Gun cleaning-deep dirt.
I have, in my collection, an aging Enfield 17, with the most horribly bubbaed stock I have ever seen on a rifle. It’s beyond horrid.
But the iron is all there, the receiver hasn’t been messed with, the original sights etc are intact. And it shoots ok.
But the bore…. the bore looks like it’s been used to shoot nothing but corrosive ammo for two thousand years. And it’s a two groover. So not like it’s worth much, and the bore is hella filthy.
So I decided to try the chemical cleaning deal. I made up a little jig, with a 5/8″ dowel that goes all the way into the receiver and is drilled for a 1/8″ steel rod. The rifle stands on the dowel, a rubber stopper around the steel rod seats in the chamber, and the rod- with heatshrink tubing shrunk onto it at regular intervals to prevent shorting- extends through the center of the barrel. A tight fitting funnel goes onto the top of the barrel to pour in the solvent, and a motorcycle trickle charger acts as the power source.
THe solvent is 2 parts water, 1 part ammonia, one part vinegar.
Here’s the theory: The inside of the barrel is coated with lead and copper and brass deposits from shooting. The positive elecrode connects to the barrel, and the negative to the rod down the center. When power is applied, the barrel becomes the anode, and the electrons flow away from it. THis sudden absence of electrons causes the particles of copper etc. which have been suddenly positively charged to be attracted to the cathode(the rod in the center), which has a negative charge.
So, effectively, you’re electroplating the center rod or wire with crap from the inside of the barrel. It foams and turns the solvent black as the ace of spades in short order. Very cool science experiment with bubbling and smoke and stuff. And a VERY clean barrel at the end.
Painfully, you can’t wax a turd, and this barrel is bad. It’s not nice to look at nor was it (at two grooves) a great barrel to begin with. But now it’s clean. And now I have a tool to use to clean barrels like never before. Schweet.
17 comments Og | Uncategorized
I need a rifle like that one.
I’m gonna try that.
How many amps does that MC charger put out? I’m guessing 500ma would work, but small chargers are like 1A or so. ???
Think a #10 bare CU wire would work as well (better?); I got lots of that, not so much 1/8 drill rod…
Cool.
Not drill rod, it was mild steel crap from the rack at Sears. I don’t know if copper would work, all the stuff I’ve seen uses steel or stainless. The rod cost me $2. Hope to post some pictures in a couple days.
You want the crummy mild steel rod, it works way more gooder.
Also don’t give that 2 groove barrel short schrift just yet. Give it an honest chance, it might just surprise you. If the bore is rough and scabby, not just unpleasant looking try fire lapping it to smooth it up. Mean mouth ’em all you want, I’ve had a couple that were scary accurate. One is now in my 1943 Long Branch #4Mk I *. Since this rifle was totally cherry when I bought it I won’t screw with it trying to hang glass on it, but It came with a good rear sight, milled with screw adjustments. With Seffric’n ammo from 1942, it will pop ten in a row into a 2″ cluster all afternoon at 200 yds. For an untouched military rifle, that is not at all bad. 2 Groove barrel.
The rangemaster where I shoot is thirty something and has no patience for 65 yr old white bearded geezers with rifles that were hatched before they were and gets all snotty and snarky. Worse after five or six of those 2″ full magazine clusters of an afternoon. So I take my thoroughly insulted aged ass home, clean my thoroughly dissed rifle while sipping an Olde Fashionnedde glass full of Glen Garioch neat while muttering arcane and vile curses on the snot of a rangemaster and his to be born nutless heirs. The curses get more imiginative and vitriolic as the level in the glass falls. I do wish I could remember some of them.
Gerry N.
A zillion years ago, I worked in a plant that did its own plating. All (IIRC) of the cathode plates were huge chunks of copper suspended in the tanks. My thinking here is that CU is a better conductor than steel…
I can see a way to keep the less rigid wire from electrically contacting the barrel.
Any thoughts on the amperage issue?
Looking forward to the pics.
Gerry, that’s certainly sound advice. And Sgt York was a hellofa shot with that same rifle- legend has it, i believe, that York was often chided for the condition of his bore, but he managed to shoot well anyway.
The charger I used was a half amp, a little trickle charger.
