Carbon fouling from Hades - old school rules

DAA

Administrator
Staff member
Sometimes, the old ways are still the best ways. But, sometimes, old habits are not the best habits.

I have a 12 twist Lilja chambered in .22-250AI that the accuracy has fallen off pretty dramatically.

This barrel has always been sort of a problem child. It never got the velocity I have seen with previous .22-250AI barrels. And it has always copper fouled more than any other custom barrel I've ever owned.

But, it has always been very accurate. Agging in the high 2's when new and still plunking down five shot groups in the 3's with over a thousand rounds on it and still chugging along with 3's and low 4's at 1,500 rounds. It always copper fouled a lot, it was a slow barrel, but it shot good. Until it just kind of went to crap last year. With groups opening up into the 7's and 8's. Which, is not acceptable for it's purpose.

The round count is starting to get up there, at 1,800 rounds, and throat erosion has advanced a good bit. So, not hugely surprising that accuracy might be starting to wane. But, I have worn out a handful of slow twist plain .22-250 and .22-250AI barrels and never had one go south like this until closer to 2,500 rounds (the two 8 twist .22-250AI's were toast much sooner).

And as mentioned, it has always copper fouled quite a bit more than any other custom barrel I've ever owned. But lately it has become a total copper mine. Just ridiculous copper fouling.

Anyway... I got a Lyman borescope recently and the first barrel I wanted to look at was this one. What I found was horrifying. Just gawd awful carbon fouling.

The thing is, the throat was carbon fouled, yes, but not horribly so – there wasn't any ring. Further up the barrel, starting about six inches in front of the chamber though, the whole barrel was just carbon fouled all to 'ell. I mean, BAD.

That the throat was cleaner than the rest of the bore I blame on an old habit. Which is, that I always pay extra attention to the throat area when cleaning. Anytime I feel a clean dry patch starts to feel tight in the throat, I break out the JB and work the throat area. But even during routine cleaning, I always pay a lot of extra attention to the throat area. So, this barrel, the result, the throat was the least fouled part of the barrel, ha-ha!

Another thing I saw, is that the bottom of the throat area, was less fouled than the top. This, is not so much an old habit, as getting complacent and lazy and dropping an old habit. From having used a Hawkeye borescope a lot many years ago, I was well aware that a solvent soaking routine would let cleaners pool in the bottom and leave the top neglected. I used to make sure that any time I was letting a barrel soak – as I routinely do with Wipeout – that I turned the rifle upside down for half the soak time. At some point over the years, I got lazy and complacent and stopped doing that. I'm going to start doing it again...

Okay, so there are the consequences of some bad habits. But what about the old ways, still being best? Well...

I had by far the worst case of a carbon fouled barrel I have ever been faced with. There was just a crap ton of really hard, cooked on carbon fouling for most of the length of the barrel to deal with.

I have Boretch C4 on the shelf (and, not for nothing, but have used it a good bit on this barrel already...). So, I started with that. Wetting the barrel with C4, 20 strokes with a bronze brush re-wetting the brush occasionally, patch out dry, inspect with borescope, repeat. The patches showed it was getting some of the carbon out, but it was a slow, hard labor process and after over an hour of hard work, I could see that it was going to take DAYS at the rate it was going.

It was at this point I remembered the Lyman scope can capture pictures. I wish I had started taking them at the beginning, but this was when I took the first pic. This is about 8” in front of the chamber, AFTER an over an hour scrubbing with C4.

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Boretech states that it is safe to leave C4 in the barrel “an infinite amount of time”. So I wetted the bore real good with C4 and let it soak over night (upside down, ha-ha!). Then brushed the bejeezus out of it again with another new bronze brush. Patched dry and inspected. Progress, for sure – the overnight soak was helping. But still a LONG way to go. So I did the whole thing over again, let C4 soak overnight, bronze brushed the crap out of it, blah-blah-blah. More progress, but STILL a HECKUVA LOT of carbon fouling remained. It appeared this method would eventually get it all out, but it looked like it was literally going to take weeks. Eff that...

