Advanced Copper Removal from Barrels

Advanced Copper Removal for Gun Barrels - Updated 2012

Copper Fouling definitely degrades the accuracy of your gun barrel. Getting the copper out the traditional way with gun solvent, patches, brushes, (and a lot of scrubbing) is too time consuming for most shooters... and it's a lot of dull physical effort. Here are the methods we use why we use them the way we do:
USP Bore Paste - Bullet manufacturer's sometimes use different bullet jacket metal alloys that may not dissolve with the copper solvent you're used to using. We found this out when a few customers reported that our most aggressive copper solvent (KG-12) wasn't getting the copper out of their barrel. We contacted the folks at KG and sure enough, the copper from Berger Bullets doesn't dissolve in KG-12... Go figure! So, in those customer's barrels, we used USP Bore paste and it scrubbed the copper out easily and quickly. Check out our USP Bore Paste.
KG-12 Copper Remover - We discovered this stuff when we had a couple of T/C Encore barrels in 204 Ruger that were coppering up so fast you couldn't do a decent break-in process. The coppering on these was so heavy from as little as 5 shots, they would take all night soaking in Bore Foam to clean it out. The KG-12 was developed for cleaning heavy copper from military Howitzer barrels... On these 204s, it cleaned out the copper in 15 minutes. Between KG-12 cleanings, we also polished these bores with KG-2 Bore Polish. These two barrels were beyond what a customer could fix with typical break-in procedures*. But using the KG-12/KG-2 process for cleaning during break-in really saved these barrels. About 1-2 hours of break-in and these barrels were shooting 1/4-1/2" groups consistently. The KG line of gun care products is very effective and worth checkling out. Check out our KG Cleaning system!

Cross-Treatment with Butch's Bore Shine and Wipe-Out Bore Foam - We use Butch's Bore Shine for light copper removal during barrel break-in periods and afterwards for quick general bore cleaning. Butch's is a mild, gentle copper remover... On heavy copper fouling, the Butch's will continue to dissolve copper, but you can be running patches through all day and they still come out blue. So, we use something different for heavy copper fouling... The Wipe-Out Bore Foam we use is extremely effective at copper removal, but it has to soak the bore for an hour or more. The interesting thing is that these two treatments seem to compliment each other. The Wipe-Out will remove a ton of copper with little or no effort but then it'll leave a little that repeated applications won't remove... almost like the left-over had been desensitized to the Wipe-Out. Left-overs come right out when we run a few patches of Butch's through the bore.
Here's an Example - A customer brought in a World War II Nagant rifle a few months back. We foamed the bore for an hour and ran a patch through... it came out purple, there was so much copper fouling. We foamed it for another hour and the same thing happened. A look down the barrel and copper residue had lifted to give a furry appearance. So we ran a brush back and forth with Butch's to break up the loose copper. Then we ran a patch through to clean out the residue. We foamed it with Wipe-Out and left it overnight. Next day a clean patch came through purple again. We foamed overnight again and a clean patch came through light purple. One more Wipe-Out foam treatment and we had patches coming through clean. However, a look down the bore showed some copper streaking was still there. That's when a few patches of Butch's Bore Shine did the trick to finish the job. This was an extreme case of copper fouling in a 60-70 year old rifle with decades of copper fouling and pitting. Cleaning out the copper with traditional methods would have taken a tremendous amount of work. Using Wipe-Out and Butch's Bore Foam got it all out with almost no effort... and just a little patience to let the cleaners do the work.
Finish with Clenzoil - Once you've got the copper out, run a patch down the bore with some Clenzoil on it. Clenzoil is a lubricant and cleaner in its own right. But also, it tends to give the barrel and ability to resist fouling..
Mar 30th 2023 EB

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