I'm starting to see more and more guys suggesting not cleaning barrels, or at least not getting carried away with it. Reid Hendricks of Valor Ridge and former Marine says he never cleans his barrels and they just get more accurate and he is very specific that he doesn't even pull a dry bore snake through them. That's on AK's, AR's and his M14. Kyle Defoor, instructor and former Seal, says at most he pulls a dry bore snake through his rifles one or two pulls max and insists that removing the copper fouling from the first four inches of barrel is detrimental to accuracy. Even John Barsness, a few years ago, had an article on barrel cleaning and he insisted its detrimental to clean them down to bare metal and remove all the copper fouling....but he DID clean them. On the other hand, bench rest shooters who obsess about the nit pickiest details clean obsessively and go through all kinds of barrel break in voodoo. Just curious what y'all think. My Mini-14 isn't the most accurate thing (16" stainless tactical model) but it's "ok". I might just experiment a bit with whether accuracy improves or degrades by not cleaning it.

Plenty of opinions out there. IBS shooters clean their barrels very clean. You find no copper in there once they are through. My good barrels are cleaned with Bore Tech which when done properly leaves no copper. My rough barrels are cleaned slightly with Hoppes. The fouling may just do them good.

ammo. oily actions and dirty barrels.

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Of the Troops & For the Troops

Lots of experience here. Leaving a barrel dirty works well as long as it is used often. If it is stored dirty it wont work a year later. Varmint shooters will shoot all season and not clean until .the season is over and then they clean till new and star.t over next season. Bench rest shooters use chemical copper cleaners and cotton. No wire brush. Clean every 12 shots and keep clean. I also think you can do more damage with a cleaning rod to a crown than another 200 rds would do.so pic and choose but the one thing I know that doesn't work is storing a gun dirty. It will never work as well as when you put it away. J.Michael

I don't tend to store one for a long time dirty. My routine every year around deer season is to check my sights and not clean it till the season is over but that's not a lot of shooting when it's all said and done.

OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS. EVERYTHING FROM MULIES TO ZEBRA. IT HAS NEVER HAD SO MUCH AS A BRUSH DOWN THE BARREL. THE FA .44 HAS 24 STRAIGHT ONE-SHOT WHITETAILS, SAME STORY BUT THE CYLINDER HAS TO BE CLEANED TO KEEP ROTATING.

years ago after reading Veral Smith's little booklet...at least when I'm only using cast bullets. With good lube it works like a charm. Haven't tried it when shooting jacketed bullets, although I've found shooting enough cast bullets will remove jacket fouling quite well.

Mostly nowadays, as long as it's still accurate, I'll use a bore snake, with several drops of CLP on it and run it 2 or 3 times through the bore to remove the powder fouling out and that's about it. I pay more attention to the chamber and action than to the bore.

I believe the most important thing, on an accurate rifle, is to do the same thing, the same way, with the same products, all the time, whatever the technique or product.

That being said.

AK Church once brought over a Remington 700 in .243 that a friend had to sell.
The rifle would only group in the 4"-5" range at 100 yards, even with some handloads known to be extremely accurate in another rifle.

Well, we took an Outers Foul-Out and after a day of cleaning layers of powder and metal fouling out, I shot, with factory Remington ammo, 3/4", center to center, 3 shot groups, 3 times in a row.

cleaning stems from a time of blackpowder and corrosive primers or cupro-nickel jackets. You HAD to clean the barrel then.

My old small-bore coach told us to NEVER clean the barrels of our .22 LR guns, only the chamber/action and only if the gun wouldn't function. I am not obsessive about my own guns but followed the Army line on cleaning when an armory and/or supervisor of weapons maintenance. They CLEAN. We used to see a lot of .17 HMRs come in for sale/trade because they "weren't accurate any more" but found that the barrels simply needed to be cleaned.

My personal opinion is that every barrel/bullet combination can be a different circumstance and that reason/logic needs to be applied but that one can over-clean as well as under-clean. I do not think that the barrel break-in "formulas" is all that it is made out to be by some. I think it does benefit the industry in sales...

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Sincerely,

Hobie

I'm gonna try the bore snake with a little Ballistol for a while on my Mini-14 and AR both and see how they respond.

At the most I only pull a bore snake through a .22 rimfire rifle or handgun and I rarely ever do that anymore...rarely as in I can't even remember when the last time was. I generally do somewhat of my own barrel break in routine. I'll shoot 20 rounds, clean it well, repeat until I get about 100 rounds through it. I don't know if it helps or not but my reasoning is the barrel is probably rougher when new and thus will foul more. Shooting 20, getting rid of the fouling and repeating may keep the fouling down a bit until it's been smoothed over a bit. That being said, when I got the current upper I have on my AR I just took it out and shot almost 80 rounds through it in the first sitting and then cleaned it.

well I've read a lot of different things too.

1. A prominent highpower shooter with a busy business wrote that he had limited time to clean guns so he decided one time to not do it. IIRC he went about 1500 rounds without losing accuracy.
2. I've read that it isn't necessary to clean .22LR barrels because they use waxed bullets that protect the bore.
3. Besides the bore, other parts of the gun need to be cleaned to maintain function- chambers, faces of cylinders, etc.
4. I don't know what the cleaning interval should be for revolvers using cast bullets. I think it is hard to buy commercial cast bullets and not have leading problems.

I completely agree on your last point. I've had more difficulty de-leading revolvers from commercial cast bullets than any other cleaning chore related to firearms. Some are ok, some are impossible. The only ones I never had issues with were the old BRP bullets. After (Roger?) sold the company, I stopped buying them and never kept up so I. Not sure if they are still in business or any good if they are but I sure miss them.

My 700 Remmy .308 needs regular bore cleaning to get rid of fowling; after 20-30 rounds the groups start to really open up. Other rifles I have seem pretty insensitive to bore cleaning.

The only time I clean a .22 barrel is when I have had it out in the rain or snow, and then only to make sure there's no water left in it.

One exception is/was a .22 Colt Diamondback that leaded up until it would not stay on a gallon bucket at 25 yards. I did the old hot Kroil treatment and ran tight patches through the barrel, getting strips of lead up to 1/2 inch long out of the bore. Once I had it clean I spent a lazy afternoon putting a dab of Turtle Wax rubbing compound into the forcing cone and then shooting a CB cap. After a couple hours of that, the bore was nice and shiny and it hasn't leaded since.

I'll usually dry-brush a center-fire bore just to get the powder residue out and call it good.