BTW... I had always kind of wondered about the blue I get on patches using C4. Kind of thought it was getting some copper too. Except when I have used it, it has usually been after I think I already have all the copper out and want to get any carbon left behind. Turns out, C4 turns blue with carbon? This is a wet patch pushed through after an overnight soak. Note the blue on top of the suppressor mount though. There was some carbon build up there so I wiped it with C4 to let it soak too. You can see that it also turned blue.

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So... I decided to go new school aggressive. I got some VFG “intense” pellets and grabbed the CLR out from under the kitchen sink. Worked those pellets hard, up and down the bore. Didn't dare let the CLR soak too long, never let it sit more than about half an hour – I just don't know what it might or might not do if left to soak a long time. After about two hours scrubbing the crap out of it with the VFG pellets and CLR, I patched it dry and inspected again with the borescope. Same old story, making progress, but the progress was slow. The picture below is what it still looked like 8” in front of the chamber after all the soaking and scrubbing with C4 AND a ton of elbow grease with VFG pellets and CLR. This is three days in!

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You can see that progress is being made, but man, at this rate, it's going to take forever and a metric crap ton of work to get all this carbon fouling out. CLR was not going to be a miracle cure.

FWIW, I think if I had to choose, for this particular job, I'd go with the C4 overnight soak over CLR, it seemed like less work for the amount of progress made. Maybe a long soak with CLR would be the ticket, but I didn't feel like experimenting with that.

I'd reached the point, I'm just not willing to put more hours and hours into this barrel. Aside from the carbon fouling, the barrel just looks like crap inside. Probably most of it from the 1,800 rounds it has on it, but at least some, I think it had some internal flaws when new. I'm seeing some stuff that would explain the copper fouling it has always had.

But, not quite ready to throw in the towel yet.

My traditional cure for a really fouled barrel, for years and years, has always been good old JB Bore Paste on a patch wrapped around a brush. Decided I had nothing to lose, be interesting to see how it stacked up against the carbon cleaners with the borescope.

So I went back old school, with JB the way I have always attacked a nasty cleaning job in the past. I did alternate between my old patch wrapped around a brush and using JB on the VFG pellets, just to try and get a feel. The pellets are kind of neat, I think they do work well, but I can't honestly say that they are any more effective than a patch wrapped around a brush.

So... Using the JB, two patches and two pellets worth, in about 40 minutes, a nearly spotless bore! It's not in good shape, but hey, at least it's clean now!

Chamber neck/leade

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Just in front of the leade

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8” in front of chamber where the earlier pictures were taken

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Lessons learned...

- JB Bore Paste still rocks. When things get ugly inside a barrel, it's time to get mechanical. For this particular barrel situation, it was just way easier and way less time than either C4 or CLR. But! That is not to say, that either C4 or CLR are bad. One barrel, one specific case, they weren't as easy or effective as JB this time. Can't say that would necessarily apply to other situations.


- Apparently, C4 shows blue for carbon? See picture.

- Don't forget to turn the rifle upside down once in awhile during soak sessions.

- While paying attention to the throat area while cleaning is good, don't assume the rest of the barrel is getting clean.

- Already knew this very well, but this was a great reminder that “white patches” do not always mean “clean”. This barrel was showing snow white patches at the beginning of this exercise.

- I better start saving my pennies for a new barrel for this rifle, ha-ha! Will be the fourth barrel for it.

Products used in this exercise.

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- DAA
 
Ouch!

Great information, Dave. Always expect pristine photos from you, but what is your secret to getting such sharp pictures from your Lyman. I have a horrible time trying to get rid of light reflection with mine, even on dim setting.

Regards,
hm
 
Clarence, thank you!

I actually thought the pics from the Lyman are kinda horrible. Not much I can do about it though. Biggest thing I noticed, obviously, is to hold still. Got quite a few blurry ones until I started trying harder to keep it still while pushing capture.