I’m told that the steel rod does a better job because of the ion exchange. The copper would become plated and lose it’s efficiency quickly, where the steel doesn’t accept the plating as readily- so the copper becomes more plated and then less efficient- but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. You could always change the wire as it becomes depleted. Not gonna know until you try.
How long do you leave it in and running current?
We left it total for about three hours with frequent solvent changes. I also swabbed it and oiled the crap out of it when I was done
I had a sweet looking Winchester 1917. It also had a two groove barrel. At least I think it did… I had bought the thing without looking down the tube, as it had passed the bullet test with flying colors. It was so pitted it shredded bore brushes in 2-3 passes. Once clean it looked like the surface of the moon.
When I took it out, I put a target at ~30yds. First shoot was about a foot to the right of the target. The second was about a foot to the left. Gorgeous as it was on the outside, I went and sold it the next day.
Good post, on an idea that works.
When I did this, I used a fired case with o-rings fitted to it to block off the breach end of the bore. I bought cheap soft steel rod from the farm supply for a few bucks, and put small o-rings along it’s length every 6 inches or so, to keep it from touching.
At the muzzle, I fitted a funnel around the barrel to keep the solution off the finish, and to center the drill rod.
For mine I used an old radio power supply, dialed down. An hour of bubbling nastiness left the bores pretty clean.
I only do this on rare occasion, and have never had to do the same rifle twice, excepting my #4 mkII, which seems to attract fouling from other rifles on the line and capture it.
You really don’t need a half-amp of current. The first one of these I saw cobbled up used a two “D” cell flashlight for power, and the batteries would last several cleanings.
I should think an old cell-phone charger (they seem to multiply in my elctronic junk box) would work just fine.
As I’ve heard (I’m no engineer), you have to watch these gizmos like a hawk, because they remove fouling based on the nobility of the metals involved. First to go would be the copper fouling, but lead is less noble than steel, so after the copper was gone, those pits in the barrel would get bigger as the barrel would be next to go, before the lead.
Because of this, I’ve been scared to use one of these gizmos, and use Hoppe’s Benchrest (the old #9 formula before the lawyers got to it) and lots of brushes and elbow grease.
Brownell’s sells these ready to go, and I bet they have an info sheet on their use, ready to email you for the asking.
Electrochemical Bore Cleaning: FWIW, I left this comment on The High Road board over a year ago:
I’ve got the Outers Foul Out II and have used it for years with great success.
My unit runs on three AA batteries or an external source of 5 volts AC. Obviously there is a rectifier in the control unit to turn the external power into DC. The label next to the external power supply jack says “5.0 VAC at 450 MA.” Allowing for the 0.6 volt or so drop of a silicon rectifier, my Outers Foul Out II unit is designed to deliver 4.5 VDC to the rod/gun connection.
Outers sells two separate solutions, one copper and one for lead. I have no idea of the chemical composition of either.
The instructions point out that the electoplating action only works for metals, and any powder, carbon, etc. fouling must be removed with a brush and conventional cleaning solvents.
Now I know zilch about electroplating but I would personally be wary to exceed six volts DC for very long. Can you plate part of your bore to the rod at high voltages? Perhaps someone on here can tell us.
For those of you “rolling your own” cleaner, I thought the above information from the Foul Out II manual might help.
My Bro has one of those, a Remington, it was Grandpa’s deer-rifle. You might be able to find a stock from the CMP.
On the FoulOut, they specify that on the first cycle after an hour to check the solution: if it has a yellow tint it’s cleaning out rust. At that point dump the solution, scrub the bore with cleaner and a brush, then degrease and back to the machine. Do that and won’t harm the bore; keep using the rust-contaminated solution and it WILL attack the bore.
The voltage isn’t the issue, it’s the current that is doing the work. I wouldn’t go above .5 amps for long without testing on something I didn’t care too much about.
Half wave alternating current will work about as well as direct current, if your DIY. A diode will have wave (rectify) AC.
Neat idea, og, thanks for sharing.
Gerry N. – Thanks for the tip about the 1943 #4Mk 1. I have a ’43 Maltby #4Mk 1 that does that, too.
http://www.frfrogspad.com/homemade.htm#Copper
Scroll down just a bit. Rest of the page is full of good info as well.