Cosmoline
Member
I've been very much unsatisfied with the commercial ramrods and cleaning rods around. They're either nice wood that I don't want to mangle in rough cleaning or they're flippy floppy things that bend all over the place. The solution was to be found at the hardware store--a rigid fiberglass snow marker. These are very cheap and are used to stake out the boundaries of roads and as a quick reference for snow depth. I grabbed one, filed one tip and hammered a piece of brass tube down tight over it. Then I put a standard ramrod tip with a threaded hole on top of that and pinned the whole assembly together. Not only is it strong enough to be hammered, I attached it to my portable drill and used it to polish the inside of my smooth rifle's barrel at high speed. Try that with a normal ramrod. As an added bonus, it doesn't go all weak and gooey when you pour near boiling water on it, so you can use it as a cleaning aid.