I dumped them into Lightroom too though, just my workflow for any pics for any purpose. Memory card into Lightroom, export from Lightroom to websize, upload websized images. Bumped up the contrast and exposure sliders on them, then upsized them on export so they are twice as big as the lousy 320x240 they start. The upsizing does them no favors in sharpness, but I think they are still easier to really see detail than the little ones, even if they are a bit fuzzier.

Like I said, I used Lightroom because that's what I always use for everything. But I would bet, any photo program on any computer, has contrast and exposure adjustment. Or at least contrast and brightness. If there is any kind of export or sizing options on "Save As", I bumped these up 2x, to 640x480.

- DAA
 
Dave, did you ever talk to Dan about that barrel and the issues you had with it? I ask because the first 22-6mm Lilja we had, which was a number of years ago, had a problem similar to yours with coppering up really bad, but unlike yours, our barrel just shot "ok" at best right from the get go. It would shoot 3-5 rounds pretty good then start throwing them all over the place. Could clean all the copper out, which would be extensive after only a few shots, and it'd shoot 3-5 pretty well then things would go to he11. Talked to Dan about it and he ended up replacing the barrel. He never really said a whole lot as to what was wrong with the barrel but admitted it had a problem and he thought it was possibly a lapping issue.

I know most barrel manufacturers still hand lap but there are a few that have switched to machine lapping with the Sunnen and feel it's more consistent because they're taking the human element out of the lapping process.

Though I don't use them much anymore I've used and still have quite a few Lilja barrels and all of Dan's barrels that I've are usually on the slow side compared to my others. Except for that one, they all have shot very well, but they're typically on the slower side of the scale.
 
Originally Posted By: B23Dave, did you ever talk to Dan about that barrel and the issues you had with it?

I did, actually. What he had to say, is kind of ironic in light of my first post above
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.

In essence, he told me to stop using JB
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! Said something to the effect that too much JB would make the interior "too" smooth and more likely to have copper stick as a result. He used the analogy of a drag slick on pavement. Kinda made sense, really. And the barrel was shooting very accurately, so I left it at that and have lived with the copper fouling.

It's always been bad for a custom, but up until last year, not THAT bad. Would probably be considered average fouling for a factory barrel. Could shoot 50 to 100 rounds on 'chucks without stopping to clean and still be popping them consistently. But it definitely had some copper after a session like that, like I said, a good bit more than any other custom I have ever owned.

So, since Dan said so, I actually have tried to avoid using JB too often on this barrel. But have used it periodically, concentrating mostly on the throat.

Twenty years ago, a close friend bought a Hawkeye and for the few years he had it, it mostly lived at my house. I got to use it a lot. Looked at a lot of barrels back then. I'm seeing some stuff in this one, you know, with 1,800 rounds it's hard to say what it really looked like when new, but I'm seeing some stuff that I think is original flaws that I think have been the copper fouling problem all along.

How, why, it decided to carbon up so horribly, I don't really know. But apparently, once it did, the copper was fouling on top of the hard carbon and got really bad. Just tons of copper that last four or five times I used it.

Be interesting to see how it shoots now. Probably won't get to that for a couple of months. But I'm hopeful it's going to be sub half MOA again and I can get another 'chuck season or two out of it by really keeping up on the cleaning. Will just have to see.

It's time to start thinking about the next barrel though, for sure. Thinking I might use a Brux this time. Toying with a .22-243 instead of another .22-250AI, too, and leaning towards heavier bullets faster twist (a 9 or 10), but I dunno, will have to think about all that.

- DAA
 
Thanks, Dave. Obviously I need to put a little more effort into improving my pics.

Quote:Biggest thing I noticed, obviously, is to hold still. Got quite a few blurry ones until I started trying harder to keep it still while pushing capture.

But ya gotta be able to chew gum and walk at the same time before you can hold that stinkin' 18" wand steady, though.
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Been thinking about using an o'ring on end of wand or some other spacer to serve as a (loose) guide in the bore to see if that helps.

