is to set a regular cleaning regimen and stay with it. If the accuracy of the rifle is acceptable with a 15 min. cleaning, why clean longer? I would much rather have people admiring the groups I shot than marveling at how clean my barrel looks on the inside. "