Holland&Holland wrote:Erud wrote:Bearcatrp wrote:I have the black spray can of CLP. This stuff is bad? Been using it for years. Seems to do a good job.
Nothing wrong with it for general gun cleaning, but it may not be up to getting the rust out that you described. CLR (Calcium, Lime, Rust) is more potent. It’s about all I’ve used in barrels for the last 3 or 4 years and it is better on carbon than any gun cleaning product I’ve tried. I have not tried it on rust, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t do more than the CLP does. Flitz and Butch’s Bore Paste are both mild abrasives and will get even more out when scrubbed back and forth with a brush.
What is your procedure for using it for general cleaning? Any tips or tricks you have learned? Techniques to keep it off the blueing?
I pretty much use it the same as any other bore cleaning product. My regular process for cleaning my barrels is this:
1. Push a couple dry patches through the bore to get the large chunks out.
2. Scrub back and forth (focusing on throat and first 10" or so of bore) with CLR-soaked patches on a spear-tip jag until they start to come out sort of clean-ish. This usually takes 8-10 patches.
3. 10 strokes back and forth with a bronze brush with CLR on it.
4. Push 2 or 3 dry patches through to get the remaining slop out.
5. Put it away.
I do that every couple hundred rounds or so and it does a great job of keeping carbon under control. It also removes some copper, but I don't care about copper one way or the other. Every so often (probably every 600-800 rounds, maybe a little more often when a barrel is nearing the end of it's life) I will scrub bit with Flitz or Bore Paste to get the throat smoothed out a bit. This is for 308's that have pretty high accuracy requirements, and I generally replace barrels at 3500-4000 rounds. They are always still shooting great at that number, but I know they're getting close and they don't owe me anything at that point. I've only ever actually "shot out" one barrel, it was a krieger .308 and it officially gave up the ghost at 4400 rounds.
My rifles have blued receivers and I don't take any special precautions using CLR, just wipe it off if it gets anywhere it isn't supposed to. The bluing on the inside of the receivers is lighter than on the outside. That may be a result of using CLR (and other solvents), but they also have many thousands of bolt cycles under their belts. If I were using it on a collector piece I would probably be a little more careful, but mine are tools.