Regards,
Clarence
 
Dave, That barrel would have benefitted from something I use very sparingly in freshly chambered barrels. It would have saved you a bunch on time and wear on your aging bones. I started using Remington 40-X bore cleaner when chambering rimfire barrels to lap the leade to get rid of the tool marks left by the chamber reamer. Rimfire barrels take a lot of shooting to break in and it would dramatically shorten that time. I use the felt pellets from Brownells and give the throat about 15 strokes with the cleaner and it takes those microscopic tool marks right out. It works very well on heavy carbon like you had here too. Just don't go all crazy with it and it will treat you well.
Edit to say those are some really good pics.
 
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Dave, thanks for posting. Great article on "saving a barrel". I think that you are lucky that the carbon came out as fast as it did.
 
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Wow. That is some real useful information. I switched to the KG brand of carbon remover, but I seen I need to bore scope and see if it really is working.
Thanks for posting that Dave.
 
Very good and informative Dave. Thanks for sharing it.
I’ve been using the wipeout patch-out deal and accelerator. With occasional Iosso paste.
Going to have to get the bore scope some day to see if it’s getting it done. Probably not as well as I was hoping.
 
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These products work very well with a good bronze bristle brush, and brushes wear out every 80-100 strokes. If you are NOT using the above products with a Good brush, then you are just getting exercise. Always buy brushes by the dozen, throw them away often since the spring in the bristles are what do the scrubbing in the bore.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-c...s-prod1277.aspx

These products are listed in a range of how fine/coarse they are

JB
Montana Extreme Copper Cream
https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-c...-prod31933.aspx

Issio

Flitz

Rem 40x
https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-c...-prod10964.aspx

then you get very agressive by going with

Brownell's Al Oxide

Brownell's silicone carbide

The nice thing about the Lyman bore scope is that you can take pictures, store them a file, and actually watch your barrel wear as it progresses. You will learn different cleaning techniques and will become your own expert for a particular barrel, and they are all different!

Brownells has free shipping on purchases over $49
https://www.brownells.com/gunsmith-tools...-prod81507.aspx


I help at least a dozen guys a year try and salvage their barrels from carbon build up. For a guy that just does not like to phart around, the Montana Extreme copper cream used every time you clean cuts to the chase without damaging bores, it is easier to use than JB and accomplishes about the same thing.

I use this Hawkeye bore scope, but the darn attachment to capture pictues is $1200. The lyman bore scope is something that every serious shooter should have...otherwise....the price can be very high.

I hate to clean guns, but I hate even more my barrels being ruined from carbon fouling prematurely killing accuracy.

I had a lyman bore scope and the Hawkeye, brother had to have the lyman, I need to get another. I used two cup hooks under a shelf on my bench to hold the wand, the the Lyman was plugged in and handy ready to go all the time...idiot proof tool.

I wish that you could treat your self to a lyman bore scope for Christmas, maybe you and a relative/friend could split the price.

Merry Christmas to all

Keith
 
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Originally Posted By: DAAOriginally Posted By: B23Dave, did you ever talk to Dan about that barrel and the issues you had with it?

It's time to start thinking about the next barrel though, for sure. Thinking I might use a Brux this time. Toying with a .22-243 instead of another .22-250AI, too, and leaning towards heavier bullets faster twist (a 9 or 10), but I dunno, will have to think about all that.

- DAA


Faster twist more powder,!! Barrels are disposable, lol. I wonder how much carbon you are seeing in a suppressed AR? I wonder if powder choice has much to do with the hard deposits. It’s interesting you thought of turning the gun upside down with a wipeout soak it’s something I have thought about but haven’t done before. I would have thought the lapping effect of JB would help copper fouling contra to dan’s advice.

I would talk to Greg and see who is making the best 22 cal barrels these days. The last 7mm I bought he told me to get a Broughton which is what I got and so far it’s met my expectations. But if I wanted a 22 cal he probably would have suggested another brand. Robert gradous suggested hawk hill are the best barrels he has seen.
 
That Lyman bore scope is on sale at MidwayUSA for $202.89 right now. Not having one and continued reading of this thread makes it awful tempting.

I did order some of those pellets and a new bore guide from Brownells after reading this.
 
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